In Michael's absence -- by which I mean his actual, physical absence while he's off at Sandals Jamaica with some mystery person, and not his typical intellectual absence -- Jim is running a staff meeting in the conference room. He's briefly distracted by Dwight's setting a tape recorder on the table and claiming that Michael asked him to record all the meetings. Jim moves on, and then suddenly asks, "Oh, my God! Dwight, what are you doing? You're not allowed to take off your pants in the middle of the office." Dwight slowly realizes that Jim is messing with the transcript on purpose, and the others start laughing and joining in. Phyllis gets bonus points for also messing with Michael, by telling Dwight to get Michael an autograph from Jim Carrey, who she says just walked in. This continues until Andy jumps in with a loud, "I am now chopping off Phyllis's head with a chainsaw!" Phyllis is okay, of course, but Andy did kill the joke pretty good.
Michael returns to the office on his first day back, carrying all manner of crap under his arm and looking kind of weird somehow on one side of his head. To his disappointment, Pam greets him like it's any other day, except for mentioning that Hannah quit for reasons that mean that Michael might have to be deposed. Michael is still on a vacation-high, trying to "Hey mon" the whole office at large. As Michael tries to enter his office, Stanley accosts him and complains about his bonus check being $100 short. Michael puts him off, adding, "You are not as much fun as your Jamaican brothers. Mon."
Apparently, things are a little tense between Karen and Jim. As Karen explains to us, she's still living in a hotel since moving from Stamford, but saw a "for rent" sign two blocks away from Jim's place. Jim is just not ready for that kind of commitment.
Michael is performing "Hot Hot Hot" for Pam in his office, undaunted by the fact that he only knows one line and one note on the new steel drum he brought back. No problem, mon -- just keep repeating it all. Which is what he does. Finally Pam tells him that they have to do inventory, which Michael was hoping to miss. He points out that they don't do inventory in the laid-back environment of the islands. "Why do you think so many businesses move to the Caymans?"
So Michael heads out to the bullpen, announces an "inventory luau" that evening, and puts the party planning committee to work on it, despite Angela's protests that they can't pull it off in one day. And I just figured out what's going on with Michael's hair; he's got one of those tiny little bead-braids over his right ear, which makes him look like even more of an idiot than usual. In response to Angela's doubts, Michael THs that a luau isn't all that hard: "All you need are some grass skirts, pineapple, poi, tiki torches, suckling pig, some fire dancers." All of which go remarkably well with inventory.
Michael has called a meeting in the conference room, where Karen makes a point of passing up the empty seat to Jim. It's always cold on the first day back, isn't it? Michael has basically gathered everyone to show them his vacation slides, trying to foster a new island-inspired attitude of relaxation in the office. Suddenly Pam spots another familiar person in the shot. "Is that Jan? she asks, flustering Michael. "That's a German woman named...Urgle Grue," he denies. How flattering for Jan. But that's the least of the humiliations in store for her this episode.
Starting right now. In a TH, Michael reveals that Jan told him to play it cool. Which is like telling Michael to squat on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and shit a brick of plutonium. He simply cannot stop himself from saying he had sex with Jan. He physically can't keep it in. And that's...what she said.
So Michael calls Packer to boast, and Packer doesn't believe a word of it. So Michael emails Packer a photo of himself with Jan, who's sleeping face-down on a chaise longue wearing nothing but a bikini bottom. Packer says he doesn't have it, even when Michael tells him to refresh. And then he figures out that instead of sending it to packer@dundermifflin.com, he sent it to packaging@dundermifflin.com. Oh, auto-complete is a capricious bitch-goddess sometimes. Fortunately, someone else in the company forwards the photo to Packer while he's still on the phone with Michael, so he is both convinced and impressed. So why isn't Michael happy?
He dashes to the warehouse, looking for Darryl. Darryl already got the e-mail, already forwarded it around. But as for whether he also forwarded Michael's follow-up email asking everyone to delete it, Darryl just says he's very busy. So he gets back to eating his lunch while staring at his monitor.
Up in the bullpen, some folks are gathered around Kevin's terminal looking at the photo. "Boring," Andy says. "Call me if she rolls over."
Pam runs into Jim in the lunch room, and senses something's wrong. Beyond the fact that their boss's boss is naked on the internet, that is. She gets him to admit that he's in a fight with Karen. Possibly seeing an opportunity, Pam offers to talk about it with him. He gratefully accepts.
Michael is hoping that there is no problem so serious that it can't be fixed by throwing Dwight at it. Sometimes it's handy to have a deranged pit bull on your staff, right? So he whispers to Dwight about the "special assignment" involving the photo file titled "Jamaican Jan sun princess," which is the most embarrassing part about this so far. Dwight tries to be all hard-boiled, saying he can't accept the project unless Michael tells him everything, but he quickly folds when Michael threatens to rescind the assignment. For Dwight, all assignments from Michael are special.
After listening to Jim's problem, Pam kind of says that Karen has a point. She THs that it's not a big deal; she helps her friends all the time, like getting a piece of tape untangled from Phyllis's hair yesterday. And with that out of the way, Pam and Jim can move on to dishing about Michael's trip to Jamaica with Jan. Kidnapping is floated as one possible explanation.
Michael gets an office visit from the second-last person he wants to see today: Toby. He's there to talk about the photo, and Michael bluffs calling the cops on Toby for stealing it. "Nine different people emailed me that photo, including my ex-wife, and we don't talk," Toby protests. His point is that Michael needs to disclose the relationship to HR. For once, Michael manages to disclose very little. But he also calls Toby a "skeevy little perv," so it's kind of a wash.
The party planning committee is in panic mode. Upon hearing that none of the local grocery stores will sell them a whole pig, Angela (feverishly feeding green paper into the shredder, presumably for grass skirts) asks Phyllis, "Did you try the petting zoo?" I bet she'd be willing to whip out her letter opener and slaughter the thing herself, too.
Michael's out in the bullpen when a call comes in to Reception from the very last person Michael wants to talk to today: Jan. Michael cycles desperately though a whole range of excuses to dodge the call until Pam finally tells Jan, "He'll call you back," with a reassuring smile at Michael. "Michael hit a deer?" Dwight asks. Michael only wishes that was all he hit today. You know I'm talking about the "send" button, right?
Dwight sticks his face through Michael's Venetian blinds, because that's so much more "covert" than just talking to him through the open door. Apparently there's an emergency in the warehouse. "It involves the photograph," Dwight hisses.
Cut to Dwight and Michael rushing into the warehouse, where the nature of the emergency is immediately apparent: the photo has been blown up bigger than life and pasted on the far wall. Seeing Michael up on the mezzanine, the warehouse workers applaud. Michael politely acknowledges it, and dashes back to the office. So now we know that there are no circumstances under which Michael will reject approval from "the guys."
Back in the bullpen, he breathlessly announces, as though it's news, that there's a circulating "PG-13" picture of himself and a woman. "Jan," Kevin nods. Michael denies that it's Jan. "Urgle Grue?" Jim guesses. Michael asks everyone to just delete any such emails, sight unseen. "Let's be professional, okay?" Oh, yes, Michael, let's.
We see Michael outside in his suit and no overcoat. He's unhappily practicing his one line of "Hot Hot Hot" on his steel drum in the freezing cold. Pam sticks her face out into just long enough to say that Jan called to say she's coming in later to talk to Michael, and didn't say what it was about. She leaves Michael to his sad, doomed plinging.
The warehouse has indeed been transformed into a luau, with inflatable palm trees here and there and sliced Spam in place of a pig. Andy has commandeered Michael's steel drum and is performing all of "Hot Hot Hot," much to Kevin's dismay.
Dwight quietly informs Michael of the steps he's taken to manage the crisis, including ordering the Jan and Michael poster taken down. Good thinking, that. Jim hands Karen a piece of paper -- presumably a lease application. Karen then comes and finds Pam to thank her for helping with Jim. And because you always find something you've been missing when you organize a place, Darryl has found his iPod with docking station. It's the best night of his life.
And the worst of Pam's, as she sits and cries in the hallway. Dwight finds her like that, and for a moment he is awesome: "Who did this to you? Where is he?" Pam says it's nothing. Dwight takes off his jacket like he's going to put it over his shoulder, but then, deciding that would be weird, he simply ties the sleeves around his waist like that's what he was going to do all along. He hands her his hanky and sits down to her. She tells him he doesn't have to stay. He says he knows. He puts a hand on her back and lets her cry a bit more before saying gently, "So you're PMSing pretty bad, huh?"
Oops, the forklift just ran over Michael's steel drum. He nods fatalistically at the on-the-nose symbolism, and looks up a second later to see Jan slowly descending the stairs into the warehouse. She says hello to everyone. Michael can only make a grunting sound, but Kevin says hi to her and adds, "You look...tan." Jan claims to have been visiting a sister in Scottsdale. And then she asks to talk to Michael in his office. Michael slowly follows her up the stairs, turning to face everyone like the condemned man he is. Which is pretty much how everyone looks back at him, so.
When he arrives in his office, Jan is sitting behind his desk, which means he has to sit in his own guest chair. She asks Michael why she's here. Michael wisely does not answer, instead opting to let Jan launch into a big speech about how she's attracted to Michael despite herself. Which...I think means she's the only person in all of Dunder Mifflin, if not the Western Hemisphere, who hasn't seen her side-boob on a computer monitor today. In other words, Michael has dodged a bullet the size of the asteroid in Armageddon. Slowly realizing that instead of firing him, Jan is asking him to go steady, Michael reciprocates her sentiment in the least smooth way possible. So I guess they're dating now. Well, that went a whole lot better than Michael had any right to expect. Especially when she hurls herself at his face and tells her to sneak out in fifteen minutes and meet her at his condo. On her way out, he can't resist adding, "You complete me." Oh God," Jan sighs as she leaves. It's like the moment at the top of the roller coaster, if you hate roller coasters and realize you now have nothing to look forward to but a lot of wind and noise and jerking around.
Down in the warehouse, Roy is sitting to Pam and asking, "Remember when we were planning our honeymoon and you wanted to go to Hawaii and I wanted to go to Mexico?" Pam remembers. Looking around at the awful luau as though it's representative of the real thing, Roy says, "I was definitely right." The dancers laugh.