By M. Giant
Michael and Dwight throw a football back and forth in the bullpen, acting like this bit of business makes the incredibly banal conversation they're having seem more dramatic. When all it does is end up knocking a bunch of shit off Jim's desk. "Can we not?" he begs, annoyed. Michael blathers about needing to be free to think, and demonstrates with a wild throw that nearly pins Kevin to his file cabinet. Kevin neatly returns it, and when Michael tries to send it to Oscar, Jim intercepts it and it becomes a game of keep-away. Jim tosses it to Phyllis, who gives it to Creed, who hands it to Ryan, who suddenly gets fucking plowed over by Dwight. Everyone, even Michael, watches in horror as Dwight rampages through the office, flattening Creed and then Stanley. Finally, panting, Dwight returns the ball to Michael. There's this shocked silence; everyone is acting like a bomb just went off, pausing to make sure everyone's okay. And then Michael screams, "PAM!" and sends the ball flying again.
Dwight is currently annoying Jim by noisily shopping online for electronic goodies and mocking his deskmate for winning the ninth-place prize of a Cugino's pizza. "Question: do their pizzas play DVDs?" Jim THs that as the company's top salesman of the year, Dwight wins some money and gets to go to a convention. "It is literally the highest honor that a northeastern Pennsylvania-based mid-sized paper-company regional salesman can attain," Jim says. "So." Spoken like the guy who didn't win.
Later, in the break room, Pam is giving him some more friendly mocking on that very subject. Phyllis comes in, oblivious to Jim's presence, and excitedly asks to see pictures of Pam's wedding dress. Pam puts it off, and Jim takes his leave. Pam THs that "people" can get weird about wedding stuff, and she doesn't want to offend "...Angela." Good thing that's not true, because not offending Angela sounds like a full-time job.
Dwight sits at his desk, lowering a big bunch of grapes into his mouth like he's Caligula or something. This wordless display is enough to score a "That's what she said" from an entering Michael, who asks if Dwight's ready for his speech at the convention. Dwight isn't too worried, because he doesn't think the speech is a big deal. "Biggest of your life," Michael corrects.
Michael THs that he gave the speech himself himself, two years in a row. He shows us his 1996 plaque and his 1997 certificate. "They stopped making plaques that year," he explains.
Dwight is in Michael's office, brainstorming for his speech. Michael shoots down Dwight's idea of an "extended thank you" and tells him that the sales people will expect to be entertained. Dwight gives us a little character insight into himself in a TH, as he tells us about the time in the grade-school spelling bee when he misspelled "failure" in the final round. Back in Michael's office, he says he can't do it. So here's how Michael builds up Dwight's confidence: "That's because you're incapable of doing it, because you don't know how, because you have no skills." Well, I think that's a speech right there. Dwight abjectly begs Michael to teach him, but Michael says he only has enough time to teach Dwight enough to avoid embarrassing Michael or the company. But who's going to teach Michael?
Dwight is in Michael's office, brainstorming for his speech. Michael shoots down Dwight's idea of an "extended thank you" and tells him that the sales people will expect to be entertained. Dwight gives us a little character insight into himself in a TH, as he tells us about the time in the grade-school spelling bee when he misspelled "failure" in the final round. Back in Michael's office, he says he can't do it. So here's how Michael builds up Dwight's confidence: "That's because you're incapable of doing it, because you don't know how, because you have no skills." Well, I think that's a speech right there. Dwight abjectly begs Michael to teach him, but Michael says he only has enough time to teach Dwight enough to avoid embarrassing Michael or the company. But who's going to teach Michael?
At his desk, Jim can't help overhearing Pam telling her mom on the phone that in spite of the money her parents are kicking in for the wedding, there will not be orange invitations. And then Jim picks up his own phone to call a travel agent. Heh, I remember those. Add "talking to travel agents" to the list of things I don't miss about the days before the internet, right between "sitting through movie credits" and "never writing anything." Jim just wants to get out of town; he has no idea where. That's not hard; I've spent my entire life in places that aren't Scranton.
Meanwhile, Angela goes over and adjusts the thermostat. Oscar THs that he gets there early every day so he can set it at 66 degrees. "Maybe some people don't like it as cold as I do," he says, "but I don't care." Okay, that's cold. After Angela's gone, Oscar switches it back. I don't think I've ever worked in an office where the drones had access to the temperature controls. They were always behind some variety of lock. And so was the thermostat.
In the conference room, Michael is teaching Dwight a joke about the difference between salesmen and saleswomen. Dwight's answer, "vagina," is technically correct, but it's not the answer Michael was looking for, which was "boobs." Se how much funnier that is? He says that it doesn't matter what you say, as long as people care about it. And then he demonstrates this concept by going out and announcing that everyone's getting a thousand-dollar bonus. Wow, what a great public speaker Michael is. While everyone's still celebrating that, he pulls Dwight back into the conference room and tells him to give it a try. So Dwight emerges and tells them in gruesome detail about a horrible accident on the freeway. Anyone they know involved? Brad Pitt. Kelly is devastated. "Also, there will be no bonuses," Dwight adds. Plus the branch is closing. "This is karma," Kelly frets, "because of what he did to Jennifer Aniston." Michael says Dwight was only kidding, and he sucked at it. Stanley asks about the bonuses, and Michael evasively calls a meeting, right now. "Cancel the wallpaper," Stanley says into his phone.
In the meeting, Michael wants everyone to take turns saying something in front of the group, so they can all get over their fear of public speaking. He adds that this will be good practice for Pam's wedding toast. Confused, Pam says that the bride doesn't generally do that. "Have you ever been to a wedding?" she foreshadows. Jim goes first, asking for suggestions for a trip destination. Kevin suggests Hedonism, because of the naked and because he's Kevin. Toby says he's been to Amsterdam. Michael makes Toby stand up, since he's suddenly decided they're doing toasts. Toby gamely mimes raising a glass and says, "To Amsterdam." Heh. Creed shoots that idea down, suggesting that Jim go to Hong Kong instead and then THing to his friends there in fluent Mandarin. Michael gives Dwight the floor.
"Good morning, Vietnam!" Dwight begins, to general groaning. But then he realizes that this isn't going to be an effective exercise, because he's not nervous in front of his subordinates anyway. Jim says they're not, and Dwight asks Michael to explain about the Assistant Regional Manager position. Michael obliges: "Well, it's mostly made-up." Dwight throws down his note cards and storms out. "Confidence, Dwight!" Michael calls after him.
Back at their desks, Jim asks Dwight where he would go. Without looking up from communing with his bobblehead, Dwight says one day he'll go to New Zealand and walk to Mordor and Mount Doom. This is one of those moments where I have to pretend not to be bothered that something Dwight wants to do actually sounds pretty cool to me. And then he dismissively adds that Jim isn't going anywhere. This irritates Jim, who does that thing where he swivels a few degrees in his chair and gives Dwight his full attention, in that way that tells you there very shortly there are going to be little pieces of Dwight raining down from the sky. He tells Dwight that he majored in public speaking in college. Dwight is grudgingly interested in what Jim has to say. So Jim gives Dwight the advice that you have to be yourself, and Dwight is about authority, not telling jokes. He tells Dwight to wave his arms and pound his fists, startling Dwight with some robust demonstrations. Jim THs that he actually had no such major, but he did download some dictator speeches, like the one from Mussolini one that he holds up. He gives Dwight some "talking points," and Michael comes out to take Dwight to the thing. "Very best of luck to you, Dwight!" Angela calls formally as they depart. Dwight thanks her, with equal formality. Pam gives us a who do they think they're kidding? look. Well, that would be everyone. Also, look who's talking.
Pam has drafted Kelly and Ryan to help her with her wedding invitations -- or maybe just the save-the-date cards -- in the conference room. Obviously, she couldn't ask Kevin to help with something whose initials are STD. Ryan is mildly surprised that she's inviting Jim.
Dwight and Michael arrive at the convention hall, which is packed. As they make their way to their seats up front, the lights go down, the music goes up, and Dwight's pants go wet.
Angela pretends to be sick, and sneaks out for the day.
The convention emcee introduces Dwight, who just sits in his chair, hyperventilating limply. Michael decides to step up and cover for Dwight. Michael's "Good morning, Vietnam!" is much better than Dwight's, but it doesn't get a better reaction from the crowd. Michael introduces himself and ad-libs about humor in the workplace. Which, amazingly enough, he does without being remotely funny.
Time for Kevin's turn at the thermostat. "I always set it at 69," he cackles.
Back in the conference room, a required mention of Pam's wedding date -- June 10 -- leads to Kelly asking Ryan when he would like to get married. Ryan basically says never, and all the air goes out of the room. As does Kelly. When she's gone, Pam advises Ryan to be more sensitive. "I know what I said," Ryan grumps. I don't think he appreciates Pam setting him up like this.
Michael is awash in flopsweat, doing a bad impression of "the black guy from the Police Academy movies." Finally Dwight pulls himself together and runs up to the stage, to a polite round of applause. Which is probably less for Dwight's arrival than for Michael's departure. "That is a tough crowd," Michael warns Dwight as he yields the podium. Dwight pants fearfully into the microphone, then starts off with a bang. Four bangs, actually, as he pounds the podium and bellows, "Blood alone moves the wheels of history!" Waving and thumping his hands, he blathers about war and fighting, and actually gets a smattering of claps on one of his applause lines. "We are warriors!" he hollers, winning over everyone except Michael, who looks around in confusion. In the back, Angela is filming this through a camcorder. Dwight becomes more and more unhinged, the crowd gets more and more into it, and Michael sneaks right out.
Oscar tells a doubtful Jim about his Key West timeshare as Ryan passes by. Ryan THs about his doubts that Jim is going anywhere at all, smugly going down the list of ways in which Jim is a creature of habit. He allows for the possibility that Jim may break loose and venture as far as Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Jim spins a globe and picks a spot at random. Sure, Cameroon is lovely this time of year, but why not rent a cherry-picker and visit Ryan at his home in Above It All?
As Dwight continues into a call to arms for all salesmen, Michael heads to the hotel bar. And Creed changes the office thermostat, wrapping up that non-plot. Dwight gets the whole audience to respond, "It is together that we prevail!" and they cheer and whistle as Dwight waves his award certificate in the air triumphantly. Well, I guess Jim showed him.
Back in the office, Jim has just told Pam that he's going to Australia. "I'm a little nervous to run into Dwight on his connecting flight to Mordor," Jim admits, but he's committed. And speaking of commitments, he's leaving June 8. Pam's wedding, you'll recall, is June 10th. She tries not to seem hurt, and sucks at it. Jim tries to explain, and sucks at that too. As a conciliatory gesture, he offers to take the completed stack of STD cards out for her, but she declines. If he couldn't save the date himself, how can she trust him to ask a hundred-odd other people to do the same?
Dwight gladhands the sales crowd on the way to the bar, finally finding Michael pouting there, well into his second or third drink. Dwight asks what happened. "I got thirsty," Michael says. Plus he had to get started right away on revising his memories of his recent flop so that ten years from now he'll recall it as his third triumph in this venue. "How'd it go?" he asks Dwight with magnificent disinterest. Dwight excitedly says it was great, and wishes Michael had been there. Michael tells Dwight some boring story about a woman at the bar who tried to order a drink earlier, got carded, and left. Dwight thinks this is riveting. And that's how Michael rescues his self-esteem. "I captivated a guy who captivated a thousand guys," he THs. "Can you believe that? A thousand guys." However does Michael do it?