It's a quiet morning at DM-Scranton, until Pam -- with Jim hanging nearby, of course, because engaged ain't married -- gets a panicked call from Michael, who's claiming to be injured and in need of a ride to work. Quickly tiring of trying to figure out the situation secondhand based on Pam's frequently-interrupted end of the conversation, Jim reaches over and puts Michael on speaker REALLY LOUD. Now the whole office can hear Michael dramatically moaning that he burned his foot on a George Foreman grill. After a moment of Jim taking this in, a tieless Michael THs from his condo that he likes breakfast in bed, waking up to the smell of bacon, etc., so he keeps the Foreman in his room. And this morning he stepped on it, as he demonstrates by moving aside the sheet of bubble-wrap that is covering his lightly seared foot. Back in the bullpen, Michael begs Pam to send Ryan, and to have him bring toilet paper. By now everyone save Dwight has gathered around, but nobody wants to be the one to go get Michael. And then Dwight belatedly comes in, gleans about one-tenth of the situation, and dashes out the door, deaf to Michael's anyone-but-Dwight pleas. After Pam and Jim get Michael to admit that he recently made up a girlfriend (kind of mean of them, under the circumstances), everyone hears the sound of a crash from outside. Jim leads the dash to the window, where they witness Dwight stagger out of his crashed Trans-Am, vomit all over his back windshield, and drive off again, leaving his bumper in the alley. "Hello? Please don't send Dwight," the speakerphone begs again.
After the credits, Michael crutches into the office with bubble-wrap taped around his "injured" foot, making a big martyr show of not wanting any special treatment today. Here we get an example of the employees following Michael's instructions before he gives them. Dwight is in Michael's wake, carrying a stack of blankets and pillows and God knows what other supplies to set Michael up in what will amount to a temporary hospital room. While Pam tells Michael about the conference calls he missed that morning as a result of cooking his foot, Jim has reached down to pop the bubbles on Michael's makeshift cast. Some people just can't resist that stuff, even if there is a grody foot inside it. "So, where are you shipping your foot?" Jim asks. Even Michael and Dwight combined can't come up with a comeback to that.
With Michael set up in his office while Dwight airs the injured foot with a handheld fan (poorly), he gives Pam a hard time about not being a good enough friend. "Would you like some aspirin? Because you seem a little fussy," Pam offers, doing an admirable job of calling Michael a baby without saying it in so many words. Dwight steps in to say that he can take care of Michael, but stops mid-sentence, leading to an awkward pause that is spectacularly long, even for this show.
And later, Dwight is on his computer, busily renaming a Windows folder DWIGHT DWIGHT DWIGHT ad infinitum. Meanwhile, Michael is sacked out on the conference room sofa, giving Ryan grief over the Not Boston Market lunch he sent him to get. What's the matter, Boston Market? Didn't you want to be shown on national TV as the meal of choice for overdramatic whiny bitches?
At reception, Dwight notices Pam fiddling with the cheap iPod knockoff that Roy gave her for Christmas. He directs her to a Russian website where she can download songs for two cents apiece. "The only thing is that all the songs are in Russian," Dwight warns. Pam rolls her eyes, irritated with herself for letting Dwight waste more of her precious free cell time, but Dwight's only kidding. Pam appreciates the joke, as well as the web address Dwight gives her. Awkward pause. Finally he takes his leave with a stiff "Okay, see you later, Pan."
Later, Pam gets a call from Michael, wanting her to come rub County Crock⢠on his foot. When she refuses, he starts rattling his crutch against the blinds and bellowing for Ryan. Ryan looks at is with dismay. Are there, like, no other temp gigs in all of Pennsylvania?
Dwight gives Pam an indestructible case for her iPod knockoff, and she sincerely thanks him for it, which weirds Jim out. Pam THs that Dwight's not her friend. And then, with horror, she realizes that he kind of is.
Michael has called his mom to complain about the lack of help he's getting from his employees, but even that conversation proves disappointing as we learn indirectly that his mom knows about his breakup with Jan from talking to Pam. It's the things you don't hear on this show.
Break room. Dwight dorkily flirts with Angela, and then even more dorkily pats her ass until she chases him off. Apparently, that required a large number of takes. Rainn Wilson wanted to get that moment just right, I'm sure.
Later, Michael needs Ryan to open the door to let him into the break room, and from there into the men's room. There's a brief, sweet lull while Toby comments on Ryan's string-cheese-eating technique, and then there's a crash from inside the loo. From behind the door, Michael begs Toby to send in Ryan to help him get up, and also to clean him up some. "Bring a wet towel," he says. Ryan desperately shakes his head at Toby, even pulling his finger across his throat. So Toby tells Michael that Ryan's dead, and suggests that he try to get up himself: "You only grilled your foot." From behind the men's room door there's more struggling and crashing and -- I think, horror of horrors -- splashing as Michael tries to right himself.
Jim asks Pam if Dwight's being weird today. "He's actually really nice and helpful," she says. Jim rests his case. Michael comes storming in on his crutches, in a righteous rage about how his employees need to have more respect for the disabled. By which he means himself. He tries to bond with Stanley, who mutters, "I'm not disabled, and neither are you." Michael flings a crutch across the room and sticks his bubble-wrapped foot in Stanley's face, seething, "What does this look like to you?" "Mailboxes, Etc," Stanley says. Michael retrieves his crutch and stumps into his office, angrily calling a meeting in the conference room in twenty minutes. In the semi-chastened silence that follows, Dwight looks up at Creed and wonderingly asks, "Dad?"
We join the meeting already in progress, where Michael has pasted up some visual aids in the form of famous disabled Americans. Oddly enough, two of them are Tom Hanks. He thought one of the photos was from Philadelphia, but when he is corrected that the shot is in fact from Big, he smoothly recovers by saying that waking up in a man's body is a disability as well. Now, I think that's a disability Michael actually has. He's in the midst of trying to dress down Stanley for doing crossword puzzles when the "special guest" arrives in a wheelchair, apologizing for his lateness by explaining that someone parked in the handicapped space. Michael carefully doesn't react to that. The guest introduces himself as Billy Merchant, the properties manager. He thinks he's there to talk about building-management stuff, but Michael is, of course, pushing his own agenda, trying to use Billy as a demonstration of the plight of disabled Americans. Leave it to Michael to use a guy in a wheelchair as a pawn in his plan to make people feel sorry for his own self-absorbed ass. "I want to clamp Michael's face in a George Foreman grill," Jim THs. Billy gives a little parking spiel, and opens the floor for questions. Only Dwight raises his hand, but he doesn't know he's doing it until Pam points it out to him. It's still better than the last time Dwight had a question. Michael tries to steal the floor again by drawing a comparison between himself and Billy. But Billy, offended, is done. You think he should roll over Michael's burnt foot when he leaves, or the good one?
As Billy gets on the elevator, he asks Jim, "What's wrong with that guy?" Jim thinks Billy means Michael, but Billy's referring to "that moon-faced kid who crashed into the pole." Jim looks like it's all falling into place. Finally. Did everyone get a concussion this morning or something?
Ryan delivers pudding cups to Michael, which Michael claims make everything better. He comes out into the bullpen in a much improved mood, as Ryan reveals that he ground up four extra-strength aspirin in Michael's pudding. And then Dwight ruins Michael's moment by pitching over into his keyboard. Jim says that Dwight needs to go to the hospital, and there's some tense discussion of logistics that ends with the agreement that Jim will drive Meredith's van, and Michael will go along, since he's Dwight's emergency contact. While being dragged to the door by Jim, Dwight collapses on the couch. Jim rouses him with a squirt to the face from a handy plant sprayer, and Pam walks Dwight the rest of the way, saying goodbye as though she'll never see her good friend Dwight again. Which, of course, she won't.
On the way to the car, Michael calls shotgun and busts on Meredith for driving a minivan. On the road, Dwight is about to take a swig from a bottle he just found hidden under Meredith's seat, and gets a squirt in the face from a still-armed Jim. And so does Michael when he tries to get it away from him. It's hilarious either despite or because of its making no sense. And if Jim gets promoted over Michael, it serves as an effective capsule preview for Season 5.
Hospital. Only Jim knows Dwight's middle name (Kurt, contrary to Dwight's predictable claim that it is in fact "Danger"). But he's still keeping Dwight awake with face squirts, so it evens out. I do hope that poor plant doesn't dehydrate while they're off on this little jaunt.
During Dwight's examination by the ER doc, Michael keeps trying to steal the doctor's attention. But when the doctor asks if Michael's skin is red and swollen, Dwight gets his revenge by saying, "That's what she said," and grinning at the camera. Which just pisses Michael off more than anything else ever could. First Dwight steals all of Michael's attention and sympathy, and then he steals his stale line.
Dwight's about to be wheeled into the CAT scan room, but the radiologist won't allow us -- that is, the camera crew -- into the room with him. No metal of any kind, in fact, which Michael thinks means he can't enter, with his aluminum crutches and all. But off Dwight's pathetic look, he relents. He leans his crutches against the wall, removes his watch and body mic, and hops in after Dwight in eerie silence.
From the hospital waiting room, Jim calls Pam to give her an update. Pam listens with her ears, but she can't help noticing that Angela's head has just ducked behind the cube wall. After she hangs up, Pam grins at the camera, and then goes out of her way to tell Oscar that Dwight will be okay. Angela, of course, sits right to Oscar. Having overheard, her face subtly expresses either relief, gratitude, or satisfaction at having just gotten something unstuck from her back teeth.
Dwight's about to go into the scanner, and of course Michael tries to stick his foot on the table with Dwight. The radiologist tells him to knock it off. Let me check my list here...yes, this makes it official. You can literally not take Michael anywhere.