It was awesome how quickly Ryan caved and started groveling when Jim stepped up his game.

The most sound stretegy for the company is to promote Micheal to CEO and hope his dumb luck saves them. Though man I really hated the board of directors. At least Micheal was trying.

I finally watched the Subtle Sexuality stuff on NBC.com. Awesomeness.

Those little videos fleshed out Erin's character so much more than anything else has and instantly made her even more likable.

And every pop song ever recorded should feature 'Nard Dog.

Can I say that I loved how they went back in the cold open and re did Jim & Pam to look like Season 2-3 Jim & Pam, and even brought back Ronni?

I liked that, but the rest of the cold open was annoying. At least that was the extent of their forced "going green" stuff for the week.

When The Temp finally starts to show his true colors, not everyone in Dunder Mifflin will live to see tomorrow.

Wow, that was awesome.

I kept thinking that David Wallace was going to use Michael as the scapegoat. That the reason our company is failing is because of this incompetent manager, but we'll fire him and watch our stock soar.

It would have also been awesome had Oscar would have let lose with ideas in the suite.

Speaking of The Temp, what's up with Ryan's wardrobe this season? Is he going for the hipster look or something?

I was hoping that he might've been going for the Rivers Cuomo look and that would come up in a deleted scene. I honestly don't think it's too far off base considering that Rainn Wilson is friends with Weezer.

Not for nothing, but in the couple of weeks since it aired, Murder has quickly become one of my new favorite (and most often quoted) episodes. I thought the whole premise was so weird the first time I watched it but having watched it three or four times now it truly gets better every time.

Ryan officially turned RUDO again.

Now that I have a bit of time to digest tonight's episode, I will say: solid, but more season thread driven than anything else. I felt the Scott's Tots thing was a car crash in slow motion. I liked that Michael was still going to buy the one kid's books for him, but if nothing else, it gets Michael back to Season 2 mode (this felt like the prequel to "Bring Your Daughter to Work Day").

Really there are a couple of bigger things tonight that will play out quite nicely I'm hoping:

1) Erin doesn't seem long for the reception desk. They planted seeds for her to move into Accounting (makes me wonder if Oscar might be leaving as he's the one of the three I see going). I'm kind of surprised that they didn't have her make a mention of HR to take Toby's spot. However, if my assumption is correct, Holly returning for Season 7 could be the reason you don't want anyone else in HR.

2) Dwight & Ryan are forming an official Rudo team in the office. It totally makes sense with Ryan's past, including Jim's treatment of him in the last episode. I can't say I'm a big fan of the cartoonish prop of "My Diabolical Plan by Dwight Shrute". I actually would've liked the end tease to be where you find out those two came up with the Employee of the Month plan together, and have been working together for weeks. Either way, it puts Ryan back into Season 4 mode though without the official power or beard. Plus, I always liked the old Dwight & Ryan scenes as sporadic as they were ("Initiation" was pretty fun from what I remember). Also, I do enjoy Dwight continuing to use Andy like a pawn.

Finally, I loved Dwight's impressions of Kevin, Stanley and Toby.

The writing has felt a lot different for the last 4 or 5 episodes and I don't know what to make of it. Like, there's little bits here and there where it feels like the writers are trying to serialize the show. I think it's kinda neat and funny, but it doesn't feel like The Office. If this is what they do to keep things fresh though, then that is fine by me.

From Dwights's "Diabolical Blog":

Having a co-conspirator may work to my advantage. Among the plethora of valuable life lessons I've learned from the WWE, is that a tag team always defeats a single wrestler (unless that wrestler is The Undertaker, I've seen him easily defeat two fighters - but Jim is no Undertaker). Alone, I was unable to topple Jim Halpert with a bugged wooden mallard, a dozen Jewish pastries, and an Employee of the Month scheme so sinister even my grandfather would approve. So perhaps a partner is what I needed all along.

http://www.thediabolicalblog.com/ - for the rest of his posts.

Oh, I guess I should also give a take on the new season. That take is: it seems that they went from a unique idea to more of a sitcom. It's sad in a way, but there is no way you could hold up the "office documentary" aspect of it for too long without becoming redundant.

'The Office' Ends As Documentary Crew Gets All The Footage It Needs

Part of the changes that have come this season is a lot of the throwaway gags seem a lot more outlandish to me, like they are going for a little bit of a Simpsons/Family Guy type vibe. I dont particularly like that vibe but this season has still been very good.

Tonight's episode, I dunno... the Scott's Tots seem just seemed SO ridiculous to me, I wish they would have concentrated more on everything in the office with people turning against Jim and Dwight manipulating everyone. The bit at the end with Ryan was AMAZING though and SHOULD be the driving force behind the rest of the season.

Also Pam's talking head consisting solely of "YUP" was hilarious.

That was a fun episode to end 2009 on. Andy & Erin melt my heart like every week.

The next announced episode is a clip show variety but will feature new footage so I'm guessing it'll be the documentary crew editing what they've shot over the last 5.5 years.

Oh, Office, how I missed thee. Creed ruled, Dwight's opener ruled, eh to Michael fighting for the Santa spot, but yay to the office celebrating them staying while the higher-ups get canned. And Andy and Erin? Yes, please. That ending with the marching band and her loving every bit of it was a heart-warmer.

I really like where they are going with Andy and Erin, especially if they keep Andy as "sweet but misguided" and not just another bumbling office idiot.

And I'm also really glad David Wallace got canned. Him bailing out various characters for no particular reason time and time again (when the proper action would have been to fire them) had become a pretty tired crutch on the show, and I'm hopeful some new blood can liven things up a little bit as the Charles Miner story arc did last season.

Was I the only one wondering if Michael was going to wish for Holly when he was sitting on Phyllis' lap?

The 12 Drummers Drumming with the Nard Dog and his running man and his cymbals ruled the world. In my life I can only hope to pull off as grand of a gesture of affection as that. Erin's reaction was great too. No tag has ever left me feeling better than this one. Is it because I'm a socially awkward weirdo smitten with the nice cute girl? Most likely.

For some reason I always liked the David Wallace character. If this ends up being the end of him, I'll be a little sad to see him go.

Michael as Jesus on the mic was hilarious.

Jesus heckling gifts was great. Michael grabbing and trying to pull Ryan on his lap and saying "I need this" made me feel like this episode was as good as Yankee Swap.

I thought that Michael getting his game face on, pulling all the employees into his office, and confronting David Wallace was tremendous and was one of the best moments in the show's history. I don't know what it was about it, but seeing the employees all think they were out of a job, and then finding out they're the most useful people in the company was pretty cool. The execs are out, and the grunts stay, so the good guys won.

I also liked the David Wallace character and will be sad to see that character go, but the guy who plays him seems like he'd do well in movies and would have a really good third or fourth guy down type career.

Ditto - that moment was Andy's biggest crowning moment of awesome.

I was just reading the bio of Andy Buckley (the guy who plays Wallace) because I was curious if he'd been in anything else. Apparantley, he's a stock broker and acting on the Office is more a side project. Interesting.

Wow, that's pretty impressive because he has a very natural delivery and he conveys emotion pretty well.

From what I remember from Season 2 commentaries, he was an actor early on and then changed careers. They specifically asked him to play the role of David Wallace. I love Wallace. It would've been easy to go the route of a boss that's always yelling at Michael about his screw ups (which they have in the past with Jan, Ryan and Charles). But the constant of David accepting Michael for being Michael was a great changeup.

One of the my favorite moments with his character is his pained look in "The Deposition" when Michael finds out the truth about his chances at the corporate opening. You could see it pained him to have Michael find out how low Jan would go to win her suit. And then in the end, when Michael says "Hey David. I like you, too", it's always been this nice little moment that shows you how much loyalty Michael has to Dunder Mifflin.

I also liked the phone conversation between Michael and David in Season 5 when Michael first really amps up his unhappiness. Just the sobering line: "You sent her away, and that sucked." And he tells off David and David keeps him around. I'll miss the character for sure.

You expect to get screwed by your job, but you never expect to get screwed by your girlfriend.

Awesome! Kathy Bates is going to be playing the owner of the group that bought Dunder Mifflin. Her arc starts on 2/4 and will be multi episode.

Also, about Jim & Pam's baby:

I can't remember the last time a series actually ran a clip show - I was having flashbacks to the 1990's and I kind of liked it.

I hope '24' follows suit.

Scrubs ran one at the end of Season 6, I believe, when there were talks about whether it was going to be brought back or not.

Ugh, I hope nobody follows suit. Clip shows made sense back in the days before syndicated reruns and DVD releases and YouTube and Hulu. You never had a chance to relive great moments back then. Now I can watch The Office up to four times a day in reruns, or watch almost any episode on Netflix anytime I want. This just reeked of laziness. If they were gonna half-ass an episode, I wish they'd have just pulled from their vast hours and hours of deleted scenes and outtakes instead.

Fake Stanley was funny, though.

Well, they did at least show some alternate takes - like the "THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID" after "drink some water to help it slide down your gullet more easily" and hearing Jim's proposal to Pam finally. All the clip show did was remind me of how much better the show was years ago, and the idea of Toby flashing back to the clips in his mind made no sense at times, and also reminded me of when Marge did that in a Simpsons one and it cut to stuff like an establishing shot of the house.

Toby wasn't flashing back to clips in his mind, the documentary crew inserted clips of previous events to pad out the happenings in the office.

If you actually need to go to those lengths to enjoy it. I personally don't, and cringe whenever the whole "Durrrr, when is this documentary going to air?" shit is brought up. I hate clip shows if only because you get all hyped for a new episode, and NBC airs commercials for a new episode, and then you sit down to watch it and realize it's a fucking clip show of episodes you've seen 10 times before.

No love for the awesome Pam/Jim montage, using the song that they were actually listening to on Jim's ipod in the original scene? I thought that was an awesome touch.

No comments about tonight's show? This was probably my favorite episode of the entire season. Aside from the lame nothingness of Andy and Erin, Michael's day with David Wallace and Jim and Pam's daycare meeting were so brutal and so funny. The show's been such a letdown this season, I almost feel tonight was an attempt to refocus on what has made this show so great: The depressions and failures of the regular man in the real world as those that think they know better get bitchslapped to reality.

"Did you ever consider that you may not be as charming as you think you are" was just awesome. That line alone (and Jim and Pam's complete no-selling of it) was so brutal and so dead on.

I can't wait for the Kathy Bates showdown.

Casual David Wallace was so, so awesome. I love Kathy Bates already and can't wait for her brand of insanity to take over. The daycare meeting was just ridiculously cringe-worthy. I thought Andy & Erin were adorable. Liked this episode. The only thing I didn't like was we never really saw any resolution to the daycare meeting subplot. It was just kinda dropped. They've been doing that a lot lately and I don't dig it.

One of my favorite moments in the history of the show. SAYING WHAT MOST VIEWERS ARE THINKING!

Rob

This was probably the send off for David Wallace, but I really wish they would keep him around more or somehow bring him back to Dunder Mifflin when the whole Sabre thing goes south.

Suck it?

Seriously...they need to keep the Sabre angle around until the cliffhanger for next season at least, if there is a next season that is. Kathy Bates playing Helen Kuschnick again is awesome!!

I doubt NBC is that dumb. I'm sure The Office will get at least 8 seasons if not more out of its run. I know there is already talk of Ricky Gervais making an appearance in Season 7.

yea, it is their highest rated comedy on Thursday night, unless Carroll wants to leave to concentrate on movies (he to me is the only one that the show can't really continue without) I don't imagine it is going anywhere.

I don't see Steve Carell going anywhere. The Office writers are creative to explain prolong absences due to filming. And the Office can survive without Carell in small douses.

In regards to Dave Wallace

I could see it going either way. In all honesty, what I'm expecting if we get anymore David Wallace is similar to what they did with Devon in Season 2 where we see him briefly and either Suck It took off or failed. I'm hoping for the latter because Michael passing on it would be another moment where he had a chance to become something big and didn't. Either way, I doubt David Wallace is going to be around too much longer. It seemed like the perfect way to write him out.

In other spoiler news:

I am glad I wasn't the only one who thought that.

I just saw "The Late Shift" last week and man, all the Sabre-Lady's character was missing was those horrid 80's glasses.

I thought tonight's episode was the strongest since "Murder". Jo calling Meredith and Creed "heartbreakers" was classic.

EDIT: Not sure if they started it tonight, but they finally added Ed Helms to the opening sequence. They do need to update the rest.

Agree completely with the sentiment of that post. Definitely my fav episode this season since Murder. Loved everything about Katey Bates, OMG she kicked Charles Minor's ass as an authority figure character.

Erin and Andy are wonderful and in all honesty I am not sure my wife has ever cringed at any moment in the show like she cringed at the moment where Andy got called out and couldn't just say her name. I thought she oversold it just a little but it was still an awesome moment and if it got to her that way it probably did others too.

So, do they just sell printers now, or printers and paper?