"This is like when the freshmen would throw a party and wouldn't let any of the seniors go."
The Office 4.03 - "Launch Party"
That was just marvelous. The first two episodes of the season felt stretched and a little thin at the edges, but this episode was just chock-full of ridiculous, sublime pathos.
That poor pizza boy. He was an obnoxious little snot-nosed punk, but he had the supreme misfortune of walking into Dunder Mifflin Scranton an obnoxious little snot-nosed punk with no feel for sales or customer relationships at the exact moment Michael Scott reached his breaking point with Ryan. For Michael, all business is personal--and the fiction that Ryan has risen somehow through Michael's tutelage is crucial to his ego--so of course he thinks Doctor Seuss is an appropriate way to mark the launch, because Ryan is graduating in his eyes. Michael's comment about it being like the freshmen not inviting the seniors to their parties was so frightening and sad, because Michael's peers think he's ridiculous, and his only hope for respect has probably been younger people who also think he's ridiculous, but over whom he has been able to convince himself he holds some authority. And to Michael, the most important thing in the world about working at Dunder Mifflin is the relationships he develops with customers. The website threatens to shunt those relationships aside, and with them all of Michael's values, and Ryan is too much of a snot-nosed little punk to leave Michael with his comfortable fictions about being a part of the next big thing, and that pizza delivery boy comes in and betrays everything Michael holds dear about good business practices at exactly the wrong time. (And of course, because Michael overreacts, because he feels helpless in the face of these young people with their cutthroat ways and their lack of respect for him, he ends up paying full price and more.)
And Dwight is Michael's right-hand man not only because Dwight is a natural born sycophant, but because he shares those values: he takes on the computer. Jim and Pam pranking Dwight by making him think the computer was talking to him was delightful, because it played into Dwight's strange ideas about how fiction interacts with the real world, and because it was so much like all of the pranking they've done with him before, and because Pam felt a little bad about it. Pam sees both aspects of the fallout of Dwight and Angela's heartbreak: the fact that their obnoxious sniping makes them even more unpleasant to be around than before, and the fact that they're both hurting so much. I love her fundamental kindness, the way she had the computer surrender so that Dwight wasn't defeated by everything that day. And Dwight's unshaven face and air of just-barely-holding-it-together desperation, the way he's hanging on by his fingernails in a situation he can't control, just kill me; Angela's sadness is more contained but equally moving, especially since she knows she's right and doesn't understand her own doubts and complicated regrets, and seems to be forcing herself to move on with a kind of blind, instinctive determination. She doesn't understand how she could still have feelings for the monster who killed her cat, she doesn't understand why it's so difficult.
And then there was the final scene between Michael and Dwight on the trunk of Dwight's car, scarfing stolen sushi leftovers and trying to pick up the pieces of their night, mocking Ryan because Michael has finally surrendered the necessary fiction that he helped Ryan get where he is, and Ryan, the least deserving among them, has left them behind.
Other things I really loved:
* The hints that Ryan's reach far exceeds his grasp in the New York office: the CEO's annoyance that he keeps sneaking into his office to do his talking head, the co-worker's glee that Dwight showed the website up and ruined Ryan's triumphant moment.
* Phyllis! Googling "how to deal with difficult people" and trying new things with Angela, and both of them getting into a fatally deteriorating passive-aggressive "I statements" war.
* The kidnapping, and the way the rest of the office workers roll their eyes and hope for the best--i.e. no felony arrests--because Michael is on a tear, and this is not even the weirdest thing he's done.
* Dwight and the pizza boy recognizing each other because the pizza boy steals what Dwight thinks of as his hemp and the pizza boy thinks of as his crappy weed, and the fundamental difference of worldviews that choice of terms exposes.
* The strong opinions about the relative merits of Pizza by Alfredo and Alfredo's Pizza Cafe. Of course Michael ordered the wrong pizza, and of course it ends up costing him the same. Kevin has his priorities: "We would like to order some good pizza from Alfredo's Pizza Cafe while we wait for the hostage situation with the bad pizza to end."
* Jim's sarcasm to Andy, Andy trying to quantify that sarcasm and keep a lid on his anger, Dwight's blithe "Just ignore him." For all their antagonism, Jim and Dwight have negotiated a bizarre but functional working relationship.
* Jim and Pam on the rooftop, sharing a quiet moment away from the craziness.
* Andy's persistent and frightening seduction of Angela while Dwight looks on, helpless and frustrated, in the background. Especially when Andy got his a capella group to conference call in to serenade Angela. WITH ABBA.
It's raining. But it's Friday!
