Episode Report Card M. Giant: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Retail Therapy
By M. Giant | Season 8 | Episode 16 | Aired on 03.01.2012
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Sabre already has a test store to open to the public in Florida. I know, it seems fast to me too. Dwight figures this is his big chance to prove himself and score the vice president's post from Nellie. His big plan involves a lot of Chuck tie ins, appealing to his stereotype of bloggers (which turns out to be pretty accurate), building fake buzz by having Erin pose as a hipster, making Kathy flirt with the stereotypical bloggers, and, most disastrously, letting Ryan give the big presentation. These succeed to varying degrees, but Ryan panics and skips town, forcing Jim to step into his tiny little shoes. The presentation is a Ryan Howard classic, all flash and no substance, but the customers seem impressed, even if Nellie doesn't.
Meanwhile, in Scranton, Andy explains that his new shiner is the result of his protecting Pam from a gang of two-wheeled ruffians in the parking lot, leaving out the fact that the biker who hit him was a fifth-grader on a Schwinn. In order to keep the employees from calling the cops, which would unravel his whole cover story, Andy asks Toby to teach everyone self-defense. It's going fine, at least by Dunder-Mifflin standards, until the mother of Andy's assailant drags her into the office to apologize. Everyone mocks Andy for getting beat up by a girl, which somehow leads to Kelly hijacking the self-defense training by attacking Toby. When Andy steps in, he gets another black eye, but avoids further mocking by pointing out that he got these injuries standing up for others. So he ends up preserving his dignity after all, at least up until he downs all the wine and painkillers.
And Dwight gets made vice president after all. God help us.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!A Sabre test store has already been set up somewhere in Florida, with fancy displays and design and a cardboard Chuck standup and Dwight in a royal-blue retail uniform shirt. Needless to say, he's pretty excited about this chance to prove himself and lock in the vice presidency with Nellie. Ryan's more worried that he's going to fall off the chair Dwight's supposed to be holding for him while he ties a banner. Erin is "incognito" as someone camping out in line, wearing glasses and a hat and pretending to be a hipster to try to build buzz. Luckily, she tells us it's really her; otherwise we might have been confused. "There's already people camped out behind me!" she says excitedly, pointing out the homeless guys sleeping next to her tent.
Short credits again, and the team does a hero-shot walk into the store, all (except Erin) wearing triangular Pyramid tablet cases strapped to their chests, like Baby Bjorns for nerds, over their uniform shirts. In the back room (whose décor includes that same "Teamwork" Successories poster that's hung in Scranton for eight years), Nellie gives an inspirational pep talk, which includes lapsing into the harsh cockney accent she had until age 32 and sharing the sad tale of not getting called back after auditioning to be the black Spice Girl. Dwight takes the floor and explains that it's press day, which means bloggers. Luckily he's got a dossier on them, which he hands out while giving the vital info: "Bloggers are gross! Bloggers are obese! Bloggers have halitosis! You're gonna love 'em." I'm going to not take this personally. Ryan stiffly vows that his presentation will make people shit their pants, while Kathy will be the hot girl who talks to bloggers. "Kill me. It was my idea," she asides, which she doesn't really have the hang of yet. Packer's job is to be the sexual predator who goes after teen girls. "I don't see where that gets us, but I'm a team player," Packer says with surprising uncertainty. But he THs that he's just waiting for Dwight to screw up so he can swoop in like a sexual predator. Nellie concludes that she wants to get goose pimples. Dwight: "Speaking of pimples, release the bloggers!"
In Scranton, Pam and Andy walk in at the same time, Andy sporting a black eye so fresh it's still red. There's some extraneous jokes packed in until Kelly (played by the person who wrote this episode, so I have higher hopes than usual lately) blares, "Since the interesting thing happened 'til now, so much time has passed. It's like my life is buffering!" Andy tells everyone the story about how when he and Pam arrived at work, Pam was waylaid by a biker gang, Andy intervened, and after a fight in which some blows were exchanged, the gang left. As he's telling this, the scene of what really happened as captured by a camera in Andy's office window unfolds: a bunch of fifth-grade girls on bicycles rode up and threw pine cones at Pam, and when Andy came over to stop it, one of them socked him in the eye without even getting off her bike. Then they all rode off while Andy stood there crying. But after relating his version of events, which Pam doesn't dispute, Andy gets a round of applause, which he accepts as modestly as Andy can ever manage.