It's just not a Dunder Mifflin-Scranton Christmas until there's a plurality of people who are miserable. Let's go down the list:
Meredith got so drunk at the Christmas party that her hair caught on fire, and then Michael not only insisted on having an intervention on the spot but also tried to forcibly check her into a rehab facility.
Michael's attempts to have an intervention and forcibly check Meredith into rehab fail.
Angelais tired of being blackmailed and belittled by Phyllis. When she finally has enough and calls Phyllis's bluff, Phyllis blabs the secret of Angela's affair with Dwight to the whole office. Except for Andy, who is off somewhere teaching himself the sitar.
Jim has to listen to Andy's sitar playing.
Stanley refuses to be the big guy in the little hat.
Toby tries to get price-gouged by Dwight on this year's hot Christmas toy for his little girl, but ends up getting double-gouged by Darryl instead. And the toy is black.
Andy has no idea what's going on with Angela, or why everyone is staring at him.
Dwight has the best Christmas ever.
It's just not Christmas without a Christmas episode of The Office. Sorry about 2007.
Yay, it's an old-school Jim prank! Dwight arrives at the office to find his desk and everything on it gift-wrapped. "Happy holidays, Dwight!" Jim chirps. "But, do not open it until Christmas." He claims it only took him five minutes, being a black belt in gift-wrapping. Dwight's pretty sure he can take it apart in less time than that, but when he drops his briefcase on the desk and his ass in his chair, both collapse. They weren't even in there. Oh, Jim, you wacky monkey.
Phyllis is handing out fezzes. "I will not be the big guy in the tiny hat," Stanley says as he refuses to wear his. Phyllis THs that her first Christmas party as head of the party planning committee has a Nights in Morocco theme. Not your grandmother's Christmas party, she says. "Unless of course she's from Morocco, in which case it's very accurate."
The bullpen is draped with all manner of exotic fabrics as Michael tells Phyllis this will be "the best Christmas party ever." Angela is stung not only by overhearing this, but by Phyllis highhandedly sweeping all of the non-Moroccan figures in Angela's nativity scene into her drawer, and then ordering her to get rid of the tree. "I don't think it's blackmail" Phyllis THs. "Angela just does what I ask her to do so I won't tell everyone that she's cheating on Andy with Dwight. I think for it to be blackmail, it would have to be a formal letter."
Dwight brings a tall double stack of boxed dolls into the office. As he explains in a TH, he researches the hot toy every Christmas, buys them up, and then sells them to desperate and lazy parents at a huge markup. This year it's "Princess Unicorn," a half-princess, half-unicorn girl. He calls the toy pathetic. I call it disturbing. Out in the bullpen, Jim mocks Dwight for his lack of Christmas spirit, and Dwight mocks both parents and Princess Unicorn. Coming out of his office, Michael spots one of the dolls and sings the jingle. Awkward. As usual.
The party has begun. Moroccan music is playing, and people are eating and kicking off their shoes. Michael holds up a cocktail for Meredith: "Equal parts scotch, absinthe, rum, gin, vermouth, triple sec, and two packs of Splenda. I'm calling them 'one of everything.'" Meredith drains it and asks for another.
Jim is flirting with Pam by rubbing an Aladdin lamp and offering her three wishes. She just wishes he'd quit rubbing the lamp, and he calls her stupid for not asking for a hundred more wishes. Charmingly, of course. They're really load-testing the PB&J charm the past few weeks, aren't they?
Andy's gotten a hold of a sitar, and is playing "There's a place in France" for Angela. She's not impressed. "It's Christmas and you're singing about nudity and France," he lectures. Doesn't stop him.
Michael hands Jim a screwdriver, which he thinks he's invented and is calling an "orange vod-juice-ka." "Can't believe no one's thought of that," Jim marvels, impressed. Creed smokes a hookah. Meredith is clearly up to "Several of Everything." Kevin rips it up on a little bongo, until Oscar reaches out and stops him. Dwight sells a Princess Unicorn to some random dude for $200. "Fa la la la la, la la ka-ching," he singing-heads. Meredith is wildly belly-dancing in the conference room, and Michael says to Kelly, "So this is what every day would be like if you hadn't left India." Where to start? thinks Kelly. Meredith's hair catches fire on one of Phyllis's candles, and Dwight rushes in and blasts her with the fire extinguisher. Because that's how Meredith and Dwight interact, always.
After the ads, the party has wound down and it's pretty quiet, except for Andy strumming out loud, ringing chords on the sitar. Some of the guys are standing around trying to schedule something, and Michael eventually decides on right now. "What if we can't do it quickly?" Jim asks. Michael mocks him meanly. Oscar doubtfully asks Michael, "Do you know how to do an intervention?"
Michael explains to us what an intervention is: "It's a surprise party for people who have addictions."
Phyllis instructs Angela on how to make a plate of hummus for everyone. Even more than the formal letter, Phyllis mentioned earlier, I think the more vital element of blackmail is the part where you push the blackmail-ee so hard they eventually rebel and you lose all your power over them. At least that's how it happens on TV. So stay tuned.
Meredith is led into an area of the bullpen where pillows and seats have been arranged in a circle. "Fire Girl!" Kevin jeers at her. "Too soon?" he asks Jim. Think so. Even if "Fire Guy" has been gone for two episodes and there's a vacancy. Michael announces that they're going to have a quick intervention and then get back to the party. Toby pipes up to say they can't ask Meredith to stop drinking, and Michael says he's just going to "implore her to stop being an alcoholic." Meredith denies it, but when Michael asks for a show of hands, she's voted down.
Andy THs at length about his drinking habits in college, during which he was called, alternately, "Puke," "Ace," and "Buzz," depending on what stage of his stream-of-consciousness monologue he's in at any given moment.
Back at the intervention, Michael has busted out a drinking questionnaire that turns out to be from a Mormon web site. Toby wants Michael to contact an expert. "I'm doing your job, man," Michael tells him. After calling Kelly on texting during the intervention, Michael wants to go around the circle to talk about how Meredith's drinking has affected everyone. Michael's example is how Meredith made them stop the best Christmas party he's ever been to so they could do this intervention. Kevin brings up the time Meredith got too drunk to go a movie, so she gave the tickets to Kevin. "That was really cool," Kevin concludes. Obviously this isn't what Michael was looking for. He tries to bring Dwight in, but there's no help there. "In the Schrute family," Dwight THs, "we believe in a five-fingered intervention." He holds up a fist and raises one finger at a time: "Awareness, education, control, acceptance, and punching." Michael continues to try and run the intervention, as Dwight gets up to sell another Princess Unicorn to a walk-in. And Phyllis does a TH in which she shows us what the gift from Corporate is this year: Dunder Mifflin shot glasses. "I don't think they're appropriate any more," she grumbles. Then she goes into the kitchen, where Angela is on hummus duty, and makes her put on a hair net. No mercy.
Meredith finally admits her addiction... to porn. Trying to get things back on track, Michael reminds her that she caught alight today, wonders what's going to happen some other day in the future when she comes into work dead. "I stab her in the head with a wooden stick," Dwight volunteers. Michael finally says that the time Meredith catches fire, nobody's putting her out. Dwight corrects that he would need to, as fire marshal. That devolves into a tangent about controlled burns and permits, until finally Toby calls a halt and everyone else bails. "You did the best you could, but this is bigger than all of us," Jim tells Michael. As the intervention breaks up, Michael calls them all enablers. He THs that his Christmas wish is for Meredith to get better, but his wishes never come true, so he doesn't want to wish that for her. "A watch would be nice," he adds.
69 days to the DTV transition. No smirk from Kevin?
Later, Jim and Pam comment on how long Michael's had Meredith buttonholed in his office. "If she wasn't an alcoholic before, she is now," Pam says.
Angela spits out a cookie upon hearing that it's served during Ramadan. Andy perches on a desk, really tearing it up on that sitar now. Dude is like a savant on that thing. "You take requests?" Jim asks pleasantly. "Please stop."
Michael and Meredith finally emerge from his office, and he helps her into her coat and promises to be right down. After she heads out, Michael asks Toby for the number of the rehab center. Michael takes it and then bounces the pen off Toby's forehead. Why? Because it's there.
In the car, Meredith points out that Michael just missed the bar she thought they were going to for a drink. She rattles off a few options, but Michael's got something else in mind.
Toby's on the phone with his little girl Sasha about Princess Unicorn, and she's deafeningly thrilled at the very mention of it. "My ex-wife is going to be so pissed," Toby THs happily. Well, no, because when Toby heads out to the bullpen to buy one from Dwight, he learns that Darryl just bought the last one. Toby abjectly begs Darryl for the doll, until Darryl agrees to let Toby have it -- for $400. Toby is pathetically, tearfully, huggingly grateful, until Darryl hands it over and Toby realizes he's holding a black Princess Unicorn. "Something wrong with the doll?" Darryl asks. Toby assures him that it's even better than the one he wanted.
Michael drives Meredith to the rehab center and ends up physically pulling her from the car, chasing her around the parking lot, and literally dragging her into the building, kicking and screaming. "I have a deposit?" he pants to the receptionist.
Phyllis tells Angela to put the Christmas tree back up, and is told it's outside. "I didn't ask you where it was, I told you where it needs to be," Phyllis snaps. And that's it for Angela. She tells Phyllis to shut up, and calls her bluff, saying she knows Phyllis will never give her away and lose her control over the party planning committee. Phyllis appears to fold, but on her way out to get the tree herself, she turns and announces, "Angela's having sex with Dwight!" Everyone is shocked. "Don't look so surprised," Dwight tells everyone smugly. Oh, and I should mention that Andy is nowhere in sight. Probably because neither is the sitar.
Jim and Pam have a joint TH in which Pam claims to have known it all along. Jim has his doubts, but Pam has decided what she wants for Christmas: the point. So Jim gives it to her. "She knew it," he agrees.
Michael has learned that you can't just check someone into rehab, but he's not giving up on Meredith. "I need to find a way to push Meredith to the bottom," he says. "I think I can do it. I did it with Jan."
Andy returns to the party with the sitar, and sits down to accompany himself on it while cheesily singing "Deck the Halls" to Angela and a very quiet staff. "The Little Drummer Boy" would have been better. He finishes up, and Angela, looking around at everyone with full eyes, quietly asks Andy to take her home. "Tough room," Andy says cluelessly as he gets up, completely oblivious to why everyone's looking at him like that. "Come on, I just learned it." Let's hope for his sake that he learns something else, and soon.
M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, follow him on Twitter (mgiant), or just e-mail him at m.giant[at]gmail.com.
See what Michael thinks of his staff. Then find out what to get the TV fans in your life for the holidays.