Michael is waiting by Reception so he can give Kevin a hard time for showing up late when he comes in. Kevin shows up, having barely survived a tire blowout on the way there. "Pop quiz: why is today a special day?" Michael asks him obliviously in front of everyone. "I almost died," Kevin repeats. But Michael is excited because he gets to be a "visiting professor...special...lecturer emeritus..." Ryan explains that Michael's going to be a guest speaker at his emerging enterprises class. "In business school!" Michael crows. Ryan THs that bringing your boss to class bumps you up a full letter grade. "So I'd be...stupid...not...to do it, right?" Um, wrong. But we'll get to that. Michael THs about being the cool teacher, like his former teacher Mr. Handell. Who was so cool he even "hooked up" with one of the students, and then a dozen more came forward. "Really ruined eighth grade for us," Michael recalls. Oh, ew.
Dwight helps Michael pack up a satchel of books (including a Trump one) as Michael asks Dwight what was the most inspiring thing he ever said to him. "'Don't be an idiot,'" Dwight answers. "Changed my life." Which time?
Ryan's driving Michael to his class, while Michael wonders if everyone will throw their hats in the air so he can say, "May your hats fly as high as your dreams." Ryan is already regretting this.
At Reception, Roy tells Pam how much he's looking forward to her class's art show that night. And Pam THs that she's happy to be back with Roy. Jim pretends not to care. Convincing yawn there and everything.
Kelly gushes to Pam about how much Pam and Roy are in love now. Pam hands her a flyer for the art show, and Kelly promises she'll totally be there. She totally won't.
Michael and Ryan walk across the quad. "This brings back memories...that I would have made," Michael says. Seeing a group of guys tossing a Frisbee around on the lawn, he decides to join the game. So he runs up, catches it, and flings it out of sight, eliciting from one of the players a confused and annoyed "...Dude..."
At the copier, Dwight gets all excited upon finding a small pile of "animal stool" on the carpet in front of reception. Looking up, he spots a tiny hole in the corner of one of the acoustic ceiling tiles, and runs to his desk for his penlight and dentist's mirror. What, you don't have those in your desk? Climbing up on the reception desk and lifting the tile, he thinks at first that he's found a trapped bird. Until it turns out to be a bat, and he recoils in panic. Just about everyone else does too, as the bat comes down and starts swooping around, freaking everyone out (except Creed, who just sits and watches, and Stanley, who walks out with his coat over his head, saying, "Goodbye"). Eventually the bat flies into the empty conference room, and Dwight shuts it inside.
Michael waits for his big moment in the projection room behind the lecture hall. There's got to be a hundred students in there, and if they all bring their bosses in, how does the professor ever get to talk? Whatever. Michael thinks Ryan is doing a big intro, but since he can't hear anything from where he is, he doesn't realize that Ryan is actually talking about how Dunder Mifflin is doomed, doomed, doomed.
Dwight, Kevin, Meredith, Kelly, and Angela (wearing a granny-style clear plastic rain shawl over her head) watch the bat through the glass wall of the conference room, freaking out every time it twitches. We get THs from Dwight ("We have a bat in the office"), Toby ("The simple solution would be to open a window, if we had windows that would open"), and Angela ("Poop is raining from the ceilings! Poop!"). Jim gets off his phone, reporting that Animal Control will be there at 6:00. Dwight gets up in Jim's face to say that's not good enough, but Jim is too distracted by rubbing the back of his neck. "I know I felt it bite me," Jim murmurs to Dwight, "but look, there's no mark. I feel so tingly...so strangely powerful." He shrugs, "Oh, well," and wanders off. Dwight feels a different kind of tingly. How long do you think Jim has been waiting for something like this to happen so he could pull this on Dwight? I'm not sure I would be surprised if he brought the bat in himself.
Ryan introduces Michael, who comes down the aisle of the lecture hall bearing a boom box playing classical music. He introduces himself, and the CD, which is still playing behind him, starts playing a self-intro by a Learning Center guy, because Michael doesn't even have a proper classical music CD. Michael pulls a Dead Poets Society move, taking a textbook from a guy in the front row and ripping pages out of it. "Replace these pages with life lessons, and you will have a book that is worth its weight in gold," he says, hefting the decimated book and returning it to its devastated owner. Now that everyone's properly inspired, Michael gets started talking about the four kinds of business: "Tourism, food service, railroads, and sales. And hospitals-slash-manufacturing."
Dwight seems to be fashioning a bat trap out of an empty paper box and Elmer's glue, when behind him, Jim dramatically pretends to be burned by a piece of garlic bread on Karen's desk, with an assist from Karen. I suspect the "garlic bread" is only a hamburger bun, not that Dwight notices. "One crisis at a time," he tells himself. And then he THs that it would make sense that a hypothetical vampire bat in the U.S. would come to a "Sylvania," like "Pennsylvania." And we see him doing research on vampires on the internet (good luck with that), while Jim absentmindedly fiddles with his canine teeth, like they're becoming oddly sharp or something. And yes, Joss Whedon directed this, but according to an interview I read, he was looking for a total departure with this and was actually kind of annoyed when he found out his episode was going to have vampiric elements. I think that's why he avoided doing a bunch of deep-focus and long tracking shots for no reason.
Michael is going on about the things you need for a business, which seems merely unhelpful at first, until he gets downright condescending by talking about selling a hypothetical whatchamacallits (whereupon he tosses an actual Whatchamacallit® bar into the classroom) so you can have a payday (ditto with a PayDay®) and eventually have "a one hundred grand" (and a 100 Grand® bar gets pegged at an inattentive guy's face). "Satisfied?" Michael smugs, holding up a Snickers® bar.
Toby tells Pam that as much as he'd love to come to her art show, his daughter's play is that night. He seems really disappointed, and even considers skipping the play. "One of the other parents will probably videotape it," he offers. Pam demurs. "It's important to support local art," Toby maintains. "And what they do is not art." Aw, poor Toby.
Michael starts to sense that he's losing the room (there's a first time for everything), so he gets even more basic. Ryan interrupts that they usually do a Q&A thing. Michael says he's just getting started. "Yeah, I know," Ryan says fearfully. Michael opens the floor to questions, and the first guy asks Michael how Dunder Mifflin is adapting in an increasingly paperless world. Michael pooh-poohs computers, and says that "Real business is done on paper. Write that down." The entire class obediently clatters away on their laptop keyboards.
Karen delivers a bottle of aspirin to Jim, who loudly says he needs it for the headache he's getting as a result of the glare off Angela's crucifix. Dwight THs that he's not entirely up to speed with vampires, although he once shot a werewolf. "But by the time I got to it, it had turned back into my neighbor's dog."
Dwight parks himself on the edge of Creed's desk and whispers, "Extraordinary events call for extraordinary actions. Will you form an allegiance--" Creed: "Sure." "Dwight: "To use sudden violence--" Creed: "Okay." Dwight asks if Creed can turn a wooden mop handle into a stake. Creed opens a drawer. We can't see into it because Creed's body is blocking our view, but he asks Dwight, "What size?" Dwight sure went to the right guy.
A student asks how Michael responds to people who leave them for big chains. Michael says, "'You will miss our service, and I guarantee you'll come back.'" When asked if anyone has ever come back, he sheepishly mutters, "We don't want them back. They're stupid." Things get worse, until the guy who asked the first question says, "By your own employee's calculation, you'll be obsolete in the five to ten years." Ryan: busted.
Creed and Dwight get ready to make their move on the bat. Kelly is yelling at Creed not to hurt it, but as soon as Dwight kicks the conference room door in and the bat is buzzing Kelly's bob, she's screaming, "Kill it! Kill it!" The bat peels off into the kitchen, and Kevin shuts the door behind it without thinking, trapping it again. "I...am a hero!" Kevin realizes. Yes, between this and his blow-out earlier, he's practically Bruce Willis in Unbreakable.
Michael's pissed, spouting angrily at the class about their ivory tower. "And your ebony tower," he adds, gesturing to Ryan's African-American professor. He's not interested in the class's pessimistic views of Dunder Mifflin's future. "Ryan has never made a sale," he adds. "And he started a fire, trying to make a cheesy pita. And everybody thinks he's a tease. Well, you know what? He doesn't know anything, and neither do you. So suck on that!" he bellows, storming out. Should be an awkward drive back to the office.
It's the show at Pam's art school. People mill about, excitedly discussing the art on the walls. But not Pam's, as she stands there alone to six fairly pedestrian watercolors, looking a bit desperate in her "artist" clothes. She should really be wearing a beret if she's going to insist on the turtleneck.
Michael pouts in Ryan's car on the way back to the office. Ryan says it wasn't personal. "Business is always personal," Michael snaps at Ryan's passenger window. "It's the most personal thing in the world. When we get back to the office, pack your things." Looks like it's time for Ryan to test that five-second trick he was bragging about last season.
Everyone's leaving the office, with the bat still trapped in the kitchen, and with Meredith trapped in the women's room. "Goodnight, Mary Beth!" Creed calls to her.
Dwight straightens up from the water cooler to find Jim RIGHT BEHIND him, staring at Dwight's neck. Jim says he plans to go home and draw the shades against the sun. Pulling his collar high around his neck, he floats out, saying, "Bye, Dwight." Dwight returns the sentiment, adding, "Good luck," as he reveals that he's holding a broom whose handle has been cut off and sharpened into a deadly point. It would almost serve Jim right if he finally pulled a prank on Dwight that ended up with Dwight killing him. From the window, Dwight watches Jim go to his car with his coat over his head against the sun and soliloquizes about the journey ahead of Jim. "But I have a destiny in this realm," he vows, pulling on a paintball helmet. "Specifically, the kitchen."
Pam talks to a random old lady about her pictures. As the woman wanders off, Roy shows up with his brother Kenny. He congratulates himself on being the only one from work to make it. Pam doesn't share his appreciation for the moment.
Dwight bursts into the kitchen with an open garbage bag. For some reason, Meredith also picks this time to come out of the bathroom. Dwight throws the bag over both the bat and Meredith's head, trapping them in there together. Somehow, he manages to extract Meredith without losing the bat. "You're welcome," he tells his disheveled, breathless, newly newly rabies-infected coworker.
Roy is heading out. "I looked at all of them," he protests when Pam gazes at him sadly. Pam says she'll drive herself home, and Roy thinks he's getting lucky that night. "Your art was the prettiest art of all the art," he says. How sweet is it that he's back to Not Getting It? Just like old times.
Back at the office, Ryan is abjectly apologizing to Michael and asking him not to fire him. Michael says that isn't what he's doing; Ryan is moving to the annex. "Where Kelly is?" Ryan says, regretting talking Michael out of firing him. Michael says that a good manager doesn't fire; he hires, and inspires. "People will never go out of business," is his parting shot to Ryan.
Oscar and Gil have shown up at the art show, and they're standing before Pam's work discussing it rather disparagingly, when she comes up behind them. But before she makes her presence known, she overhears Gil talking about how art takes courage and honesty. "Those aren't Pam's strong points," Oscar admits. And Gil pronounces Pam's work "motel art." Behind them, Pam looks devastated.
Later on, things are closing down and Pam's getting ready to take her stuff down. And then Michael shows up, impressed that Pam did all of her work "freehand." He especially likes the one Pam did of the office building. "How much?" he asks, to Pam's confusion. He can even see his window and his car, as well as Pam's. This is what he needed to see, after the day he's had. "That is our building," Michael says, clearly moved. "And we sell paper." Pam's eyes fill up, and when Michael tells her, "I'm really proud of you," she goes in for a long hug. Just what each of them needed right now. Fortunately the something she feels in his pocket turns out to be an actual Chunky®.
And back at the office, Michael hangs Pam's painting of the building right to the front door. "Without paper, it could not have happened," he rhapsodizes. "Unless you had a camera."
Watching Ryan unpack his box at his new desk, Kelly practically loses it with excitement. Ryan looks like he's about to lose it with...something else.