The Office: Prince Family Paper
By fred | January 23, 2009
(S05E12) It’s not unusual for The Office to have two stories going on at the same time, one of them taking place outside of the office — should it be at corporate, someone’s home, in the warehouse (do they still have that?), on a business trip or anything else they can come up with. When that happens, it can be that both plots are equally good, but chances are one is better than the other — or you’ll like one more.
This week this is what we had, two plots, one within the office, and one outside. The one inside the office had a lot going on for it, like the fact that it is actually inside the office, the heart of the show, or that it involved a lot more characters including some who haven’t gotten much screen time as of late. And yet, in the end, I think we could have done without it, or maybe even we should have done without it…
Sure it felt like something that would actually happen during office hours, break away from your work to debate some random, useless topic. And I bet the hotness of Hilary Swank might very well be one of those topics that come up every so often indeed, but the bottom line of this entire thing was : not funny.
Oh sure it had its moments, for instance Oscar’s speech about symmetry with a little graphic was pretty hilarious, and there were a few other moments I liked, but in the end I didn’t find this whole thing very funny, and more than once I heard myself wishing they would get over with this already and move on to something else, something good I could really enjoy.
Maybe I should have thought that that the thing that would wake Stanley up and get him really involved in whatever is happening was this silly debate was a funny thing, but I’m sorry to day I did not. By the end of it it started to feel like this was more of an extended SNL sketch that had been dragged on for way too long already, and yet there was still no ending in sight.
And yes, maybe I’m also disappointed that we didn’t get to see whatever Creed had to say, because I have a feeling it would have been pretty hilarious and, well, Creed-like.
Outside of the office things were actually better, as Michael Scarn – ex-movie star now real-life spy – was out on a mission for corporate. Yes, it seems that ever since he’s been getting results while others are not, or not a much, they do give Michael more responsibilities and trust him more with important matters. Or maybe it was yet another test, and now they really will have to send a spy to find out what’s going on… or get Toby to do it.
Anyways, the latest Michael/Dwight association worked quite well, and even if the math was wrong they executed their plan to perfection, up to the mouth-licking thingy at the end. And while you could see Michael’s conflict coming after they had been so nice with them, especially since Mr Prince did laugh at Michael’s joke !! I mean, do you know what that means in Michael’s world!??
This whole thing worked, and made for some great chat between him and Dwight – loved how after a first mention of Vietnam by Mr Prince (”I opened the store when I got back from Vietnam. – I hear it’s beautiful there!“) we got to see Dwight talking to Michael about a terrible war during which far too many died… and if Frodo hadn’t destroyed the ring, then goodness itself might have died! Of course.
It was very Michael Scott of him to run away with the list of clients, because he couldn’t think of just destroying it or flushing it down the toilet, he had to run downstairs and then back up when he realized he forgot his key, and yet I thought that wasn’t really working. I couldn’t really say why, but it felt a bit off. Still, was was great was that in the end Michael did get the list to corporate, which will score him even more points! I don’t know where this is going but it is going somewhere for sure, right?
In the end I’d say this was only on okay episode, where the most hilarious bit might have been Jim’s latest prank on Dwight, and where the office plot really wasn’t the best, and far for being really funny. It had some great little things though, for instance I loved Pam’s expression at Kevin’s “A painting can be beautiful, but I don’t want to bang a painting.” and her smile after Michael set the score.
What did everybody think ? Any idea what corporate’s next move will be with Michael ? Any guesses at what Creed might have said ? (Hopefully there’s a deleted scene somewhere…)
Posted in Reviews
Shows: The Office
