Episode Report Card M. Giant: B- | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Something in the Water
By M. Giant | Season 8 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.19.2012
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Robert's selling his mansion, and he's pretty down about it, given all the wild parties he never got to have there. Kevin suggests an indoor pool party as a last hurrah, and Robert's up for it. As is everyone else apparently, although Jim makes it his business to get out of there and home to Pam and the kids as soon as possible. Unfortunately for him, Robert ropes him and some of the other guys into a lengthy tour of the place, and all the wild bacchanals that never were.
Meanwhile, Erin's learned about how Andy followed her home after the Christmas party, so she's thinking she can win him back, if only she can make him jealous. This is while Andy's girlfriend Jessica is also there, mind you, and the person she decides to make Andy jealous with is Dwight. Dwight is surprisingly up for the task, but in addition to Andy's almost complete lack of interest in Erin, there's also the fact that he's carrying around an engagement ring that he's been considering giving to Jessica, and it's gone missing. So he's a little distracted by that, and it doesn't help when Kelly finds it and decides to destroy it to wipe out the bad juju she thinks accrued to it from the star-crossed Californias. In even more minor news, Darryl is shy about taking his shirt off in front of Val, and Kathy the temp might be a little bit into Jim.
Eventually, Robert realizes the party he's always wanted is happening right now, and jumps naked into the pool, blurred pixels and all. As competing sycophants Ryan and Gabe clumsily follow him in, Jim makes his escape at last. Andy's not so lucky, though, as the vision of Erin rising from the depths of Robert's pool with his family's ring in her hand seems to give him second thoughts. As it would anyone, really.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Dwight sits down at his desk, only to find a meatball already in his chair. That's bush-league crap from Jim, but from across the bullpen, Stanley seems to think it's hilarious. Jim explains to us that it's always more fun to mess with Dwight when he has an audience, and with Pam on maternity leave, Stanley has unwittingly stepped in. However, he seems to have some very specific tastes. For instance, Jim's replacement of Dwight's entire desk with a Lego version of it and Dwight himself with a bespectacled, puke-tone-clad dog doesn't seem to get much of a reaction from Stanley at all. In fact nothing does, except meatball-themed pranks. In fact, when Dwight opens his drawers to find them full of meatballs and his stapler entombed in one. Stanley loses his shit. There's something symbolic about this shout-out to the pilot, in which Dwight's stapler was magically suspended inside a light, translucent confection of Jell-O, as opposed to today, when it's trapped inside a sclerotic bolus of dense, heavy, fatty, dead flesh. Can't quite put my finger on it. Anyway, the joke's on Jim, because apparently Stanley and Dwight are in league. "We will never have to buy meatballs again," they tell us in the parking lot, happily holding up overstuffed freezer bags of the things.
At Reception, Erin fields a call from Andy's new girlfriend Jessica, like she doesn't have his direct line. After we see Erin do a TH about how she's moving on with her life by learning Italian (actually just eating Italian), she patches Jessica through to Andy. Who, in turn, THs that his parents loved Jessica. In fact, they gave him a family ring for her, although first they took out the main stone for his little brother. Andy seems to get that it might be a little premature, but as he points out, "I haven't proposed to anyone in years."
Robert's at Pam's vacant desk (Kathy the temp switched clumps after all, to Andy's old desk next to Stanley and Phyllis), looking at photos of his big house, which ten years ago was going to be his own personal Playboy mansion, but he's planning to sell off now that his wife -- whose existence made it impossible to live the Eyes Wide Shut life he imagined there -- has left him. "The one percent are suffering too, people," he laments. Jim makes the mistake of chuckling at Robert's complaint that his "speakeasy lounge" is listed as a "rumpus room," and Robert pins him to the wall like a butterfly for laughing at his pain. Really, Jim? You couldn't have come up with a simple, "Heh, rumpus."? After Andy comes out to diagnose Robert's case of the grumpies, Kevin suggests Robert throw a literal last hurrah at the mansion, namely a party at Robert's indoor pool. Robert seems up for it, and he heads out, telling everyone to wear a swimsuit tonight. Do none of these people ever have plans for after work? After he leaves, his mood already improving, Meredith offers Erin a ride, since they live so close together, which Meredith knows because of how Andy followed Erin home after the Christmas party. Erin is surprised to hear it, and not just because Meredith even remembers anything at all that night. "He wanted to make sure California didn't put it in you," Meredith crasses. Erin looks through Andy's window with a new take, and then squeeing-heads about what stalker Andy is. Seriously, there's literally a squee in there.