Michael walks in just as Jim has just succeeded in setting up Pam for the old "What's updog?" bit. You know, you say the word "updog," and then the mark asks what "updog" is, and you answer, "Not much, what's up with you?" Hilarious. Michael asks for a repeat, and takes a moment to get it. And then he can't wait to try it on everyone else, but he can't seem to ever pull off the setup. Like, Ryan and Stanley respond with "what?" and "don't interrupt my sales call," respectively. Dwight is his last, best hope, and actually does come back with the "what's updog?" reply, but Michael skips right to his celebration and forgets to close the deal. After realizing his mistake, he sulks into his office, with Dwight somehow still pleased at the attention. "So close," Jim mouths to us.
It's spring cleaning day at Dunder Mifflin, even if it is January. This way, Michael says, they don't have to do anything in the spring. Out in the bullpen, Dwight is giving out assignments to everyone. Meredith has to replace the urinal cakes, and Oscar has to dust. Except that Oscar is out sick. Dwight says that's unacceptable. Angela agrees with Dwight. Then they eye-fuck. "Wwwwhat are you guys doing?" Kevin asks uncomfortably. Dwight takes off. His eyes need a cigarette.
But he goes straight into Michael's office, who shares Dwight's suspicion that Oscar is malingering. Together they dial up Oscar at home, and Oscar sounds pretty stuffed up as he claims to have the flu. Michael says that's a shame; they could have used some "Hispanic cleaning ethic," causing Ryan to look up in horror from whatever it is he's doing on Michael's floor. Oscar doesn't react audibly, which is of course an obvious sign that he's faking. Not that Michael picks up on it. Instead, he quizzes Oscar on his symptoms, which Dwight finds consistent with what he's checking out on WebMD. Michael lets Oscar off the hook -- or so it seems. He actually wants Dwight to drop what he's doing and investigate. "Because an office can't function efficiently unless people are at their desks, doing their jobs," Michael lectures.
At reception, Pam is talking to Kelly about having bought her wedding veil. Kelly asks to be a bridesmaid. Pam's like, "...err." Fortunately, Kelly changes the subject to how Pam is going to wear her hair. Pam lets it down, which all but conjures Michael out of his office to ask Pam why she doesn't wear it like that all the time. "It's much sexier," he says grossly. Pam immediately gets to work putting it back up. Which seems like a waste of time, now that she's just going to have to shower for six hours to get the Michael Scott ickiness (extra-chunky style!) off of herself. As Michael passes Jim's desk, he quietly remarks in passing to Jim that this must be torture for him.
In a TH, Jim reminds us about spilling the beans to Michael on the booze cruise. "I confided in the world's worst confidant," he understates. Back in the now, Jim enters Michael's office and closes the door so he can tell Michael -- again, in confidence -- that Jim was confiding in Michael before, and Michal is the only one who knows. Now, anyone else would be mortified at having almost just spilled the beans, but Michael is too deeply honored by the trust Jim placed in him. He of course doesn't realize that Jim "placed" his trust in Michael in much the same way I once "placed" my keys in my car before locking it. In a TH, Michael vows to keep the secret "for as long as [he] possibly can." In a fine bit of hair-acting, Jim leaves Michael's office looking frazzled, as his boss sings "Our Lips Are Sealed" by the Bangles. Yes, we know it's not the Bangles, but Michael doesn't.
Dwight puts Ryan in charge of spring cleaning. His efforts to intimidate Ryan into getting excited about it don't really pay off.
Michael "happens" to visit the break room at the same time as Jim, because now he thinks they're best buds. As Stanley comes between them to buy a soda, Michael asks Jim for updates on the P situation. "P-A-M," he clarifies. "It's okay, we're talking code." Jim takes off, and to punish Stanley for ruining the moment, Michael punches the peach iced tea button on the machine. "You're gonna hate it," he snarls. Michael sure can be an asshole when he's trying to be someone else's friend. ["Except he totally blew it, because peach iced tea? Delicious. -- Joe R]
Dwight's on the phone with Oscar, asking why there was no answer six minutes ago. "So, sounds like you're too sick to come into work, but well enough to go to the pharmacy," he interrogates. Then Dwight THs about all of the visual clues that tell you when someone is lying. "Unfortunately I spoke to Oscar on the phone," he admits, "so none of this is useful." Much like Dwight himself.
Michael comes up to Jim to the storage shelf, now trying to bond over grape soda. Dwight comes up and wonders what's going on, since Michael never drinks grape soda and never talks to Jim. Jim thinks, If only. Michael says that he loves grape soda, and that he and Jim are friends who tell each other secrets and everything. Dwight demands to know what the big secret is, and before Michael can even start gulping in air, Jim quickly says that he asked to head up the Oscar investigation, but Michael shot him down. Dwight asks Michael if that's true, and even with a ready-made lie that he only has to sign off on sitting there in front of him, he's totally unconvincing. In fact, he displays all the signals of dishonesty that Dwight described earlier. I know that everyone has already gotten past the question of how Michael ever got promoted to regional manager in the first place, but for me the one thing that makes it so unlikely is what a completely terrible liar Michael is. Dwight is, naturally, convinced. Michael sends him off with a pat on the back. Jim mimics the gesture, prompting Dwight to spazz out as he removes the post-it Jim stuck there. As they return to Jim's desk, Michael invites Jim out for lunch. Jim begs off, but as soon as Michael starts talking about a picnic/Pam-talk session in the break room, Jim loves the idea of going out. "I know just the place," Michael says.
Cut to Hooters, where Michael is telling Jim to order milk. Get it? "Why do I like Hooters?" he THs. "I will give you two reasons: the boobs and the hot wings." And then he giggles at the naughty-ish, completely stale joke that he just totally screwed up.
Michael makes an idiot of himself in front of their waitress by ordering a chicken breast, hold the chicken. "Is that what you really want?" she asks, shutting him down. He orders a gourmet hot dog like a spanked little boy. No hot wings for you!
While grossly digging through the reception desk's jelly bean jar for black ones, Dwight quizzes Pam about how Oscar sounded on the phone before, when he called in sick. She answers as quickly and meaninglessly as she can, just to get his blackened teeth out of her face. After he's gone, she dumps out the rest of the candy in her trash can. I don't think I would have done that. I would have taken them to the Dumpster.
At Hooters, Michael asks what Jim likes about Pam, and Jim says that she's easy to talk to and has a good sense of humor. Michael surprised to hear it, since Pam never gets any of his jokes. Jim cuts a look at the camera and asks, "What about you?" Michael: "Her boobs, definitely." Jim: "Wow, that's not what I meant." Too late; Pam's boobs are ruined forever. And it gets worse, because Michael told the waitresses that it's Jim's birthday, so now add "ritual" to the list of the many varieties of humiliation Jim endures today.
When they return to the office, Pam asks what they talked about. "Politics, literature," Jim says, holding up his new Hooters t-shirt for her to see. "I hate you," Pam says. Well, that makes two of them.
Dwight comes into Michael's office to give an Oscar update, and Michael snaps at him to just go to Oscar's house. "I could have done this whole investigation in, like, twenty minutes." "Including prep time?" Dwight asks, stung. Which is foolish, because he's sat through enough of Michael's speeches and presentations to know that Michael doesn't do prep time. My other question is, wouldn't Toby have gotten wind of this? Because I'm not sure it's legal. I'm not saying Toby would have been able to stop it; just that he would have gotten wind of it.
With spray cleaner in hand, Ryan opens a desk drawer, revealing it to be completely empty. He tells us that if necessary, he could clean out his desk in five seconds. "And nobody would know I'd ever been here. And I'd forget too," he adds dreamily. One would like to think so.
In his office, Michael gazes at Jim through the window and then finger-combs his hair down over his forehead. Thusly coiffed in a poor-man's Halpert (which is, let's face it, a whole new definition of poverty), he goes to accounting and tells Angela to expense the Hooters lunch. She objects, so they have to go to Toby, who threatens to take away the corporate credit card that Michael just got back after an $80 expenditure at a magic shop. Michael is trying to make the case that Jim's lunch is business-related, since Jim's emotional malaise is affecting his productivity. "He's in love with a girl he works with, who's engaged, so just cut me some slack, please?" Michael whines. "Pam?" asks Kelly, who overheard the whole thing. Michael's face falls farther than his hair, and suddenly he doesn't care about the expense reimbursement any more.
And during the commercials, the word has spread. Phyllis asks Angela who she would choose if she were in Pam's place. Angela declines to answer, then says, "Roy." Kevin is telling Creed, who leers, "Which one is Pam?" As Michael mopes past, Kevin makes some comment, and Michael shirtily informs him that this is private. After all, this is a personal matter, between Jim and Pam. And Michael.
Dwight stakes out Oscar's house. I don't think this is what Michael had in mind.
Jim comes out of the men's room and runs into Kelly, who asks why he never told her about his thing for Pam. How long was he in there, anyway? Jim THs that he used to have a crush, and now he doesn't. Because he thinks we're idiots. "Riveting," he claims sarcastically. Tell it to the posters, Big Tuna. And then we see Pam walking by Jim's desk while Kevin's there, sending Kevin into leer overdrive.
Jim catches up with Pam in the break room and decides to come clean-ish about his "former" crush on her, before she hears it from someone else. Pam says she kind of suspected when she first started. She asks if he's going to be all awkward around her now. "Oh, yeah," Jim says. "Hope that's okay." Pam laughs a tension-breaking laugh and is about to leave, and all would still not be lost if only Jim could refrain from stopping her at the door and assuring her that he's totally over it. But of course, he can't. Pam looks a bit sad as she leaves. How good a salesman can Jim really be if he doesn't know how to not over-close?
It's dark outside Oscar's house, as Dwight watches him come home with Gil. Oscar looks fine, by the way. He and Gil take shopping bags out of their trunk, and Oscar fixes Gil's hair as Dwight watches. He swoops in, busting them, and gloating to us outside Oscar's house that he found out something very interesting about Oscar: "He was lying about being sick!" Dwight agrees to not tell Michael in exchange for a future favor from Oscar. And then we see Dwight in Oscar and Gil's house, sitting between them as they happily watch TV and hold hands behind him. Enjoy that closet while you can, Oscar.
Jim knocks on Michael's closed office door and immediately enters without being invited, which is about as close to a tantrum as we'll ever see him. Michael's hair is back to normal as he throws himself on Jim's mercy. It's an odd position to be in, having to yell at your boss. And now here's the thing that makes up for Michael's inability to lie in terms of being promotable: his ability to get out of trouble by crying. Michael's tears get him off the hook, and Jim even gives him an awkward seated/standing hug. Well, that's okay, then. Of course, if Jim had the stones to actually give Michael the dressing down he deserves, he would already be with Pam by now.
Ryan is going down the list of spring cleaning tasks, and is surprised to learn that Creed didn't do his part. Not sure why. The surprise, I mean. The takeout menus will just have to wait until year.
Pam stops into Michael's office with his schedule for the following day, and even now he can't shut his piehole about the crush thing. Pam says it's no big deal, since it was a long time ago. Stupid, stupid Michael corrects her that it was on the booze cruise, and when Pam asks him what he means, he finally shuts down. Several hours too late.
Jim and Pam walk to the elevator together, she looking curiously at his back as they go. Jim of course is wearing his most squee-worthy I'm-so-in-love-with-Pam face, which unfortunately after all these years of sublimation now looks like his I-think-I-feel-a-nap-coming-on face. As they board together, Michael VOs that keeping secrets is nothing but trouble. As demonstrated by the sad tale of the protagonist of a Skinemax movie he recently saw, called More Secrets of a Call Girl. Well, the important thing is that he's learned his lesson.