Episode 7 - The Lover
14 February 2010
Review
Synopsis: Jim and Pam return to the news that Michael is sleeping with Pam’s mother. She freaks out after Jim tried to hide the news from her. Michael is upset that Pam doesn’t care about his happiness. Dwight plants a bug in Jim’s office.
The Good: Once more the characters drive the comedy nicely. Michael tells his best friend Jim about his new girlfriend. Jim understandably freaks out in one of a number of funny sequences (see Comic Highlight). His first reaction to the news is to keep it secret and prevent Pam from being upset. It’s an instinct which suits Jim down to the ground. I have always accused him of being a bit of a coward and not standing up to Michael more often. Once more he avoids the awkward situation and ends up having another turning-into-Michael moment. When Pam finds out and locks him in a death stare he wriggles uncomfortably and tries to crack a joke like Michael would. In the end he is able to comfort her and restore peace between them.
In Michael’s one-track mind he can’t see why the news would upset Pam. Pam has been his close friend for longer than most of his employees in his mind. He therefore sees his relationship with her mother as a chance to become even closer to her. His actions actually throw up an interesting debate about what would happen under these circumstances in a workplace. The reaction of the other employees rather accurately reflects the reaction that most people would have. Initially appalled at his behaviour and lack of appropriateness, they eventually come round. After all, Pam’s mother is an adult and what she and Michael do outside of work is no one else’s business.
It’s actually a very clever situation because Pam is in a uniquely horrible position. While the sympathy is entirely with her she also crosses the line by yelling at Michael in the office. As useless as Toby is in dealing with her, she still isn’t justified in heckling Michael and preventing others from working with her anger. If the story continues on it could provide plenty of opportunities for more good character interaction.
The humour generated by the story was pretty solid. Stanley joyously joins Pam in her cry to end Michael’s pointless meetings. Then he giggles aloud when Michael insinuates that Pam’s mum had refused him something in the bedroom. Poor Toby brought more misery on himself by foolishly trusting Michael’s apparent change of heart about him.
Meanwhile Dwight bugs Jim’s office in a blatant way and gets caught. But it turns out that it was simply a cover for his real bug, beautifully hidden inside a pen on Jim’s desk. The conclusion to the plot is one of those fantastic moments which sums up a character. Having outsmarted everyone with his plan Dwight gloats to the camera about having eight hours of Jim talking to go through. Of course what he was left with was Jim making paper sales and nothing interesting which might help Dwight bring him down. The genius is recognising that Dwight has intelligence but that it is badly misdirected. If the pen comes back to play a bigger part in a more important story down the line, then all the better.
The Dwight story too provides good humour. The writers really get Dwight’s character here as he constantly corrects people calling his gift a duck, when it is in fact a mallard. Then he tells a Bavarian fairytale, reminding us of his strange German farming background. We also get some plausible Ryan douchiness as he swaggers about in his fedora and continues to treat Kelly like crap. We even get Creed breaking into tears at the sound of some classical music for some unknown reason.
Finally in a nice touch we see Erin refusing to do something Pam wants without Michael’s permission. It annoys Pam to see her paying Michael such extreme respect when she has long since stopped caring about that. However it marks out Erin as just being conspicuously nice and cautious. Having Erin play this role is great because the show needs more characters who can have “normal” reactions to the weirder members of the office.
The Bad: I didn’t quite follow Michael’s comments about being prepared to die in the office or Pam’s response that she would be too.
Comic Highlight: Michael tells Jim that he is sleeping with Pam’s mum. Jim reacts with disbelief. Surely this is one of Michael’s nonsensical jokes. Jim asks what car Pam’s mum drives and assumes Michael won’t be able to answer. Without hesitation Michael replies and before he can finish the sentence Jim swears and it is beeped out. It was an appropriate and unexpected response. But then to add to the humour Toby walked in and received a hail of abuse from both Jim and Michael pushing him out the door confused and hurt. Michael flails around trying to justify his relationship “she is right on my way home from work” he says. To which Jim blurts out “Then take a different way home man!” before looking at the camera and trying to calm down so no one will realise what’s going on. It’s another object lesson in comedy. Write how two people would actually behave and then work out how to make that funny.
That’s what I said: The episode didn’t have a feel good flow because Pam and Michael were stuck refusing to change their position on the issue. But that reflected pretty well on how you would think the two characters would behave. The whole episode felt very natural and organic and this story could be a winner as a result.
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