The Office Recap: Mafia

What’s even less likely than a mobster walking into a paper company for a low level shakedown? I don’t know… maybe Michael Scott encountering someone with a distinct ethnicity and not drawing ridiculous conclusions?

How do you follow up an excellent wedding-themed episode of The Office? With a weak episode that showcases Michael Scott’s idiocy and delivers minor laughs. Hey, I love this show as much as the next guy but this episode felt more like a story that might’ve fit better into a webseries. Sure, there were a few amusing moments, particularly with regards to Kevin setting up shop in Jim’s office but I just wasn’t feeling it tonight. Do I attribute that to the absence of Jim and Pam? Nah. They were missed, though they did make a few vocal appearances as the staff continuously called them for various reasons, disregarding the fact that they’re trying to enjoy a peaceful, romantic Puerto Rican honeymoon but the episode could’ve done fine without them if there was a story arc that wasn’t so ridiculous.

Oscar was right when he said that without Jim and Pam around, there’s “not the usual balance between sane and others.” And that “Coalition for reason is extremely weak.” Truer words haven’t been spoken in a long time at Dunder-Mifflin.

An Italian-American guy named Grotti showed up at the office to try to sell Michael some insurance. After he left, Dwight and Andy convinced Michael that the guy was in the mafia and probably planning to burn down the warehouse in response to Michael not purchasing any insurance. Michael, Andy and Dwight set up a lunch sit-down with Grotti to reconsider the sale. Andy showed up dressed as a mechanic, complete with tire-iron and jumpsuit. Grotti proved to be as aggressive a food-orderer as he was a salesman, teaching Michael the “Do it the way I want it or I’ll send it back” approach, of which he used later when he sent Erin to get him coffee. While Andy pushed Michael to buy the insurance so as not to end up with a horse head in his bed, Dwight tried to talk him out of it. By the end of lunch, Michael decided to buy the insurance he couldn’t afford. And later, back at the office, after Andy and Dwight confirmed that Grotti wasn’t in the mob, Michael called the guy up and cancelled the order, then told the whole office that he stood up to the mafia.

And earlier, while dressed in his mechanic outfit, Andy attempted to fix a woman’s car. Apparently he has no idea how to use jumper-cables and after frying the woman’s engine, promptly left her and her son to deal with the mess. Of the entire Mafia-story, this was probably the most amusing bit.

The B-story involved Kevin screwing up Jim and Pam’s honeymoon. He announced to the camera that he’d started using Jim’s office to fart in. A true bit of consideration on Kevin’s part for the rest of the office, particularly Angela and Oscar, who are stuck sitting near him. But then when no one really said anything, he just started saying in there. I suspect his fellow accountants decided that their fart-free environment outweighed seeing Kevin set up in his own temporary office. When Jim’s credit-card company called to verify the charges they were seeing on his card, most recently taking place in Puerto Rico, Kevin pretended he was Jim, using a paystub he found to verify his identity. Confirming that “Jim” wasn’t in Puerto Rico, the credit card woman told Kevin she’d cancel the card and send out a new one. Way to go Kev.

So yeah, call me underwhelmed by this week’s episode. I’m not one to state that this series relies on Jim and Pam, so my dislike for “Mafia” has less to do with their absence as it did with the silliness with the theme and the lack of truly great laugh-out-loud moments that we usually see. Maybe the writers were too wrapped up in delivering last week’s excellent “Niagara” to give the concept of this week’s episode much thought.