TVSquad

(S04E14) I performed tonight in Hartford, CT. Coming out of the comedy club, a woman who wasn't at the show checked me out. I heard her say helloooooo in a guttural way, like I was a really good looking guy. A few seconds later, though, once she got a better look at me, she said, "Never mind." Then, she and her friends laughed for as long as I could hear them.

Apparently, I'm only good looking when someone is looking at me out of the corner of her eye.

I bring this up not to inform you that I'm unattractive -- my blogger profile photo does a better job of informing you of that than I ever could -- but rather because I didn't think I could be any more depressed than I was after that comment. I honestly thought their derisive laughter was going to be the low-point of my evening. Then I watched tonight's Office finale...

We opened happily enough: Michael is delighted because it's Toby's last day. As Michael sees it, the setup of the office is essentially this: he's Corey and Toby's Dean Bitterman. If it wasn't for Toby constantly doing his job by trying to reign Michael in, Michael could finally detonate his bra bomb and be named the president's Secretary of Partying Down. Thus, he hates Toby.

Toby leaving is the best news Michael can hear. He wants to throw a going away party -- really a "don't let the door hit you on the ass" party -- so he convenes The Party Planning Committee. Angela wants to throw a regular party -- sheetcake and a slideshow -- but Michael wants something bigger. Because his Nana's slow slide into dementia has caused her to mistakenly send Michael dozens of $50 birthday checks in recent years, he's able to finance the party himself.

Angela wants no part of trying to put together Michael's vision (he requests an antigravity device to be present), so Michael entrusts Phyllis with the responsibility.

The Office is at its best when its exposing the dramas that take place at every workplace: I remember when I was teaching there was a screaming match at one of my department meetings over book storage. A screaming match, with actual veins pulsing. It was awesome; we talked about it for days. Angela's pettiness towards Phyllis (she goes so far as to "accidentally" shred her party vendor contacts) perfectly captures the small-minded myopia that sometimes sets in when you actually start to believe that the party planning committee means something. It was a small thread throughout the show, but a hilarious one.

Toby, meanwhile, is tasked to train his replacement, Holly. Michael instantly dislikes her because "HR is a breeding ground for monsters." He tells Dwight that they should haze her, which to Michael means trying to sell her an elevator pass. Dwight, however, interprets hazing as a "fun way to show a new coworker that she is not welcome." He tells Holly that Kevin is "slow" and is there because of a special program. Kevin's look and manner of speech don't really do him any favors in disproving this description and when Holly talks to him, she does so in that same measured voice that we all use for some reason when talking to a slow adult.

I'm sure some slow-adult support group will find something offensive in Holly and Kevin's interaction, but damn it was funny, especially when Kevin interprets Holly's patronizing tone of voice as romantic interest. Holly patiently explaining to Kevin how much money he could spend at the vending machine followed by Kevin declaring that he was "totally going to bang Holly" might have been the funniest moment of the evening. Like the rest of the episode, though, it had a downbeat ending to it, but we'll get to that in a bit.

It takes Michael about four nanoseconds to about-face on Holly. The moment he talks to her, he decides he loves her. A full-court Michael press is about to commence when Jim talks him out of it; he explains that getting to know a person better is part of the courtship. This leads Jim to reminisce about his times with Pam, which leads him to decide to propose to her tonight. He hands Phyllis an envelope full of cash and asks her to make sure there are fireworks at the party.

This sequence sent my wife's cute receptors into overdrive. You know how they say that crack cocaine perfectly fits the receptors in your brain's pleasure centers, overloading them and ultimately burning them out? I'm pretty sure that's how my wife felt right about the time Jim was handing Phyllis the envelope.

Aaaaaand, lest you start to complain that this was just another Jim moment, misinterpreting "cute" for "acting," Mr. Krasinski had a little sumpin' sumpin' for his critics tonight, finally standing up to Ryan via a voicemail. I'm not sure one speech will silence an army of internet critics, but I think it's unfair to say Krasinski can't act -- it's just that his character is sometimes confined to "cute" or "smug." When the occasion calls for it, he can do something else.

Michael takes Jim's advice to keep things slow between Holly and him, but it's hard because it's obvious that Holly is Michael's soulmate. When he responds to the fact Holly does yoga by speaking like Yoda, she answers him in the same voice. There are maybe five girls in the universe who would do that and three of them used to be dudes. It's easy to see why Michael is so drawn to her.

The party begins and it's a hell of a celebration: there's no antigravity machine, but there is a moon bounce, a ferris wheel, and a band. Things are going great; Michael's song-parody farewell to Toby is even heartfelt! And that, dear readers, is when things start to fall apart.

Listen, before we get to this section, understand what I mean: I'm not saying "fall apart" like it was a bad episode. I mean "fall apart" in the sense that I've come to love these characters so much that the last half hour was hard to watch. I guess you could criticize the show tonight for being "too emotional" and "out of place" for an NBC sitcom, but I'm not going to do that. This week I wrote in my House review that it's a drama that does comedy better than most actual sitcoms; I'll say the same thing about The Office. It's a sitcom that does pathos better than most dramas. You're either going to like that or you're not and I happen to love it. If you're looking for straight comedy without all the foo-foo, go watch 30 Rock (seriously, it's the funniest show on TV and it could use some viewers).

Michael is called away from the party to the grocery store by Kevin. When he gets there, he sees that Kevin had run into Jan and the emergency Kevin called him about was the fact that Jan is now visibly pregnant. This leads to Michael assuming that it's his (exuberant, as you'd expect). It's not, though. So, obviously, Jan cheated on him, right?

No. She went to a high-end sperm bank. She wanted to get pregnant, but not with Michael Scott's inferior seed. She said maybe if she were younger, she'd let Michael be the father of one of her children, but not now, not when it counts.

Ouch. I can't think of a worse scenario involving a woman -- and I've imagined more bad scenarios involving women than the WOPR ran through nuclear war simulations in War Games. Michael, as well as anyone with human emotions watching at home, is devastated.

Jan has the gall to ask him to take lamaze classes with her. Seems that she's just as needy as ever, just not when it comes to Michael's sperm. Instead of telling her no (and using about forty words that the National Organization of Women would disapprove of) like we want him to, he says that "he'll think about it."

As Michael is driving back to the party, the fireworks have begun. It's a pretty perfect moment, with music playing, fireworks flashing, and Pam's pretty little head on Jim's shoulder. He slips his hand into his pocket, pulls out the ring and...

Andy takes the microphone and asks for everyone's attention. Yep, even though they've never kissed, he's proposing to Angela. Angela's response? Every man's dream: a flat "okay."

The moment is ruined and Jim, sadly, puts the box back in his pocket. Pam is upset that Jim didn't propose. So are the rest of us. I know a lot of you hate the JAM stuff, but man, tell me you didn't want to see it happen! Tell me you weren't disappointed as hell when it didn't! Go on and tell me that, you rock-souled evil meanie! Yeah, I didn't think you could.

To top off our evening of tragedy, Michael misses out on an opportunity to go out with a clearly interested Holly (who goes off with Kevin -- he can even drive himself!). He then calls Jan to tell her that he'll go with her to the lamaze class, as soon as she tells him what that is, exactly. Sadly, a reunion with Jan looks to be in the mix.

Just when you thought there couldn't be any more hangers left to cliff, the stinger at the end of the episode has Phyllis walking in Dwight and Angela getting it on.

Phew!

I wasn't old enough to watch Empire Strikes Back in the theaters; my first Star Wars movie was Return of the Jedi (25 years ago this month, incidentally). So, I don't know exactly what it was like back in 1980 when people finished watching that movie. I imagine it would have been pretty bleak in the theater -- as Dante from Clerks said:

"Empire" had the better ending. Luke gets his hand cut off, finds out Vader is his father, uh, Han gets frozen, taken away by Boba Fett. It ends on such a down note. I mean, that's what life is, a series of down endings. All "Jedi" had was a bunch of Muppets.

Maybe some of our older readers can tell me if this is right, but I'm going to guess the feeling after Empire was a lot like the feeling after tonight's Office. Hell, we even had a disturbing reveal regarding paternity and some Yoda talk.

Forgive me, then, if this review doesn't feel quite complete. See, Empire is by far my favorite Star Wars movie, but I'm not sure if I would enjoy it as much if I didn't know Return of the Jedi was there waiting with its Muppets and its highly-implausible WWF style side-switch by Darth Vader to make everything okay in the galaxy far far away again. A down ending is harder to enjoy if you're not sure if there's light at the end of the tunnel. The Office returns in September. Come back to TV Squad then and I'll tell you whether tonight's episode was as fantastically good as I think it is.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go cry myself to sleep.

Other Stuff

-- Pam got into design school! But, uh, the program is only three months. Maybe I'm mistaken, but doesn't it take longer than that to get a degree in design? I've actually performed at the Pratt Institute -- it's a highly regarded art school, not one of those places where you have to freehand copy a picture of a turtle to get in. What gives? Do places like that actually have three month programs?

-- "You cheated on me? When I specifically told you not to?" Ahh, that's a line I plan to use on my wife when the inevitable happens...

-- Ryan is arrested and the video is on YouTube! Oscar had one of the lines of the night: "The worse crime was the beard!" Zing! My editor, Joel Keller, put forth the theory that maybe Jim was the one who tipped off the SEC. Anyone see any signs of that? It makes sense, but I'm not sure if Jim would be that back-stabbing.

-- I just realized that Jan made Michael get (and unget) several vasectomies. She just leaped-frogged Jenny from Forest Gump in the "mistreatment of simple-minded man-children" pantheon. Wow, just... wow.

-- I'm not sure whether Toby is creepy or sad. Either way, I certainly hope someone from the documentary crew sends Toby a tape of Pam saying that she thought he was cute. After twelve years of swimming in Michael's bile, he deserves that.

-- My apologies that this review is so long. I've tried to keep them to under 2000 words this year, but sometimes an episode requires a little more than that. As Linda Richman would say, I'm completely verklempt. September can't come fast enough.