Michael has set up several stacks of paper boxes in the bullpen, in order to favour his employees with his hilarious "going downstairs" gag. He starts by getting Ryan a pencil "from the warehouse," which is when we first see that Michael should have maybe stacked the boxes five high instead of four. You want to perform, you need some core strength. Dwight sends him for a pen, and Michael happily obliges. Pam then asks for some coffee. Michael dismissively says that the warehouse coffee is so much better, so Michael goes "downstairs," and then belly-crawls into the kitchen, interviewing that he's like Bette Midler in For The Boys, doing whatever it takes to keep the troops entertained. Certainly, he's willing to wear through the knees of his pants, because if you're going to do comedy, you've got to be committed. He brings Pam her coffee, and she's like, "Cream and sugar?" Michael huffs off, but before we can see someone ask Michael to return from the warehouse with Darryl, it's time for the credits.
When we come back, Jan is on the phone with Michael, telling him, "We lost Ed Truck." Michael blithely offers to give her Ed's phone number, but Jan's like, "Er, not that kind of 'lost,' guy."
Michael comes out to the bullpen to announce Ed's death. Kelly rushes over to comfort him, which seems to be the first thing that cues Michael to the possibility that he might be sad about Ed's passing, and he duly starts acting upset, saying that it is very sad, because Ed was Michael's boss. Phyllis says it's a shame, and that Ed was a good guy, which reminds Michael that Phyllis and Creed had both worked with Ed too. Man, that Ed managed himself quite the dream team. Michael says that he'll be in his office if anyone wants to come cheer him up. When there are no takers, Michael decides to generate his own condolences, going over to Reception to ask Pam whether she heard the news. Since she was about ten feet away when he announced it, she...actually did. He comes around the side of the desk and opens his arms, and Pam's like, "Oh...uh, okay," and gets up to give him a hug, which of course he holds just long enough to make her uncomfortable and probably wonder how many months Michael will be holding on to the memory of what her boobs felt like pressed up against him.
Stamford. Josh checks with Karen about a price list that she was supposed to generate. She says she'll do it today, and Josh asks Jim to make sure she does. Jim affably agrees, and Andy coughs, "Suck-up!," immediately checking to see that Josh made out his special secret dis. If he did, he doesn't seem to think it's worth any kind of acknowledgement or congratulation. Karen rolls her eyes. Maybe come to meetings prepared, and Big Tuna won't be all up in your biz.
Karen goes to the vending machine, cursing. Jim, happening by, asks what the deal is, and Karen says that they're out of her favorite chips: "But don't worry. My snack food does not fall under the umbrella of your authority." Jim declares that, since he's her project supervisor today, they won't be doing anything until she is duly chipped: "Now, please." And then Karen starts loving Jim -- as we all love those who facilitate our consumption of salty treats.
Creed comes into Michael's office, saying it's a shame about Ed. Michael's like, "Sure, but he was old," adding that Ed's death must have made Creed more aware of his own mortality. Creed says that age had nothing to do with it: Ed was decapitated. Behind Michael's desk, Dwight turns around, suddenly enthralled. Creed explains that Ed was driving drunk and drove under an eighteen-wheeler; his head popped right off. But cars were slipping right under trucks the whole way through The Fast And The Furious! Vin Diesel movies aren't based in physical reality? Nonsense! Creed adds that a human can live for hours after decapitation. Dwight: "You're thinking of a chicken." Creed: "What did I say?" Heh. Michael interviews that Ed's cause of death did not befit a Dunder Mifflin manager -- "alone, out of the blue, not even have his own head to comfort him." Since it's Creed, there's at least a 50/50 chance that he's just making shit up for funsies, but Michael doesn't seem to consider this possibility...
...and goes straight to the bullpen to gross everyone out with the alleged details of Ed's passing.
Dwight finds Angela in the break room, instructing her that if he should ever be decapitated, he wants her to put his head on ice. And near french fries, maybe? He then interviews that he wants to be frozen upon his death, even if in pieces, because by the time he gets defrosted, he will have figured out how his killer got the jump on him. Assault with Jell-O?
Michael calls Jan, complaining that they take a day to honour Martin Luther King, and he didn't even work at Dunder Mifflin. Jan offers to give everyone the day off, and Michael angrily tells her that she doesn't understand his staff at all. The idea that they would want an authorized excuse to go home, and away from Michael's oppressive moping! Anyway, Michael tells Jan that he wants to honour Ed with a life-sized statue. Jan grits that it's not realistic, but Michael says it would be very realistic -- it would move and have eyes that light up and everything. Dwight, behind Michael, corrects him that he's talking about a robot. Jan loses her patience, and with Michael still talking over her, she tells him she's hanging up. The call having ended, Dwight shows Michael his schematic for the Ed robot, which has a six-foot power cord to make sure it can't go rogue and attack them. Michael says it's perfect, and it's not clear whether he's being sarcastic or sincere. Which is often the case, after all.
Stamford. Jim rules out another possible Herr's retailer, and Karen's like, "We tried, we failed, moving on." Jim sadly says he never pegged Karen as a quitter. Andy turns around to ask what the game is and say he wants in, but Jim tells him they're just looking for chips for Karen. Andy asks whether they checked the vending machine, and Karen kind of meanly cracks that they never thought of that. Andy asks, then, whether they checked her butt. You know, it usually is the last place you look.
Scranton. Michael's now brooding in the bullpen, leaning on a pillar by Phyllis's and Stanley's desks, musing about how much blood there must have been. Phyllis and Stanley implore him to shut it. Michael tells Stanley that there's something wrong with him, and raises his voice to bitch that there's something wrong with everyone in the office because they don't want to mourn Ed enough. Michael then interviews that there are five stages of grief, and steals a peek at his monitor as he lists them: "Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance." He states that the staffers are denying their sadness, which is making them angry, and that it's his job to get them through to acceptance -- or, failing that, just to depression: "If I can get them depressed, then I'll have done my job." I would guess that this job was already done for Michael with at least half his staff as soon as they got to work this morning.
After commercials, Michael's gathered everyone in the conference room. He has an expanding and contracting plastic office-toy ball things (...you know?), and says that he's going to toss it around; when you catch it, you have to name a person you know who died, and talk about how it made you feel. He offers to start, saying that he lost Ed: "And it feels like somebody took my heart and dropped it into a bucket of boiling tears, and at the same time, somebody else is hitting my soul in the crotch with a frozen sledgehammer. And then a third guy walks in and starts punching me in the grief bone. And I'm crying, and nobody can hear me, because I am terribly, terribly, terribly alone." And the grief bone is connected to...which bone, again? Before anyone can really react to this horrifying glimpse at Michael's psyche, Roy appears in the doorway to pull Pam away, saying there's something wrong with her car. At her desk, Roy confesses that her car is fine, but that he thought she might want a break from all the grief counselling. It will not surprise you to learn that a break is exactly what she'd like.
Outside, Roy peppers Pam with pleasant questions about her car, none of which she can answer because she's a girl, and/or doesn't care. It's a nice, relaxed moment, anyway.
Stamford. Jim tries to bluff the Herr's distribution centre by pretending to be from West Side Market, but loses it when he's asked what his store number is: "...Six?" Karen cracks up, and Jim hangs up before Herr's pokes any more holes in his story. Dammit, Jim, get your head in the game! There are chips at stake.
Stamford. Pam returns to the conference room, only to learn that she hasn't actually missed anything; Michael waited for her. Pam looks at the camera, visibly deflating. Michael starts by throwing the ball to Phyllis, but Dwight, sitting to her, snatches it away before she can catch it and tells the tale of having been a twin, but then "resorbed" the other fetus in the womb: "Do I regret this? No. I believe his tissues made me stronger. I now have the strength of a grown man and a little baby." What about its weaknesses? I wouldn't be surprised if Dwight's skull still has a soft spot. Michael tries to move the share to Stanley, but Stanley flatly refuses, so Michael tries Pam instead. She offers up the story of her aunt, "this amazing female boxer," who was paralyzed in a bout. The camera cuts over to Ryan, who narrows his eyes in recognition. Pam goes on: this aunt ended up asking her manager to remove her breathing tube. You know, I've never seen Million Dollar Baby, and now I know I really don't need to. Apparently Michael hasn't seen it either, and is as moved as you would expect a simpleton like Michael to be by the work of a simpleton like Paul Haggis. Anyway, Ryan motions for Pam to toss him the ball, and tells the group about going on safari with his family in Africa, where his cousin Mufasa was killed by wildebeests. Michael encourages him to go on, but Ryan says that, to tell the whole story, it would take him about an hour and a half. He doesn't say that it would also be interrupted by several cloying musical numbers.
Kevin goes , and as he talks about throwing a big party one weekend, only to suffer the loss of his Uncle Bernie and then pretend he was still alive, Ryan and Pam roll their eyes that Kevin would pick a movie that Michael not only would have definitely seen but is probably planning to screen for the Movie Monday. Michael gets mad that Kevin would ruin this moving session for everyone: "Do you think this is a game?" Phyllis: "Well, there is a ball." Stanley gets up to leave, but Michael insists that they're not done: "The guy who had my job is dead, and nobody cares! And he sat at my desk!" Toby kindly says that he understands that Michael may not have realized until today that death is a part of life (I'm paraphrasing), but that just today, Toby saw a bird fly into the glass doors downstairs, and died, and that there was nothing to be done. Michael, as he does, feverishly seizes on this...
...and tears down to the lobby and out the front door, where he sees the bird on the ground. With Dwight behind him, assuring him that the bird is dead, Michael ignores him and picks up the bird, holding it to his ear to try to hear if it's still breathing. Dwight frantically tells him not to touch the bird, because they're crawling with germs. Michael: "No! You can't get diseases from a bird!" Well, none that ended up amounting to anything, alarmist TV movies to the contrary.
After commercials, Michael has brought the bird up to the kitchen, and is ignoring everyone's hygiene concerns as he desperately tries to revive his patient by pouring water into its beak. Dwight offers to flush the bird. Michael doesn't seem to credit this suggestion.
Michael, now gone cold with rage at his heartless colleagues, trudges out to the bullpen to order everyone to a mandatory bird funeral in the parking lot at 4. Meredith tries to get out of it; Meredith fails. "Toby killed this bird, and now we are going to honour it," "says Michael. He then honours it by waving it violently in the air as he reminds everyone that the bird died alone, and that they need to be there for it now. No one tries to argue, and Michael hands the bird off to Dwight to find a box for the deceased. Yes, who better to deal sensitively with the death of an animal?
Stamford. Karen calls a supermarket in Montreal, impressing Jim by speaking French. Still, no dice on the Herr's.
Scranton. Michael is finally gratified to see Kelly crying at the copier. He excitedly goes to comfort her, but when she sobs that she doesn't know how many times she has to confirm with Ryan before he remembers that they have plans, Michael stomps off again. It's such a lost opportunity -- who knows better than Michael what it's like to have one's heart broken by Ryan?
Michael enters the break room just in time to see Dwight trying to cram the bird into an empty pop can. Dwight defensively says that the can is about the right size. Michael picks something up off the table: "Is that the beak?" Oh, man! Someone careless might have mistaken that for a Corn Nut! Dwight defensively interviews that he grew up on a farm, so he's used to animals dying (or getting slaughtered), and non sequiturs, "My grandfather was reburied in an oil drum!" He pauses, and then adds, "It would have fit if he had given me another minute." I hope he's back to talking about the bird, and not his grandfather.
Dwight heads over to Pam's desk in search of another vessel in which the bird can go to its eternal rest, and Pam offers a coffin she's made out of a Kleenex box. She also suggests that Dwight perform a song on his recorder at the service. Pam then interviews that she didn't set out to the office this morning thinking she would have to plan a memorial service for a bird, but that you never know what turns your day's going to take. Perhaps if she had known, she could have done up some tiny avian prayer cards.
Stamford. Karen returns to her desk to see a bag of Herr's Salt & Vinegar chips on her desk. She asks Jim where he found them; he plays dumb, but grins for the camera, and then interviews that he called the distributor, who told him that the chips were also sold in the vending machines one building over. I would think Jim would know that, since I assume that this office is in a depressing office park where all the buildings look alike and that Jim has gone into the wrong one at least once.
Stamford. In the parking lot, Michael asks Dwight for the box, and Pam says that she has it; we get a close-up so we can see that she's embellished it with thumbtacks and a toothpick cross, and even put pencils on the side to serve as handles for the bird's wee little imaginary pallbearers. Michael is moved at her efforts, and sets it gently in a paper box that has been nearly filled with shredded paper. Ryan interviews that when he was five, his mother told him that his fish had gone "to the hospital in the toilet"; it never came back, and they had a funeral for it. And even at the time, he thought he might be a little old for the whole routine: "And I was five." Outside, the mental five-year-old continues with the funereal pageantry, gratefully accepting Pam's offer to say a few words. Pam very sweetly says that while they all might be thinking that they don't know much about the bird, they probably do. It was a local bird -- possibly the same one that crapped on Oscar once. Kevin giggles that this incident was hilarious. Pam also suggests that the bird might have been trying to get inside to "spread his cheer" with a song. Dwight curtly says that it wasn't a songbird, but Pam forges ahead anyway, speaking directly to Michael as she says that although it might have seemed as though the bird died alone, it must have actually had many bird friends who cared for it very much. Man, Pam cannot be paid enough for all the therapy she has to provide Michael. Naturally, Michael gives in to the catharsis of the moment, and then Dwight accompanies Pam on his recorder as she sings "On The Wings Of Love." Michael voiceovers that society tells us to deny our feelings, but that grief isn't wrong: "There's such a thing as good grief. Just ask Charlie Brown." Heh. Back in the parking lot, the box with the bird corpse is immolated, and Michael chokes, "Let's get back to work," because even the Ryan Started The Fi-Yah! incident taught him nothing about fire safety.
After commercials, the box is still burning. Dwight, now alone, sprays it with a fire extinguisher. Paper shreds fly everywhere, and then Dwight stamps out the remains of the Kleenex box. I hope, when my time comes, I am dispatched with as much dignity.