Well, coke-heads are erratic in nature so.....

Ryan wasn't really trying to be nice this week.

I only have about 5 weeks of work experience, but I got off the vibe that he was trying to warn him in a nice, casual way, like a boss should. There were some subtle hints that he was pissed off, but I still think he reacted pretty reasonably.

Dwight's Org Chart

Of course he wasn't an outright dick about things or it would look like he was just being petty because Jim went over his head to David Wallace. C'mon now!

ultimoDANK

Wow, are you the guy everyone rips on for being mad thick? Because this would be a pretty textbook example; I have...more than 5 weeks of work experience, and would be pretty ill-at-ease if a superior acted like that much of a cock to me.

He was CLEARLY being a passive-aggressive asshole.

I liked this episode more than the last few, mainly for Dwight's chart and Darryl telling Michael about gangs.

Ryan was trying to come off that way, but he was still being a passive aggressive dick. Jim's always been shown to be good at his job/sales and was offered Ryan's job before Ryan was. There aren't really legit grounds for firing Jim, so threatening his job, no matter how nice he tried to come off, was a dick move.

I really wish I didn't know that these episodes were scripted wel in advance, then I could believe my opinions on this board about more in-office seting and Stanley exposure were influenced by me. So I really loved this episode and feel this is the best of season 4.

The thing that pissed me off about Ryan laying it into Jim is that even though he jokes around and spends a lot of time chatting, his performance as far as the numbers go are probably the best in the office or second to Dwight. One could imagine that the laid back environment he decides to bring to the workplace not only helps his performance, but morale for the entire Scranton branch.

And another thing, I disagree that Jim doesn't stand up for Pam, who is way cuter with those nerdy glasses. Jim Halpert is just really secure with his relationship with Pam that he doesn't need to be this overbearing boyfreind. Perhaps I say this because I've been in the position of being out and having guys approach my girl. So what? I know who she's going home with. For Pam to have a problem with Jim's behavior she would have to expose herself as a total objectionable woman, which is not her nature.

A few people, but there also those that think I'm throwing my life away. I'd say 61%:39%.

And I doubt you'd react if your superior acted like that to you (or even harsher). The only reason I left my job was because my boss actually endangered my well-being. Not everyone is as tolerant as me, but I definitely wouldn't describe Ryan as a "cock" toward Jim.

ITT Kevx301 confirms he has some sort of ASD.

I still don't get why he was so excited (or pretending to be) when Michael and Dwight showed up in New York... I'm guessing it was a coke thing.

I never got involved in that debate at all. What I did do last week was challenge you to write (that is what you pretend to do, correct?) an alternate setup to what they did on the show last week and you ignored it. Clearly you have the time so why not take up the challenge. We'll see if your writing is good enough that holes can't be poked in it.

Loved yesterday's episode. I guess I gotta rewatch b/c I thought the idea of Toby being in the room when Ryan warned Jim was b/c Toby filed a complaint and/or went straight to Ryan as the HR rep telling him he needs to do something about Jim and Pam. Maybe I was reading too much into it though but the fact they cut straight to a Toby talking-head segment leads me to believe he is getting vindictive.

Rob

I've been trying to try to avoid talking about the writing. I'm willing to admit I came off as pompous, but for some reason, mainly because I disagreed with the WGA going on strike, you guys didn't like me and thought I couldn't do it. I really don't want to talk about it anymore, as there really is no point. My last final for school is on May 13th, and I plan to work on a few scripts over the summer, but unless I meet Judd Apatow at Rite-Aid and he likes one of my ideas and buys it, there's no need to talk about it. If you really want to hear my ideas feel free to contact me on AIM sometime. I realize I deserve part of the blame for all those arguments and part of the digressions of threads, so I'll just try to put an end to it now.

Anyway, as far as this episode, one thing I did like was how they tried to be realistic. Toby confronting Michael about Stanley standing up to him (although Angela, Pam and Jim have done just as much in the past) and then Stanley threatening to sue Michael. Unfortunately, being real didn't result in a plethora of laughs.

My wife said the same thing and the thought hadn't even occurred to me that Toby may have stooged Jim off until she mentioned it. I am not sure but see that as a definite possibility.

Loved this episode. Any time Stanley has a fit it's tremendous and this was also one of the best Dwight episodes ever from Andy getting worked to the awesome black emergency disaster chart.

Ryan's interaction with Jim was totally incredible because the thought of Jim's goofing off actually endangering his job had never occurred to me before, so that cold slap in the face to Jim was really something.

Darryl, as always, was awesome too. I really, really hope the spin off is The Warehouse.

P.S. Anyone who has not already done so needs to click on the full sized picture of Dwight's chart. It is amazing, including but not limited to the name Creed Bratton as a presumed alias and Devon and Tom crossed out.

Here are both versions:

Dwight's org chart in PDF form from NBC.com

Dwight's org chart with emergency overlay from NBC.com

Haha, I love how the warehouse is on "Lockdown".

I like the little symbols by the names, especially Toby's.

I like how in Dwight's emergency overlay, Andy Bernard has a GIANT RED X over his name/position.

I love that Creed's name is in quotation marks.

A few weeks ago I complained about the Chair Model episode and how I wasn't crazy about it. Rewatching it, I really liked it quite a bit more. This week, on first watch, I loved the episode. A second watch this morning with my wife dulled my enthusiasm a bit.

Still, Dwight's chart was out of this world awesome. And angry Stanley is always money.

This week's episode was really good and it sucks that we only have 2 episodes left in this season.
Does anyone know if the Season finale is a one hour episode?

It is.

Good show tonight...Jim & Pam really are vulnerable humans after all.

I was really expecting Jim to be overhearing Michael's final speech on "Jim can do anything, yet he works here selling paper."
Pam wants to get out of Dunder-Mifflin, but would have to go to school in Philly or NYC?

I liked last nights episode.

Andy's blisters were kinda gross.

I'm more curious how next weeks episode will be. Toby wasn't even in this episode at all, unless I missed him. So, his going away should be interesting. Also, I'm curious if Jim will actually pop the question or if something will get in the way.

Well, Toby was in last week's episode I guess getting Ryan to put Jim on "probation". I have a weird feeling about next week. I can see Toby or Ryan getting in the way for the season-ender.

Yeah, Toby will probably confess his love for Pam as he's leaving and right before Jim wants to propose or something.

I wonder if, in Toby's own mind, Toby = Jim and Jim = Roy. That would make Toby's big moment hilarious, especially if Pam is on the phone and it's filmed the same way as the big season 2 moment.

...and if it ends in a slap to his face from Pam. I dug "Job Fair" - Jim's little speech about doing something he'd never done before - try - was one of my favorite moments, along with Darryl asking Michael what college he went to, and Pam's bit at the end with the graphic design job definitely added some intrigue to the season finale.

It's weird, a lot of people are looking at the Pam Applies For A Job scene as a sign that she's looking to move on. I took it as the opposite as she was totally overwhelmed by the programs required to learn and didn't seem too keen on moving. I think it anything this might've been her giving up her dreams which isn't the happiest of moments but not surprising either given how the conversation between her and the dude went.

Except for Creed, just wow, one of the worst episodes ever of the show. Michael and Jim have just become absolutely intolerable.

30 Rock shouldn't have much trouble retaining the belt come Emmy season.

The guy Pam was talking to at the end of the episode looked as though it could have been one of John Krasinski's real brothers.
I notice how they're showing less of Angela. Probably because she is pregnant in real life.
I also hear The Office is getting a spin off series.

At the same time, maybe coming back and seeing that Jim succeeded at something he usually is terrible at, could inspire her to think maybe she should "try" too.

The last two minutes were the best part of the show. Though the production nerd in me is curious how someone could be so into graphic design yet is unable to use Photoshop?

Didn't she use Photoshop when Ryan asked her to make the logo for Dunder Mifflin Infinity, or is that just a false assumption?

And yes, there is going to be a spin-off series, and it might include some characters from the current show.

just watched it on hulu...

I died watching Michael's response to Jim/Pam making out at the end, other than that, ehh.


Something's definitely off about the post-strike episodes. It seems like they're intentionally going more and more broad with the slapstick and the sense of humor in general. Which hurts since it wasn't exactly a Wes Anderson flick to begin with.

Kevin's character in particular seems much more broad this season, post strike. Part of the humor from him being in a band was that it was hard to picture him doing that. With where they've taken his character since then, a reveal like that would no longer be surprising.

Yeah, when I read the preview for the episode I knew that Kevin was going to be the one good at golf, and Andy was going to be terrible. The whole episode just left little to the imagination.

Is the "magic" gone with this show?
What's up?

I'm not comparing Steve Carell to David Spade, but it's a similar situation to the last three seasons of Just Shoot Me, and toward the end of 8 Simple Rules, where they basically let David Spade go wild and do whatever he wanted with absurd storylines. This season is the same thing as it's become The Steve Carell Show where he basically says strange lines and makes noises and tries to get himself over in every scene. While I don't dislike either actor, eventually fans are going to get sick of it and stop watching.

While I don't agree with them, most of the casual fans I've spoken to really only care about Jim and Pam. At the start of Season 4 they seemed to be the focal point, and now they're slowly becoming less and less important.

I think for *most* people Jim & Pam is the central focus of the show. I think most people's number one aspect of the show is the ensemble cast in general, but I think what hooks most people episode to episode is the PB&J saga.

When I bought the first season on DVD, without ever seeing any episode, the only thing that really led me to buy the second season was seeing what happened with Jim and Pam. I actually hated the Michael Scott character throughout most of the first season. I would also like to see more of the Jim and Pam storyline, a little less of Michael, but I do like the minor characters getting air time as well, because most of them are hilarious.

Well said, I agree with every aspect of that accessment.

I agree with that - the show's lost something with this more broad approach to its writing. Hopefully it's just being done in order to minimize the damage to story arcs being hurt by the strike, leading to a return to form in S5. Or better yet, things shape up for the finale. After watching some pre-strike and post-strike eps today on Hulu, it almost comes off like a completely different show because of how reliant they've become on broad humor, which has led to the characters being turned into caricatures far too often for a comedy/drama show.

They've turned most of the characters into lunatics at this point. It really makes it hard for me to buy into the whole documentary set-up of the show, I mean, there's just no way this whole group of nuts can be real.

Jim and Pam are the only remotely normal ones, and, honestly, I find their whole relationship boring as hell. I realize that characters have to grow and things have to move forward at some point, but I liked the dynamic much better when Pam was dating Roy, who was generally just a normal guy who'd started to take his girlfriend for granted, and Jim was the guy stuck on the outside.

I'm sorry, but Jim is not realistic at all. Nobody snaps their head to the side as quickly as they can within miliseconds of anybody saying anything.

Speaking from experience, you are wrong. Granted, it happened in a much larger office setting, but it happens frequently.

He's not that unrealistic, generally most offices have witty people that make fun of the dorks and have running jokes. Sure it's unrealistic that he always has a great line but c'mon now.

It's hard to say exactly what's missing. I don't think it's the change in the Jim/Pam thing. I think a lot of the hilarious dynamics that used to carry the show are gone now. Dwight as assistant to the regional manager starving for power was great, and we never see it now. The constant war between Dwight and Jim was always amazing, and now it's something they just nod to once in a while. Kelly and Ryan were hilarious in season 3, and so were the dynamics between Michael and Jan and Michael and Ryan.

I think all the replacements of these are just inferior. Dwight v. Andy is only moderately funny, and the whole Angela is storyline is really boring now. Kelly is a nonfactor. Jan's character is horrible now, and Michael/Ryan is now way less funny than before and significantly less funny than Michael/Jan was in seasons 2 and 3.

I was watching an old one the other day, "Sexual Harrassment." The scene where Jan comes in and bans Michael from making inappropriate jokes, and Jim goads him back into saying "that's what she said"...it's just the kind of hilarious scene they haven't been able to pull off once this year.

Actually, as much as I hate BJ Novak, except for the episode where he was on drugs, Ryan is vastly superior this year to past seasons. He just wasn't needed as much and the move out of the actual office is better for him. Plus his nerdy jokes are better when he tries to act like a big shot. In seasons 1-3 it was just an insecure nerd making awkward jokes.

It wasn't Ryan himself that was great before (he's bad this year too), but the others surrounding his character made for much funnier scenes, like Michael staring through the blinds at him, making those prank calls, and the "ryan started the fire" song. And of course the classic "what's crazy about naming a baby usher?" line from Kelly. I just don't look forward to his scenes at all anymore.

And I don't think you're supposed to. He's just there to make Michael funnier (in theory) by playing off him, along with throwing in the occasional funny gem. I prefer that to his, "Creed asked me how to set up a blog," rant and things like that.