Michael's in a meeting with Oscar, Angela, and Kevin, discussing those webisodes they all made last year and how nobody got paid for them. In the middle of the meeting, Pam interrupts with a phone message for Michael, and he tells her he doesn't have time and will call that person back. Pam interviews that Michael loves when Pam interrupts a meeting with a Post-It saying who's on the phone, only since Michael doesn't get a ton of calls, he mostly just has Pam make up important phone calls that he can then blow off and look really important and managerial. We see Pam delivering a series of Post-Its with good-day messages, a smiley face, and my favorite, a dancing hot dog with a "hiya, buddy" message. Pam's so awesome. This last note gets delivered to Michael during his meeting with Ryan, only when Michael attempts to blow off the "call," Ryan's like, "No, customer service comes first, make the call." Michael, of course, can't, and he and Ryan tug-of-war, until Ryan has to insist on Michael doing his job. Michael has Pam "connect" him, and all he can think of to say on this faked-up business call is "Hi, buddy." This is literally the best Michael's going to feel all night, so enjoy it while it's merely awkward and embarrassing.
After the credits, Jan and Michael are driving to New York for Jan's wrongful termination hearing, at which Michael will be deposed. He tells the camera that Jan got fired for "having the courage to augment her boobs," though Jan is quick to point out that there was also a "pattern of disrespect and inappropriate behavior." She's clearly coaching Michael on what to say, and Michael has to construct increasingly elaborate mnemonic devices to remember said coaching. Michael keeps asking Jan to put the roof of the car down, which is a nice callback to Michael and Dwight in "Office Olympics." Michael wants Jan to tell the camera how much she stands to win from the lawsuit, but Jan thinks that's tacky. "A million dollars," Michael excitedly bowls her over. "Four million," she corrects. And for that reason, he says, he has "memorized Jan's answers," complete with "errs" and "ahhs" to make it sound spontaneous. He calls it the "perfect crime," which of course makes Jan freak out and insist that Michael's simply going to tell the truth. Michael wants the roof down, lest he get carsick.
In the Dunder Mifflin offices in New York, Jan's trying to deal with her hair now that it's been blown out to Tuesday by the open-top car ride. Meanwhile, Michael's making lawyer jokes to Jan's attorney. Ryan shows up with the other Dunder Mifflin suits and asks to speak to Michael privately. When he does, he asks if he and Michael can be "off the record, as friends." Okay, so Ryan may be a dick, but he's not dumb. Not entirely dumb. He says that Jan's lawsuit has put the company in a "very tough position," and he just hopes Michael won't say anything too damaging. Michael promises he would "do anything" for the company. His loyalties sufficiently divided, Michael already starts looking around for an escape hatch.
Back in Scranton, we see Jim and Darryl playing a game of ping pong in the warehouse. Darryl slams home a shot and calls "game, son!" Pam interviews that the warehouse got a ping pong table last week, and Jim comes down to play Darryl a lot, and sometimes she brings him juice. "...My boyfriend's twelve," Pam realizes. Back to the game, we realize that Jim is one of those players who can knock a ping pong ball back across the table pretty well, but Darryl is one of those players who can also smash it home to win a point, and that is the universal dividing line between all table tennis players. Darryl wins another game and does a little dance in celebration, but that is nothing compared to the shit Kelly starts talking to Pam, of the "my boyfriend just beat your boyfriend" variety: "What has two skinny chicken legs and sucks at ping pong?" Pam is clearly rattled. Kelly interviews about the fine distinction between talking trash (hypothetical, like "Your mama's so fat, she could eat the internet") and talking smack (immediate and verifiable, like "You're ugly and I know it for a fact, because I've got the evidence right there"), and says she only talks smack.
Later on, Pam quietly calls Jim into the conference room, where he sees that she has fashioned the table to look like a ping pong table. She tells him he has to practice and get really good and beat Darryl. "Oh, I can't beat Darryl," says Jim, matter-of-factly. Pam begs him, though, if only so she can shut Kelly up. We're then treated to a montage of Kelly smack-talk, which is far and away my favorite part of this whole depressing episode: "Your boyfriend is so weak, he needs steroids just to watch baseball"; "Jim couldn't hit a ping pong ball if it was the size of the moon"; "Were Jim's parents first cousins who were also bad a ping pong?" Marry me, Mindy Kaling! Anyway, Jim agrees to get better at ping pong in order to defend his lady's honor and sends Pam away to recruit opponents.
Back in New York, the Dunder Mifflin attorney, Diane, shows up, along with Toby. Michael totally flips at seeing Toby there and nastily asks if he's come to "renew [his] divorce vows." Toby just says that he's Michael's HR rep and he's there to help him. Michael blusters that he won't talk until Toby leaves, but of course nobody takes him seriously. Inside the conference room, Michael is sworn in and asked about the circumstances surrounding Jan's termination. Michael repeats the "pattern of disrespect" line, and Jan smiles at him from across the table. She interviews that there are a lot of things that Michael is well above average at. "Ice skating, for example," she says.
Scranton. Pam lures Kevin into the ping pong terrordome. She's all secretive about it, talking about balancing travel receipts and all, but when Kevin opens the door, all we hear is, "Oh, awesome!"
Deposition. Michael's being asked how long he's known Jan (six years, two months) and whether he was "directly under her the entire time." Michael" "That's what she said." Of course, this is a deposition, so everyone takes that literally and can't quite understand why Jan would have said that if it weren't the case. Michael, confused: "Come again? That's what she said." Just digging himself deeper and deeper. Jan assures her lawyer that Michael was just making a joke, but he has the stenographer read back the testimony anyway, but of course it doesn't sound right if you don't stress the "she" part, so Michael's kind of correct when he says she's butchering it. Court reporters have zero comic timing, you guys.
Scranton. Pam's leaving the ladies room as Kelly is walking in, and neither one wants to move aside for the other, so there's a standoff. Pam finally steps to the side because she's not crazy enough to spend a full day in the doorway to the bathroom, but Kelly probably is. So Kelly's all, "Yeah, that's what I thought." You guys, ghetto fabulous Kelly might be even better than Us Weekly Kelly.
Deposition. Michael continues to be inappropriate, saying that Jan thought her firing had a lot to do with "the twins." Who are the twins? "They hang off m'lady's chest," Michael says proudly. Jan's lawyer sighs and clarifies that Michael means her breasts while both Jan and Diane (and, we assume, all women everywhere) can't even look at him. Talk turns to Michael and Jan's relationship and whether that played a part in her firing, but well-coached Michael brings up the issue of the HR waiver they signed, and he produces said waiver, in a picture frame. Diane produces a photo of Michael and Jan from Jamaica that contradicts Michael's testimony, and he ends up digging himself an even deeper hole when, in his ramblings about the vagaries of relationships, says that he and Jan first kissed two years ago. Diane asks him whether this is true, and he just freezes for a moment, then says, "...Line?" Diane's like, "Come again?" and the mediator says, "He asked for a line? Like in a play?" Well, this has certainly become a farce, so it fits.
After the break, we're back at the deposition, where the stenographer is reading back an exchange where Michael repeatedly asks to go to the bathroom in order to get out of answering a tough question. He is ultimately denied.
Scranton. Jim's just dispatched Meredith in the Room of Pong when Dwight storms in and demands to know what's going on. Jim lies that one of their biggest clients is a pong enthusiast, and Jim needs to improve his game in order to keep the account. Dwight's crazy, vindictive, and superior, but he's also a great salesman, so he agrees to help train Jim. Cut to Jim versus Dwight, and guess who else is a ball-smasher? Dwight slams a shot home and is all, "Told you." He interviews that all his greatest heroes are pong masters, and he rattles off a long list of obscure people with unpronounceable names.
Deposition. Michael is coming clean about his two-year, on-again off-again relationship with Jan. He says he knows this destroys her case, but he throws himself on the mercy of the deposition. Diane is satisfied, but Jan's lawyer has an entry from Michael's personal journal to read. Michael didn't know this was coming, and he's freaked that his "diary" is about to be read aloud. I love that the lawyer did him the favor of calling it a "journal" and Michael still called it his "diary." The entry is from last January, after the Jamaica trip, and it's kind of funny with the "Oh, diary, what a week! I had sex with my boss!" breathlessness, but it's mostly sad because it talks about how Jan called their coupling a "one-time mistake." This is supposed to be evidence that there wasn't a relationship relationship going on, but it mostly makes Michael look like a chump, and even worse is that he knows it. It's excruciating to watch, even though I'm cheered somewhat by the fact that Michael signs off with "XOXO," which makes me more positive than ever that he'd totally love Gossip Girl. Diane wants a copy of the diary for discovery purposes, and the mediator says they'll make ten copies, eleven once Toby requests one as well. Oh, the indignity of being Michael Scott.
At the cafeteria, Michael looks around as everyone pages through his journal, and since he's ruined Jan's case, he's forced to go sit with Toby, of all people. Toby's also reading the diary, but he's nice enough to stop once Michael sits down. Toby tries to make Michael feel better by relating a story about being asked to testify during his parents' divorce proceedings, but Michael can only take so much in a given day and having his life compared to Toby's is one too far, so he reaches out and pushes Toby's lunch tray off the end of the table and walks away, exactly like Simon from Frisky Dingo. Oh, Michael. We can't ever go back to Arizona!
Michael goes over to Jan and asks how she could have stolen his diary, or even known he had one. "You keep it under my side of the mattress," she says. Michael says he doesn't like the lump. Jan says she -- nay, they -- need to win this case, and she also figures a stolen diary cancels out emailing her topless Jamaica photo around the company. They exchange clipped, no-eye-contact "I love you"s.
Back in the deposition, the lawyers are trying to clear up who this "Ryan" woman is, who Michael describes as hot, but in a different way than Jan. Jan's lawyer wants to keep things focused on Michael's relationship with Jan, not with "this Ryan person." Toby breaks out giggling, because: come on. That's funny. Michael manages to gather up all his lucidity and gravitas and says that while he considered Jan his girlfriend after Jamaica, Jan clearly didn't consider him her boyfriend, and that puts her in the right, businesswise. The eagerness with which Michael is serving up his dignity on a platter is both sad and unlikely to stop at just this scene. Diane patronizes that it's "admirable" that Michael would defend a woman who is "so obviously ambivalent" about her feelings toward him. Ouch. Diane also mentions all the poor performance reviews Jan gave him, which Michael excuses away by saying Jan was going through a divorce and "drinking a lot...of water." Okay, this has all become excruciatingly, painfully, unamusingly hard to watch, so here's where I start skimming, because who wants to feel quite this shitty on a Thursday night? So Diane makes Michael read a scathingly negative performance review Jan wrote about him after they has begun dating, and Jan looks guilty and embarrassed and Michael looks humiliated, and Diane forces Michael to answer whether he thinks, in light of this, Jan's judgment is flawed. In other words: is your girlfriend wrong or are you truly that terrible? I want to jump out the window of a high building. The commercials mercifully take us away from this misery.
Back at Scranton, Dwight's Pong Clinic continues. Jim's developed a "spin serve" but Dwight's still smashing winners past him. Still, he thinks he's ready for Darryl, and Pam makes the call. Dwight's like, "Darryl? Darryl is the big client? Darryl works here, dumbass!" Ha! Jim's like, "Riiiight..." Hee. Dwight smashes one last winner before exiting in disgust.
Deposition of Suicide-Inducing Depression. Michael asks Jan how she could do this to him, but she wants him to view Dunder Mifflin as the enemy, not her. He says Dunder Mifflin has always been loyal to him, even offering him Jan's job, and he should have taken it. Jan's all, "Not so fast," and produces David Wallace's deposition in which he's repeatedly asked whether Michael was a serious candidate for Jan's job, and David repeatedly non-answers that Michael is a "nice guy" before finally admitting that Michael was never in the running for that job. David, in the room now, looks guilty and sad that Michael had to hear that. So now Jan's lawyer asks Michael if Dunder Mifflin indeed exhibits a pattern of disrespect towards its employees. In other words: is the company wrong or are you truly that terrible? I want to open my veins with a butter knife. Michael finally answers that Dunder Mifflin has "absolutely not" behaved unduly towards him. That's an awful thing to hear someone admit, and Michael looks like he's about to throw up or cry. It makes sense, though: he's been in his weird, mutually self-destructive relationship with Dunder Mifflin longer than he's been in his weird, mutually self-destructive relationship with Jan.
Scranton. Jim versus Darryl. Jim wins a point with a decent shot, giving Pam a chance to gloat for once. Of course, Kelly's response ("Yeah, the floppy-haired girl you date won a point") and the fact that Darryl still wins the game by a healthy margin end up taking most of the wind out of her sails. After more post-game smack talk ("Hey (hey) you (you), I don't like your boyfriend! Cuz, cuz, cuz, cuz, cuz he sucks at ping pong!") Pam's finally had enough and she challenges Kelly to a one-on-one game. They both bring the smack talk, but when it comes to actually playing, it becomes all too clear that they are girls and thus suck at ping pong. Jim and Darryl sneak off to play another game up in the conference room.
Depression Deposition. Everyone's left the room but Michael and David Wallace. David seems honestly sad to have seen Michael go through such a humiliating process, and he sincerely apologizes. Michael accepts it, for whatever its worth. Then Michael, just as sincerely says, "David, I think you're a nice guy too." It's almost impossible to tell whether Michael means that at face value or as a dig at David's coded testimony, but it manages to let Michael recoup some dignity either way. Michael interviews that he ultimately sided with Corporate because Jan brought the diary with her to New York even before she knew about the Jamaica photo. "You expect to get screwed by your company, but you never ever expect to get screwed by your girlfriend." And it's so true. On the silent, awkward drive home, Michael and Jan haggle over inexpensive dinner options, now that the $4 million is almost certainly off the table. They settle on fast food. And I want to drink an eight-ounce glass of Draino. What better way to say good-bye to The Office for the foreseeable future (pay your writers, AMPTP, damn) than with this incredibly soul-killing story.
Lucky for us, there's a tag at the end with Dwight and Mose playing world-class ping pong in the warehouse, after hours. It's good enough where I start to think about things like CGI effects or, failing that, how many takes it could have taken them to get such a perfect, long rally. Anyway, come back soon, Office!