Michael rushes into the office in the morning, excitedly -- desperately-- ordering everyone to brainstorm ideas for what he can do to the wet cement outside before it dries. After rejecting the ideas involving his initials and drawing a picture, Pam translates Kelly's idea of putting his handprints in it like a movie star. "If you were a real star you'd put your face in it," Jim instigates. thing you know, the whole staff is standing outside while Jim makes an impromptu speech and Dwight wraps Michael's face in cellophane. I expect Michael to break his nose on the dry surface, but instead he just leaves a blank oval indentation in the pavement. He THs about a lasting mark that he can show his kids one day, but I think the only lasting mark will be on someone's sprained ankle.
In the kitchen, Andy and Angela play the most boring Mad Lib ever. It's a Bland Lib. After overhearing them, Dwight THs that they seem happy together. "I hope nothing horrible happens to them," he lies.
Pam's wearing glasses! Some attractive women look even better in attractive glasses, my wife being Exhibit A. These are not attractive glasses, and Pam does not look more attractive with them on. She explains that she slept over at a "friend's" house (mmm-hmmm, a "friend") and forgot her contact lens stuff. Hence the Coke-bottles. "Shut up," she concludes. Michael is so turned off by the specs he can't even understand her: "It's just noise coming out of an ugly scientist," he says.
Later, Michael's holding a brainstorming meeting when Jim quietly turns to Pam to deliver another one of his fake proposals, which is this case is a sarcastic request for coffee. Either way, her answer right now is no. Meanwhile, Michael's rooting around for new ideas in the field of...well, anything at all, really. Andy throws out a useless idea regarding outgoing voice mail greetings, and Jim tweaks him by deadpanning a one-up of that idea. He's taking the piss, of course, but Andy looks at him like Jim just stabbed him in the back. Then Michael's off into an urban/rap idea, but when he predictably asks Stanley to engage and get involved, Stanly refuses to look up from his crossword puzzle. Michael pushes it and Stanley finally snaps, "Did I stutter?" Silence. Behind Stanley, Toby looks uncomfortable. After last week, I would imagine that shocked silences prompt flashbacks for him. Rather than address what just happened, Michael dashes out for a glass of water. And we wonder why Stanley doesn't respect him. Okay, never mind, obviously we don't.
Later yet, Toby goes into Michael's office to suggest Michael do something about Stanley's blatant insubordination. Because he doesn't want to stand up to Stanley, Michael tries to play it off as joking between friends, which he says Toby is too white to understand.
Andy has decided to sell his old Xterra, now that he's got his Prius and only chicks seem to drive Xterras, in his experience. Or should I say "Xperience?" His only taker is Dwight, who announces, "This car is crap. I will buy it for to nothing." Dwight gives Andy a hard-buy -- which is not something I've seen before -- and gets Andy to agree to knock $1500 off the price.
Michael approaches Stanley to preemptively forgive him, even though Stanley's not apologizing. As Stanley THs, "It's like I used to tell my wife, I do not apologize unless I think I'm wrong, and if you don't like it, you can leave. I say the same thing to my current wife, and I'll say it to my one, too." Well, at least he's realistic.
In order to explore options for other people to discipline Stanley, Michael has Dwight go over the org chart. He could defer to Ryan, but that would make Michael look weak. Dwight's other, final option is that he, Dwight, could do it, but only if Michael invokes Dwight's disaster plan that puts Dwight in charge of the whole office. Michael's tempted, but even he doesn't want out of this badly enough, even in the face of Dwight's hard sell. It's almost like he doesn't believe Dwight's promise to turn power back over to him or something.
Pam discovers another reason to hate her glasses: Kevin's librarian fetish. After refusing to indulge him, she just takes them off, and proves to be almost completely non-functional as a result. Creed wants to see if Pam could play the piano like all those blind jazz cats, and adds, "I'd also like to see her topless."
Michael goes down to the warehouse to ask Darryl for advice. He starts, with typical obliqueness, by asking if Darryl was ever in a gang. Totally straight-faced, Darryl tells Michael all about the gang tradition of "fluffy fingers." In other words, tickling. Alas, we will never see this pay off. I guess they don't want to put Michael in the hospital in the middle of the season.
Ryan stops by the branch, and on the pretense of wanting to tweak Jim for being an Eagles fan, he calls him in to the conference room with Toby and totally blindsides him with a formal warning about his job performance. Jim's shocked as Ryan says Toby can give him the details. Toby THs that he thinks all the time Jim spends hanging out with Pam has caught up to him. Oh, Toby. You little, little man. Get thee to Costa Rica already. When Jim returns to his desk and Pam asks him what's up, he kind of blows her off. Despite not having her glasses on, she's not too blind to notice that.
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Dwight washes Andy's car and posts a flyer in the kitchen offering to sell it for ten grand. Dwight gloats about his dick move in Mad Lib format, and is unrepentant when Andy angrily sticks the flyer in his face. Angela? She looks quietly amused. I think It's hard to tell when they're working so hard to hide her pregnancy.
Michael watches through his office window as Stanley gets up to go to the bathroom. Seeing his opening, Michael goes out to quietly announce that he's going to fake-fire Stanley to teach him a lesson, and he wants them to play along. When Stanley comes back -- well, all we get before the break is Jim shaking his head at the camera, so we know this is going to be bad.
Back from the ads, as promised, Michael fake-fires Stanley in front of everyone. Stanley is not cowed, and in fact threatens to sue. Michael does the one smart thing he can do at this point, which is to try and call this off before Stanley can really get going. But it doesn't work, and Stanley goes off on a fresh rant. Michael boots everyone out, but Pam can't find her glasses so Jim has to literally lead her out by the hand. And that's the end of that subplot for tonight. I was really hoping for more of a payoff there. Or at least something along the lines of what Creed said earlier.
After everyone clears out, two cameras watch from behind the Venetian blinds in other rooms as Michael tearfully asks Stanley why he keeps picking on him and Stanley explains, fairly calmly, that he simply doesn't respect Michael. After a surprisingly minimal amount of whining, Michael accepts that. But he firmly and strongly -- even maturely -- says that as Stanley's boss, he can't allow Stanley to talk to him that way in the office. Which wins him the first bit of respect from Stanley he's ever had. "Fair enough," Stanley rumbles. And they shake on it.
But if Stanley could hear Michael's bad and interminable Rodney Dangerfield/Henny Youngman/Jeff Foxworthy/Borat/Seinfeld routine in his office afterward, he'd probably take that handshake back.
Tag: in another meeting, Michael floats the idea of singing Christmas carols to their best clients in the summer. "Has potential to be your best idea yet," Stanley says, not entirely wrongly. "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard," Phyllis cackles, also not entirely wrongly. Everyone out but Phyllis!
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