By M. Giant
Things have changed over the summer. Ryan and Kelly have moved to Ohio (though not together and we all know they've just gone off to The Mindy Project), there are two new young guys in the office and Andy's returned from a month-long Outward Bound retreat having turned into a dick. We learn that Jim got an offer from an old college buddy to help launch some kind of sports-marketing startup that was originally Jim's idea, but it's in Philadelphia so he passed it up for the good of the family. Angela's trying to adopt out one of her cats, Comstock, because he's the only one her baby's allergic to. Oscar ends up taking the cat, which leads to us finding out that he's having an affair with Angela's husband, although nobody else does as of yet.
But it's mostly about the two new guys, Pete (Jake Lacy) and Clark (Clark Duke), who are dubbed the new Jim and Dwight. After having found out that Angela's baby isn't his, Dwight spends about ten seconds trying to latch onto "Dwight, Jr." as a father figure before ending up feeling threatened by him, both for Clark's sales ambitions and his ability to walk the slack line during Andy's Outward Bound demonstration in the parking lot. Dwight attempts to prove his superior manhood by riding a bicycle across a tightrope from the building's roof to a telephone pole and ends up dangling three stories over the heads of his horrified coworkers instead.
Jim's reaction to the New Jim is more nuanced, though hardly less suicidal. He dismisses the idea of any resemblance between the two of them, until he overhears Pete talking about his grand ambitions that he's taken no steps toward realizing. Sound familiar? Suddenly terrified of living out the rest of his purposeless years here at Dunder Mifflin, Jim decides to jump on board the startup after all, which is probably great. But he does it behind Pam's back, which is definitely not.
And then there's Andy, who has decided to make a career out of exacting his revenge on Nellie after all and crapping on anyone who gets in his way (primarily Toby). Listen show, I know we all missed Steve Carell last season, but abruptly turning Andy into Season 2 Michael is not the solution.
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