Credits. Eeeeverybody sing!
Michael opens this week with a greeting to "Pama-lama-ding-dong," which is enough to make any support-staff member want to kill herself, followed by the dreaded horror of "Makin' copies!" which is enough to make any support-staff member want to set her own corpse on fire and feed it to an army of fire ants. He asks for messages, and Pam uncomfortably busts him for the fact that she already gave him his messages; she has to clarify that he just wants them again for the cameras -- or, as Pam says, "the...[eye flick]." Michael THs about being the source of his employees' food, sustenance, and very existence. And possibly medical care, given that he claims to "heal" everyone. He explains that the time has come to pick a new health-care plan, which makes him very nearly everyone's doctor. Honestly, as bad as that sounds, I don't think it would be any more annoying than being treated by Patch Adams.
Jan comes to Michael's office to check on his progress and is horrified to learn that he intends to offer the Rolls Royce of health-care plans, when she was thinking more along the lines of a covered wagon. Or possibly roller skates. Michael resists, pointing out that this will not be "popular around the old orifice [sic]." Can I say "[sic]"? Am I humoring Michael? I feel gross. Anyway, Jan insists that doing unpopular things is part of Michael's job, and he does his classic twitching routine as he resists basically...everything she's saying. When he blusters that Jan herself never delivers bad news, she points out that she's...delivering bad news right now. To...Michael. Ow.
We pay a visit to a much happier Jim and Pam, who are at reception, and Jim is in Jim Stance. He's explaining last night's episode of Trading Spouses, which is how you know that he likes him some quality entertainment. She tells him she didn't see it, because she has a life, and he points out that if he got a life, there would be no one to watch his TV. Finally, someone has some perspective. The scene ends in classically strange Office style when Michael walks out, tries to smile, makes a weird "yah-hah" noise, trying to sound cheerful, and retreats to his office, not having gotten what he came for. But really, does he ever?
thing you know, Jim's in Michael's office, where Michael is citing his "busy day" in pawning the task of picking the health-care plan off on Jim. Jim is about as interested in doing this as he would be in having his teeth extracted with a butter knife, so he tells Michael to give the job to Dwight. We slam directly to Dwight telling Michael, "Yes! I can do it!" Dwight smells blood. Like, actual blood. The blood of other employees who have to have bunions removed and can't afford it. In one of the speeches that will define him, Jim explains, in a TH, his decision to kick the job to Dwight: he says that working at Dunder Mifflin is just a job for him. If he were to be promoted, it would be his career. "And if this were my career," he says, "I'd have to throw myself in front of a train." Thus does Jim put a ticking clock on himself, such that in a way, every week, we are happy to see him, and every week, we are sad that he's still here.
For his part, Dwight just wants to know how many people he's allowed to fire as part of his task of...choosing the health-care plan. "Uh, none," Michael says impatiently. More importantly, Dwight wants an office, because the crazy person who lives inside Dwight's brain and pounds on his skull all day demanding an increase in status senses that there might be something promising here. Dwight suggests that the conference room might be big enough to serve as his office. Michael, sucking the teat of his measly authority as pitiful weaklings have been doing since the Big Bang, haughtily agrees to assign Dwight the conference room "as a temporary workspace." But when Dwight smirks and happily mutters to the camera that he now has an office bigger than Michael's, Michael instantly rescinds the offer. Dwight is even weaker and more needy than Michael (WOW!), so he instantaneously retreats and agrees to treat it as a workspace. Normally, this sort of thing would play as a dick-measuring contest, but it's not even that. It's not guys arguing over who's going to be the stud -- it's guys arguing over who gets to keep the last scrap of power over his environment at the close of the Going Out Of Relevance sale, and Michael has managed to win. Just barely. Michael THs that if Dwight fails, then he'll feel good about giving him a second chance, and if he succeeds, then he'll take credit. Would that we all could work for Michael. Dwight toils in what is labeled, with a temporary sign, "DWIGHT SCHRUTE WORK SPACE."
Later, Dwight distributes information to everyone, displaying his usual, squirrel-like efficiency. He THs that he "slashed benefits to the bone," and that he saved money, so he did his job. He goes on to explain that "in the wild, there is no health care," and in the wild, you just get eaten. He does have a point, you must admit. Yet another lesson to be taken from the fact that there are no monkey doctors. Out in the office, the workers predictably fret about the deductible, the loss of vision and dental, the requirement that all surgery be performed by apprentice barbers, and whatever other horrors Dwight has managed to visit upon them.
Michael's Chickenshit Shuffle begins as he calls Pam from inside his office, and as the camera peers between the slats in the closed blinds at his office window, we can just see that he's pushing a toy D-M truck around his desk and whining about how busy he is. When Pam reports that there's unrest among the peasants over the terrible health plan, Michael tells her that he can't talk, because he has to go answer a call. He's forgotten that Pam can see his phone line, so he's chosen the one excuse she can actually determine to be untrue. The fact that she busts him immediately doesn't stop him from doing it again about two minutes later. He's a pro, that one.
Later, Jim and Pam storm the Dwight Schrute Work Space, and Jim and Dwight participate in some hellacious wrangling over the difference between an office and a workspace, as well as over Dwight's assertion that he is Jim's superior, a notion that seems to disquiet Jim at a level usually reserved for YouTube videos of guys getting hit in the junk with crowbars. Pam cuts to the chase, accusing Dwight of selecting a "ridiculously awful plan." Dwight happily agrees when Jim claims that Dwight cut more than he needed to, going on to say that he doesn't personally need any health care himself, because he's never been sick. Jim calls out what would logically be Dwight's resulting lack of antibodies, but Dwight is convinced he needs no antibodies -- he has such strength of spirit that he can raise and lower his cholesterol with his mind. "Why would you want to raise your cholesterol?" asks Pam. "So I can lower it," Dwight responds. She asked for it, you have to admit.
The accountants discuss Michael's hiding game amongst themselves, and Kevin happily burbles that Michael will need the potty sometime, and the potty's out here. Indeed, Michael winds up being hopped upon by Meredith and Oscar when he emerges from the bathroom. When the whole staff corners him, Michael acts like he had nothing to do with the draconian changes, and he sends Dwight back to rethink the plan. This seems to postpone the immediate crisis, but Michael still feels so uncomfortable sitting in the same room with the idea that people are displeased with him that he starts to improv, which is never, never, ever good for him -- here, he winds up announcing that there will be a great surprise at the end of the day. Nobody believes him. In his office for a TH, Michael admits that he doesn't know what the surprise is going to be, but he's thrilled, because everyone is out in the office right this minute thinking about how awesome Michael is and how much they adore him. INDEED. I must say, I can think of no one who needs to be loved as much with this kind of grasping, ultimately futile fire in the belly, unless it's Robin Williams. A comparison Michael would incorrectly find flattering, if you think about it.
Dwight announces to the staff that he's been made aware that they're unhappy with the plan, so he wants them to fill out a survey and say what diseases they have, so he can see about coverage for those. Jim points out the slight confidentiality problems this creates, but Dwight solves this very easily by pointing out that nobody has to use his or her name on the sheet. Just write your diseases down anonymously! Well, that does sound good. HIPAA schmippa! Don't come at me with your Department Of Federal Requirements!
Michael's First Disastrous Attempt At Surprise Planning happens when he visits a travel agency hoping to get an all-expenses-paid trip to Atlantic City. It turns out that large, last-minute, entirely comped trips to casinos aren't as easy to come by as Michael thought. Maybe if they were all senior citizens?
Back at the office, diseases are being circled. There's also a write-in section (Dwight's biggest mistake), and Jim and Pam are at reception making plans. Jim tells Pam that she shouldn't write down Ebola or mad cow disease. He waits a beat and tells her that he has both, grinning and holding up his paper, which not only shows the entire block of circle-able diseases circled en masse, but also shows that he has written not only those two, but also "Count Choculitis" and something that ends in "--east ears," which I really, really wish I could see. Pam whispers to him that she's making up new diseases to claim that she has, and she asks Jim for a possible name for an affliction where your teeth turn to liquid and run down the back of your throat. Jim, feigning confusion, tells her he thought she was making things up -- that's spontaneous dentohydroplosia! Pam is impressed. We all are impressed.
Michael's Second Disastrous Attempt At Surprise Planning involves an ill-fated telephone inquiry -- which he makes surreptitiously from his car -- into taking everyone down into a mine shaft. When it turns out that the industrial coal elevator isn't a free-fall and there's no laser tag once you get down into the mine, Michael loses interest. He insists in a TH that he thrives on improv. And he's wrong. See? I told you he had a lot in common with Robin Williams.
Dwight angrily emerges from his workspace to demand that Jim explain several suspicious diseases that have shown up on the questionnaires. In addition to leprosy and flesh-eating bacteria, people have claimed to have "hot-dog fingers" and a "government-created killer nanorobot infection." As meticulously crafted as that second one is, I think there's an argument to be made that nothing in this episode is as elegant and perfect as "hot-dog fingers," which makes even Angela laugh. In fact, everyone in the room has a horrible case of the giggles while Dwight is talking, which giggles they are desperately trying to hide from Dwight. Dwight says he'll be investigating (yay! I love it when Dwight investigates!), and until the perpetrator appears, "there will be no health-care coverage for anyone." Don't make him turn this PPO around, people. Because he'll do it.
Later, in the interrogation room Dwight has set up, he confronts Jim about, among other things, "Count Choculitis." Dwight tries to convince Jim to confess, but Dwight is no Brenda Leigh Johnson, so instead of confessing, Jim picks up Dwight's keys and locks Dwight in the workspace. Out in the office, Jim gives Dwight's keys a snap of the wrist, and they land in the shelving behind Stanley, who sees them go by and goes right on with his phone conversation. Dwight immediately calls Jim at his desk, and Jim's particular cheerful delivery of "Jim Halpert!" followed by his impish, happy "Who is this?" is probably the moment when he cemented heartthrob status for anyone who was still holding out. Dwight insists that Jim is fired, but Jim ignores him and takes an "unexpected" call from Pam in which they discuss the upcoming weekend.
Dwight makes a call to Jan, who is frankly disgusted that he's bothering her, and who most definitely will not give him the requested permission to fire Jim. During this call, it comes to light that Dwight is in charge of the health-care plan, which Jan is not excited about, and she winds up ordering Dwight to never call her on her cell phone again. Michael is in, as they say, troub-blllllle.
Michael returns to the office with ice-cream sandwiches, filled with hope and satisfaction that, although he didn't wind up solving the problem as well as he'd hoped, he's at least solved the problem. As he throws them around the room, he drips with relief that he has solved the problem of the surprise, until Stanley tells him that this had better not be the surprise, because the day has been much too rotten for ice-cream sandwiches to make up for it -- at which point Michael instinctively agrees, assuring Stanley that no way no-how is this the surprise. Of course not! Michael ignores Dwight's ongoing begging to be let out of the conference room, and then when Michael is gone, Jim puts aside witty teasing and clever manipulation for a moment and just flat-out hurls an ice-cream sandwich so that it bounces off the window in front of Dwight's face. Sometimes, the cheapest joke is the most precious. A concept to live by, people.
Poor Dwight is at his wit's end, so he gathers everyone for a meeting in which he says that he will read off the submitted medical conditions, and someone will have to take responsibility for each, or it won't be covered. He assures them that they've all forfeited their right to confidentiality, presumably by writing down things like "--east ears." He announces that he's apparently the only adult in the room, and we're off: "Number one: inverted penis." There is quiet. Finally, Meredith tentatively raises her hand: "Could you mean 'vagina'? Because...if you do, I want that covered." Dwight says he thought she didn't have a vagina anymore after her hysterectomy. "A uterus is different from a vagina," she says with a combination of embarrassment, horror, disgust, and condescension. "I still have a vagina." Her delivery on that line makes this scene for me.
Michael sits miserably in his office, surrounded by empty ice-cream sandwich wrappers, looking like he's about to vomit ice cream and shame. Oh, the humanity.
Back in the conference room, Angela claims dermatitis. Dwight thanks her, then is on the prowl for the jokester who came up with "this hysterical one: 'anal fissures.'" Kevin nervously notes that that's a real condition. "Yeah, but no one here has it," Dwight says. Kevin looks at the camera with only his eyeballs. "Someone has it," he finally says. Yeah, they're not putting you in the Smithsonian for "anal fissures" jokes, but that doesn't mean they don't work. Dwight gulps.
Late in the day, everyone is standing around in their coats, trying to decide whether to just go home or wait for the "surprise" like Charlie Brown waiting for the chance to run at the football. Michael emerges from his office to greet his expectant workers. They want to know about the health-care plan, and Michael pretends to be sympathetic, acting surprised and then blaming Dwight for "a crappy plan" as if he and the workers are all in this together at the mercy of Big Management. He points out, of course, that he lacks the power to change the decision now. The order of business? The staff wants to know about the surprise. Michael pretends that he almost forgot, and he empties the hidden compartment hidden under the bottom of the barrel by asking what they think the surprise is. "We all think you don't have a surprise," Stanley truthfully reports. Michael decides to continue to improvise, and in order to buy time while he thinks of something, he starts doing a drum roll with his mouth. When the drum roll lasts so long that even a seventh-grader with a new snare drum would have ended it by now, it gets really awkward for everyone. Michael is still throat-clearing, like maybe there's going to be an end to all this, but patience runs out. People leave, just as Michael THs about taking on Robin Williams in a contest to see who's the bigger idiot. At least that's how I think that contest would turn out.
The office empties, except for Dwight, who delivers the bad news: "Oh, um...Jan wanted you to call her." I hope he's got an ice-cream sandwich left.