Dwight's on the job market, with his three résumés and his three words to describe himself in job interviews: "Hard-working, alpha male, jackhammer. Merciless...Insatiable...." What kind of job is that an interview for? In the meantime, he has joined the staff of Staples as one of its elite corps of redshirts. Break's over, Dwight. Back to the sales floor.
Andy has taken over Dwight's old desk, and it's really not an improvement, since he's now annoying Jim -- and everyone else in the otherwise quiet bullpen -- by playing them his cell ringtone, which happens to be Andy singing all four parts of "Rockin' Robin" a capella. Alas, if only Dante were alive to tell us which circle of Hell Andy is bound for as punishment for this abomination. Andy then sucks up to Jim, "even though [he's] younger and [has] less experience." He refers to them as "Andy and the Tuna," complete with a musical number to the tune of "Benny and the Jets." "I miss Dwight," Jim THs while snow falls past the window behind him. "Congratulations, universe. You win."
Michael THs neutrally about Dwight's departure, and the camera pulls out to reveal Andy hovering behind him, getting on his nerves by downplaying the loss and generally not making any sense at all. The good news is that Oscar is back.
"How was your gay-cation?" Kevin asks Oscar, who congratulates him for the witticism that I totally forgot about when I used it several weecaps ago. "I thought of that like two seconds after you left," Kevin says. Angela's greeting to Oscar is not quite as warm, but not for the reasons you think.
Andy comes into Michael's office for no reason, and it weirds Michael out so much to be the annoyed rather than the annoyer that he gets up to visit the loo. Andy offers to walk with him, since he's going to the kitchen. Michael's "Boundaries much?" face is pretty good, probably because he's had so many similar expressions directed at himself. And then Andy stands outside the men's room listening to Michael flush and congratulating himself on all the face-time he's getting with the boss. Creepy.
Angela gathers up her courage to ask Oscar to join the party planning committee. "The one with all the women? Because I'm gay?" Oscar asks touchily, while Kevin snickers his ass off. The thing is that Angela is trying to apologize to Oscar, and because he's not aware of the real reason for her distraught state, he accepts rather than risk sitting there while she totally breaks down. Kevin asks to join too. "Never," Angela sniffs.
Dwight's Staples manager congratulates him on selling two printers that morning. Dwight scoffs at the compliment. "Give me something hard to sell," he snaps rudely. How about the idea that Dwight is a genius salesman? I've always experienced considerable buyer's resistance to that concept.
Michael notices that the ficus is looking neglected, and also asks Pam to ask the night crew why they stopped arranging the toys on his desk. Pam tells him that was Dwight. Michael says they need more of that kind of attitude around the office. Andy swoops in from nowhere to agree, suck-up-ishly. Even Michael has figured out that Andy isn't likely to agree with any kind word about Dwight, so he busts Andy for not knowing what he said. Having to deal with Andy like this makes Michael seem almost normal. As in this TH from his office, in which he talks about everyone's favorite Cornell grad: "Smart. Solid. Likes me a lot." Too much, in fact. He continues in VO as Andy suddenly realizes that Michael isn't visible, and gets up to go looking for him. "I don't understand how someone can have so little self-awareness," Michael whispers as he hides behind his door. I'd be worried if I thought Michael were in danger of learning anything from this experience.
Oscar's first meeting with the party planning committee is about, what else, Oscar's welcome-back party. "Oscar night," Michael calls it, entering uninvited and saying he wants it to be Oscar-specific. Oscar tries to interject, and Michael hurries to say it's not about Oscar's gayness, but his "Mexicanity." So he assigns Phyllis to get firecrackers and a Chihuahua, and Pam to get some frozen chimichangas from the supermarket. Oscar sarcastically suggests riding into the office on a donkey. Michael, of course, takes him at his word, probably because he's too proud of not having offended Oscar to pick up on the sarcasm.
Dwight looms over a browsing customer at Staples. "I will literally be standing right here if you need anything at all," he Manson-lamps at her. I've always suspected that a lot of his sales are a result of people just buying things from him so he'll leave them alone.
Back at the office, Andy annoys Jim by noisily pantomiming fishing for tuna, i.e. Jim. Jim doesn't help matters when he gets up and goes to Karen, because that just makes Andy act like he's got a fighter on the line. Karen declines to help Jim out, since she's got a bunch of Dwight's old accounts and his mythical-creature passwords to sort out. Jim returns to his desk, and Andy resumes his shtick. Seeing this from inside his office, Michael compares Andy to Marv Albert, but since he can't get the whole name into his brain at one time, he only refers to him as "Mar-something. Great sportscaster -- big weirdo creep." And Andy celebrates landing his 185-pounder, as Jim gazes out at us hopelessly.
Michael misses Dwight so much that he goes out into the bullpen to ask if anyone's talked to him. Nobody has, including Phyllis, who mumbling-heads, "Dwight had a big personality, and I have a big personality. A lot of times, when two people like that get together it can be explosive." Like gunpowder and Maalox.
Dwight shoots down a Staples coworker's attempts to make small talk in the break room, and gets downright rude when he finds out she's never heard of Dunder Mifflin. She THs, "I don't like him, his giant head, or his beady little eyes." So Dwight's making a place for himself at the new job that's not so different fro the old one, I see.
Andy has now taken to singing "Zombie" by the Cranberries, one of the most annoying songs of the last fifteen years with all its gratuitous register changes. Probably why he picked it. With one more helpless look over at Karen, Jim gets up and enlists Pam in his plans for vengeance instead. So here's what happens: he spills his pencil cup on Andy's desk, and in the course of gathering them back up, he snags Andy's cell phone as well. And then he slips it to Pam. The phone, I mean. Jeez.
Michael and Angela share an awkward, Dwight-free moment in the break room. The two people who miss him the most.
Later, Jim gets up from his desk. Pam gets up from hers. They both start walking. Without a word, Pam hands Jim Andy's phone. Nobody notices the drop but Karen. Pam stands guard by the water cooler while Jim climbs on a table in the back room, lifts one of the ceiling tiles, and tosses Andy's phone in. Everyone in the bullpen notices the noise as the phone clatters into place above them, but nobody knows what it means. And really, at this place, mysterious sounds emanating from the space above your head fall pretty low on the list of daily annoyances.
Later still. Cue "Rockin' Robin" by the Four Andys, coming from...somewhere. Hearing his distinctive ring, Andy starts looking around for his phone. Jim plays innocent, but while Andy is distracted by the search, we see that Pam is on her phone, grinning angelically up at the ceiling.
As part of the prep for the fiesta, Ryan uses a Sharpie to copyedit the label of a bottle of generic lemonade into "Lemoñadé." Phyllis is busy slicing up the frozen chimichangas and placing little Mexican flags in them. And Angela is sort of helping Pam to tape up the WELCOME BACK OSCAR banner. Noticing that Angela's distracted, Pam asks her if everything is okay. "No," says Angela.
Jim dials his phone, and Andy stresses out even more about his missing but clearly audible cell phone. "Maybe it's in the ceiling," Jim suggests, making it so he can't get in trouble when the thing turns up. "Maybe you're in the ceiling!" Andy snaps back, and tries searching Phyllis's desk. Phyllis, bless her, nearly takes off Andy's fingers slamming her drawer shut on him. If only she could figure out a way to take off his tongue.
Angela is in Michael's office, telling him the real reason Dwight was late on his last day. Michael, with his famous romance radar," thinks he's got it figured out: Dwight...loves...the company. He asks Angela if any other employees would have done that for her. Angela says no. "Certainly not Andy," she adds. Which, as far as the revenge promised by that glare in the last episode goes, is pretty weak.
Michael comes to a decision: he's stepping out for a bit. On his way out, he is accosted by Andy, who outlines his plan for their weekend. Which would be pretty creepy, even if it didn't include a nap at Andy's place. "No. I don't want to do any of that," Michael says coldly. He tells Andy to stop it before he drives him crazy. Must be nice to be the boss, and be able to say that to people. As opposed to not being able to say it to the boss, like we've been watching Ryan do for the past two years. Even Andy can't keep sucking up in the face of Michael's rejection. "Sorry I annoyed you with my friendship," he snits. You know what Andy needs right now to cheer him up? An a capella version of "Rockin' Robin." Good d thing Jim's on his phone right now, calling down those sweet, sweet, tweet-tweeting harmonies down from on high. Andy turns to the bullpen and freaks out on everyone, and finally turns and puts his fist right through the wall between Michael's office door and the one to the conference room. Jim wisely hangs up his phone. "That was an overreaction," Andy says to the shocked room, and announces that he's off to the break room if anybody wants anything. For once, Michael leaves without saying a word.
And goes straight to Staples, where he has an awkward reunion with Dwight over a symbolically giant pyramid of Staples copy paper. Michael tells Dwight what Angela told him, and Dwight is kind of amazed for a moment that Angela outed them. But Michael adds, "If you were willing to do something like that for some random coworker, then clearly I misjudged you from the beginning. And I apologize." Suddenly the paper isn't between them anymore, as Michael asks Dwight to come back. Dwight doesn't want to do Michael's laundry any more. "We can talk about that," Michael says cagily. Good enough for Dwight, who strips off his red shirt and walks out with Michael. Luckily, he was wearing a t-shirt under it this time. You know what a crap shoot that can be.
The fiesta has commenced, and almost everyone back at the office is wearing a sombrero. As Jim and Pam marvel jovially over the hole that Andy put in the half-inch drywall, Karen can't help noticing. Again. Oscar is telling Angela that he's enjoying the fiesta more than he expected, but he's already lost her, because she just saw Michael return with Dwight, the latter of whom is rocking a Battlestar Galactica sweatshirt. Everyone applauds Dwight's return, and Angela is the first to shake his hand. "You did this for me?" Dwight asks in wonder, looking around and totally missing the "WELCOME BACK OSCAR" banner. "Guilty," says Michael.
Karen comes and finds Jim in the conference room and cuts right to the chase: "Do you still have feelings for her?" After an ambushed pause, Jim just nods and says, "Yes." Karen gets up and leaves. Well, okay then. Should have played with him when you had the chance, girlfriend.
It's piñata time. Oscar gets denied, and the broom gets handed to Dwight instead. He declines the proffered blindfold and beats that piñata to death. Michael boasts about how awesome he is for admitting his mistake, and says that he learned something: "I don't want somebody sucking up to because they think I'm going to help their career. I want them sucking up to me because they genuinely love me." Dwight, by the way, is rampaging through the office and absolutely destroying every piñata in his path. We mercifully cut away before he reaches the one that takes him down.
Episode tag: Andy drives along, saying that he's off to management training. "Anger management, technically," he clarifies. "But still, management material." He tells us it's supposed to take ten weeks, and explains how he plans to finish in five. You may recall the plan from "The Merger." And then he meets the moderator and gets right to work.