We open with Dwight, very aggressively cutting his nails at his desk -- obviously, because where else would he do it? And when I say "very aggressively," I mean that he is scowling at his nails like they've wronged him on a very personal, emotional level. Or that it's been so long since he's cut them that they're, like, half an inch thick or something. Once he's done, he blows the clippings off his desk, and straight onto...Ryan's. Y'all, Jim's not sitting there anymore! Up is down! Black is white! Temp is perm!
Ryan confirms this in an interview: he's no longer a temp, and now has Jim's old job. This means that, at his ten-year high-school reunion, it won't say that he's a temp. Instead, it'll say, "Ryan Howard is a junior sales associate at a mid-range paper supply firm." He takes a pause as he lets the majesty sink in, and then sighs, "That'll show 'em." He should make sure to bring lots of business cards for the chumps who ended up at low-end paper supply firms -- not to mention those poor bastards manufacturing pushpins.
Out in the bullpen, Pam looks up to Ryan, sitting in the Jim-shaped hole, and we cut back to the moment of Pam and Jim's big Season 2 finale kiss, where she admitted that she'd wanted to kiss him for a long time, but was still going to marry Roy, and also probably go back to wearing her hair in that dowdy old style, not that she said the last part.
"Jim is gone!" interviews Dwight, sobbing. "He's gone! I miss him so much! I cry myself to sleep! Jim!" He abruptly stops, proving that Dwight is the Sarah Bernhardt of Scranton and was totally faking the entire time: "False. I do not miss him." Aw. Dwight, I bet he misses you.
After the credits, Michael is in his office, angrily defending himself for using the word "faggy." Toby is gently explaining to him that Oscar would prefer that Michael use a word like "lame," instead, but Michael contends, "That's what 'faggy' means!" Apparently, Oscar has come to Toby to complain that Michael called him "faggy" for preferring Shakespeare In Love to an action movie. Michael clarifies that it wasn't just any action movie, it was Die Hard. Okay, not to be a hate speech proponent, but Michael has clearly just won the argument. Anyway, Toby even more gently says that the word isn't acceptable to Oscar because he's gay. Michael's like, "Duh." Toby's like, "No, he's seriously gay." Michael's like, "I'm saying." Toby tries a different tack: "He's attracted to other men." Michael says that Toby's just crossed the line. Hee. Toby takes a breath and makes one final attempt: "Oscar is an actual homosexual." He just told Toby. The camera zooms in on Michael's stunned face as Toby adds that Oscar is hoping he can count on Michael's discretion. He...is? That is one naïve homo.
Michael interviews that he never would have called Oscar "faggy" if he'd known Oscar's orientation: "You don't call retarded people retards. It's bad taste. You call your friends retards when they're acting retarded. And I consider Oscar a friend!" Maybe Michael should just stick to "lame." I mean, at least until he gets an employee who uses a wheelchair. God forbid.
Michael finds Oscar at the photocopier and quietly apologizes, saying that he had no idea. Oscar is, at first, as gracious as one could be under the circumstances (but also answers him even more quietly, trying to shut him up before anyone else overhears, since Kevin and Angela are right there). But Michael, of course, can never shut up, ever, and with Kevin and Angela totally overhearing everything says that if he doesn't know how to behave, it's because he's so super-duper-straight, though he suggests that maybe sometime they could go out for a beer so that Oscar could explain to him how he could "do that to another dude." Seems like the appropriate solution would be for Oscar to order Michael some instructive videos, to be delivered at the office. But instead, Oscar -- with bitter sarcasm (that Michael, of course, can't discern) -- says that sounds like a wonderful idea. Michael, his work done, takes off, leaving Oscar to slink back to his desk, where Angela and Kevin stare at him, waiting for him to explain whether his gayness affects his ability to read a ledger.
In an interview, Kevin giggles helplessly.
Angela interviews, "It explains so much."
And in his own interview, Oscar declares, "No, I'm not gay. And I don't understand why anyone would think that I'm gay if..." He trails off into a gigantic sigh, shakes his head at himself, and resumes: "Yeah, I'm gay." He smiles with relief; it's actually a really nice performance in such a tiny scene, the way Oscar Nuñez's face changes from tight and pinched to open and relaxed in a matter of seconds. You kind of hope the character can hold on to that feeling for the rest of the day, and all the crap that's about to rain down on him.
Kevin inter-giggles some more. Like...that kind of crap.
In Stamford, Jim is telling someone that he doesn't know if Dunder Mifflin paper is any less flammable than other companies' products. Although if there were such a thing as paper made with asbestos fibers, the company selling it would probably be someplace like Scranton. Or maybe New Jersey.
Jim then interviews that he thinks it's pretty obvious why he transferred to Stamford. After a long beat: "I got promoted!" Indeed, he is all in a suit and shit. With jacket. Though he still has the same stupid Muppet hair.
In the office, Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) turns around from his desk -- in the Stamford office, the desks are all in rows, like the salespeople are all in the steno pool or something -- and asks "Big Tuna" whether he's single. Andy looks over at a pretty blonde in the kitchen, telling Jim that she's hot, but crazy. He advises Big Tuna to steer clear of her: "Head for open waters." Jim, in his usual affable yet bewildered way, agrees.
Jim then interviews that he ate a tuna sandwich on his first day at the office, whereupon Andy started calling him Big Tuna. He doesn't think anyone in the office knows his real name. Oh, boo hoo. My first week working in the office, someone thought I was an intern.
Anyway, sure enough, in his own interview, Andy says that Big Tuna is "a super-ambitious guy -- cut-your-throat-to-get-ahead type of guy." But Andy's not threatened by him: "I went to Cornell? Ever heard of it?" He spent his entire time there drunk, never studied, and performed in an a cappella group called "Here Comes Treble." HA HA HA! Awesome. Giving fictional a cappella groups ridiculous names is one of my favorite TV tropes -- like Chock Full o' Notes on NewsRadio. And the reason it's so hilarious to me is that the fake ones can never possibly be as stupid-sounding as real ones like the goddamn Whiffenpoofs. I mean, speaking of...lame.
In Stamford, Michael's counterpart, Josh Porter (Charles Esten), is running a perfectly respectable, normal, professional meeting, telling staffers that they'll be having another refresher on the diversity policy, because of problems at the Scranton branch. Damn Shakespeare In Love, ruining everyone's day. Upon this latest Scranton embarrassment, Jim camera-shrugs. Josh also has a list of new start-ups from the Chamber of Commerce that someone will need to cold-call, which Jim volunteers to do. At this, Karen Filipelli (Rashida Jones) looks at him sharply. Apparently you have to get up pretty early in the morning to apple-polish harder than Jim.
Karen interviews that Jim seems like a nice guy, but that she's not sure how well he's fitting in. She says that he's always looking at the camera, and...she executes a pretty dead-on Jim-style camera-shrug. She's no Buster Keaton, but I admire her gift for physical comedy.
Back in Scranton, Michael peers through the glass at the bullpen, asking Dwight whether he can tell who's gay and who isn't just on sight. Dwight confidently says that he could. Michael's like, "What about Oscar?" Dwight says Oscar's not gay. Michael takes a little pleasure in informing Dwight that he's wrong about that. Dwight is confused: "He's not wearing women's clothing." Yes, they can be sneaky that way. Michael says that if Oscar could secretly be gay, anyone could be, so Michael needs to nail down which staffers are gay so that he doesn't inadvertently piss off anyone else. Dwight, somewhat hopelessly, suggests that Michael could just assume everyone's gay and not say anything offensive, but Michael scoffs at the notion that anyone in the office would enjoy being treated like he or she was gay. I mean, really. It's not like they get to take off any extra holidays. Angela comes into their eyeline, and Michael says that Angela's so hard and severe, she could be "a gay woman." With a sidelong glance at the camera, Dwight smirks that he doesn't think she's a lesbian. Michael's not so sure: "I can imagine her with another woman. Can't you?" Dwight smirks harder. Michael wishes there was a way he could tell someone was gay. Dwight muses that Jim once told him you could buy gaydar online. Michael doubts it. Dwight agrees that it might not have been true: "Jim didn't tell the truth a lot." But Michael can't entirely rule out the possibility, and they decide to call Jim to get the website just in case. Yeah, that's probably not something where your Google results are actually going to be very helpful.
"What's gaydar?" asks Jim, on the phone in Stamford. "Oh, oh! Gaydar! Yes!" Managing to keep from laughing (but grinning at the camera), he says he thinks they have it at Sharper Image. He offers to check, and makes some loud fake-typing noises on his keyboard: "It's sold out." He snickers at the camera, saying he's sorry. He's not even going to suggest trying eBay?
Back in his office, Michael anxiously gazes off. Dwight, wedged in to him, grabs the keyboard: "I'll try Brookstone." Yeah, their gaydar is probably waterproof and has a CD player built in.
Back in Stamford, Jim grins: "I miss that." He should read Dwight's blog.
After commercials, we're back in Scranton. Pam's at her desk when Roy enters with a couple of foil-covered plates, asking Pam if she wants chicken or fish. She sighs deeply, and finally takes the chicken. He asks if she's having a good day, and she answers perfunctorily that it's excellent. She looks away, and he leaves, awkwardly. The camera zooms in on Pam's left hand so that we can see she's not wearing a ring. Nor has she gotten one of those ring-finger tattoos that all the kids are so excited about.
Pam interviews that she "didn't go through with the wedding." She says she "can't explain it," but that she (suddenly) had to get out of the relationship. They still had to pay for the food, so they froze it. She calmly insists that she's doing well: she has her own apartment, she's taking art classes, and she has lunch for the five weeks. And it's probably no less boring than anything available within short driving distance of Dunder Mifflin, Chili's notwithstanding.
In the warehouse, Roy has his own interview, in which he says that after Pam dumped him, he stopped taking care of himself; he hit bottom when he got arrested for drunk driving -- whereupon we see his mug shot, where he kind of looks like a chunkier Nick Nolte. He says that after that, he started working out, and now he's not going to take Pam for granted; his eyes welling up, he says he needs to get her back. Maybe he should start taking art classes.
Stanley interviews that he got Pam and Roy a toaster, which he couldn't return to the store after Pam and Roy sent it back to him. So now he has two toasters. It may surprise you to learn that this doesn't fill Stanley with joy.
Kelly walks up to Oscar's desk to announce that it's so cool that he's gay: "I totally underestimated you." Kelly then wanders off again before Oscar can say anything.
"Yes, I am super-cool," Oscar agrees with Kelly, in an interview. He recaps (save it for the professionals) that he's an accountant at a "failing" paper company in Scranton, "much like Sir Ian McKellen." Oh, that bitch is terrible with numbers, you just know it.
Looking dyspeptic at his desk, Oscar watches as Angela very deliberately cleans her hands with hand sanitizer and then glares at him before wandering off, perhaps to take a sanitizing shower.
Angela interviews that she sometimes watches Will & Grace and wants to throw up: "It's terribly loud." She confesses that she does like to watch it when Harry Connick Jr. is on, though. Even when he's playing a Jewish character? Perhaps we all underestimated Angela! Or, she didn't notice.
Meredith steals over to Angela's desk, squirts a gob of sanitizer onto her fingers, and licks it. Forgot to brush the hangover out of our mouth this morning, did we?
Stamford. Andy opens his desk drawer to find his calculator in Jell-O. He pulls it out and asks who did it. No one confesses, but Jim looks pretty openly pleased with himself. Andy keeps asking who did it, getting madder and madder until he finally kicks a wastepaper basket across the room. The camera pushes in on Jim, who's suddenly consumed with whatever's up on his monitor and rapidly shaking his head in order to avoid discovery. Plus no one else really thinks it's that funny either. Maybe they already got their fill of that gag the first time.
Jan enters the Scranton office and gives Oscar a pleasant, finger-intensive wave. Oscar doesn't look that excited at the prospect of being invited to join Jan on a visit to the Liz Claiborne outlet.
In his office, Michael gets dressed down by Jan, who can't believe he could be so obtuse about sexual orientation. Michael is affronted that she would say that about him: he watched The L Word, and what he called "Queer As Fuck," the last word being bleeped. Jan wearily says that's not what it's called (and she's right), Toby says that Michael essentially outed Oscar today, and now he feels his co-workers -- particularly Angela -- are discriminating against him: "And that's your fault." Michael seizes on the mention of her name, saying that he thinks Angela might be gay, and that maybe the root cause of all this stuff is that she and Oscar are having "a gay affair." Jan and Toby both try to get Michael to understand that this isn't possible; Jan adding that Michael should imagine if he were gay. Michael chuckles that he really, really, so isn't, and that no one should know that better than Jan. She's not in a kidding mood, though, and says that his immaturity could lead to a lawsuit that the company can ill afford. Though if it does happen, they should see if DM can get the contract for the paper used to print the many, many pages of depositions taken from Michael's employees.
From this meeting, Michael has surmised the following, which he says in an interview: "The company has made it my responsibility today to put an end to one hundred thousand years of being weirded out by gays." If that were what Jan had said, Dunder Mifflin would deserve to be sued. Um, even more.
Michael's called Oscar into his office for a rap session. Oscar asks Michael whether he's the first gay person Michael has ever known. Michael decides that this must be a trick question, since you can't always tell, so how would he know? "Is that the right answer?" says Michael, faltering. Damn those gays and their clever wordplay!
Apparently it isn't the right answer, since Oscar's just dropped his head in defeat when Pam opens Michael's door and tattles that Dwight is looking at gay pornography on his computer. I already said, don't Google it! Ah, no one listens. Dwight brays that Michael knows what he's doing. Michael, Kevin, Creed, and Meredith have gathered around Dwight's monitor and are looking on in fascination. Michael, as usual, over-corrects, saying that he doesn't have a problem with what's on Dwight's screen, and actually finds it "quite beautiful." Oscar comes out (no pun intended) and asks what everyone's doing. "Watching some of your friends," says Angela, meanly. Oscar says that this is stupid and brushes past her; she stumbles and yelps, and Dwight is instantly up out of his seat and kicking at Oscar in Angela's defense, which is when Michael decides that the moment has come for his excellent leadership and orders everyone into the conference room, regardless of whether they're gay or straight or a lesbian or overweight. I wish he would go on listing one attribute for each person in the office: "Or a binge-drinker or creepy or depressive or a total wussy-ass coward or a beet farmer..." But that doesn't happen.
After commercials, Michael's leading a meeting with his typical sense of occasion. He starts by giving his troops some background on the word "gay": it used to mean "happy," and then when Michael was a teenager, it meant "lame." Heh. But now it means a man who makes love to other men. Sitting up against the window, Pam turns to Ryan to try to share this ridiculous moment with him, but he's like, "What?" and she's left to look at the camera instead, having no one to mock Michael with. Which seems impossible, but there it is. Anyway, Michael invites Oscar to take this moment to officially come out, however he wants. Oscar decides not to fight it, and he stands and says that he is gay, although he didn't intend to share that part of his life with his co-workers today. If he had, perhaps he would have worn something a bit more faaaaaaaabulous!
Creed interviews that he doesn't have any problem with homosexuality: "In the '60s, I made love to many, many women, often outdoors, in the mud and the rain, and it's possible a man slipped in. There would be no way of knowing." Not in the days before DNA testing, no.
Back in the meeting, Michael is rhetorically asking, "Who should be the judges and juries of our society?" "Judges and juries!" says Angela irritably. After a brief, uninformed sidebar about gay marriage, Dwight declares that he wants the rest of the "office gays" to identify themselves. Oscar impatiently says that no one else in the office is gay. Dwight calls out Phyllis: "She makes absolutely no attempt to be feminine." She's actually more adorned than Pam is in this moment, by the way, and she haughtily announces, "I'm getting married to Bob Vance." Everyone gets distracted by the happy news, Pam grabbing Phyllis's hand to check out the ring. Michael uses this as proof that "everybody has a chance," but can't let the subject die, asking whether Phyllis ever experimented with other chicks when she was in college. Phyllis pissily reminds Michael that he knew her in high school, adding that, back then, they all thought he was gay, what with his matching ties and socks. No cutaway to an archival photo supplied by Michael's mom? Boo. Anyway, Michael shoots back that he just liked to look good. Oscar observes that Michael seems to be very defensive, and Michael says that he's just coming out as a straight guy. Oscar accuses that Michael is sending mixed signals about Oscar's being there, but Michael insists that the only signal he's sending is "Gay good!" He adds that if he were gay himself, he would be the gayest gay that ever gayed (I'm paraphrasing). Oscar can't even respond to Michael, turning instead to Toby to say he doesn't think he can work there anymore. He gets up to leave, but Michael stops him, saying that he's going to put his money where his mouth is by embracing Oscar; he specifically tells Angela to watch so that she can learn that you can't catch anything. Pam's mouth drops open. Michael wants to make a statement -- all over Oscar's face, apparently -- but Oscar refuses. He's polite at first, but as Michael keeps ignoring him, until Oscar finally has to shove Michael away, saying that he doesn't want to touch Michael: "You're ignorant and insulting and small." Michael is obviously very wounded by this -- and because he can only dish it out and never take it, everyone else watching looks like they feel more sorry for Michael than they are for Oscar. Michael chuckles to cover his embarrassment, and turns to walk out, but Oscar closes the door, and he ends up apologizing to Michael. Unbelievable! Oscar opens his arms: "Come on." Michael falls into Oscar's arms and sobs into his shoulder, "I'm sorry I called you faggy!" Oscar says he knows. Dwight looks on at this tender scene with naked terror...
...and in an interview, he says that Michael appears to be gay, too. Matching socks, again? Will he never learn? Dwight: "And yet he is my friend. I guess I do have a gay friend!" He's a regular Tyra Banks!
Back in the meeting, Oscar is trying to detach himself, but Michael the remora is still clinging to him, saying that he's going to raise the stakes. Oscar, no fool, does not like the sound of that. Michael, getting emotional, says that what everyone's about to see, they should burn into their brains, so that they can see it every time they come into the office. Oscar's like, "We don't have to..." But it's too late: Michael's already staring at Oscar's lips. The rest of the employees start to realize where this is going -- Ryan actually half-shields his eyes -- and then Michael is forcing his lips onto Oscar's, who is extremely not into it, to the degree that he actually grunts in protest. It's really not hot. Michael finally breaks the clinch, congratulating himself, "I did it." Michael and Oscar uncomfortably thank each other as the rest of the employees silently flip shit (especially Kelly, who is so excited and overcome she might actually be crying). "See?" chokes Michael. "I'm still here. We're all still here." Kevin tries to get some applause going, though he abruptly breaks it off when Dwight follows Michael's lead by gripping Oscar by the biceps and laying a huge smooch on his cheek. If anything could be less hot than Michael's kiss, it's Dwight's, because Dwight is in a short-sleeved dress shirt with gigantic pit stains.
Michael smugly interviews, "We are not in the playground anymore. There are new rules. We have to be mature, but we can't lose the spirit of childlike wonder." That's one way to describe stubborn pig ignorance, I suppose. He muses, "What is love, anyway?," as we watch Oscar gathering up his things and getting ready to leave. Michael guesses that love is supposed to break all the rules: "Like me and Jan." Or Pam and Jim -- as, I guess, we're supposed to think as we watch Pam staring at Ryan, again, some more. Michael: "Or Oscar and some guy." In Stamford, Larry Wilmore leads another diversity lecture, as Michael VOs, "When two people find each other, what should stand in their way?" Jim gazes at the empty chair beside him, wishing it were full of a girl with frizzy hair, in Casual Corner couture.