When Dwight takes it upon himself to throw a fire drill -- complete with actual fire -- the ensuing panic stops Stanley's heart and gets both Dwight and Michael in a heap of trouble with Corporate. Michael replaces Dwight as safety officer, but that doesn't stop Dwight from turning a CPR lesson into a macabre nightmare. Now that Dwight has two strikes and Stanley's in a condition where stress is life-threatening, Michael tries to help everyone relax -- only to discover that just being around him stresses people out. So he comes up with a classic Michael solution: having a roast for himself: Of course he can't actually take the jokes, and goes through a brief but tragic emo phase before returning to the office and roasting everyone back. The laughter and applause he earns is, as one would expect, more than enough to cure what ails him. And, he thinks, what ails Stanley, too.
In other news, Pam's parents are going through a rough patch, and her dad is staying at their place. They discuss the issue while watching a bootleg film (an overwrought romance in which Jack Black dumps Jessica Alba for Cloris Leachman) with Andy, who takes their completely unrelated conversation as an indication that they are film geniuses. Pam makes the mistake of asking Jim to talk to her dad, and the thing you know, the elder Beeslys are splitsville. Jim has no idea what he said, but when Pam says that it's because her dad never loved his mom as much as Jim told him he loves Pam, he's out of trouble in a hurry. Aw. It's a rare man who loves his fiancée enough to split up her parents.
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When Pam gets up from reception, Dwight goes into action. He pulls a can of lighter fluid and a rag from his desk drawer, then steps into the back hallway. Where he closes the door behind him, breaks the key in the lock, uses a blowtorch to heat up the door handle, and drives wooden shims under the door. Then he lights up the contents of a trash can. All so people will learn more about fire safety than they did from his PowerPoint presentation last week. "PowerPoint is boring," he says. Well, this won't be.
"Does anyone smell anything smoky?" he asks once he's back at his desk and clouds of smoke are billowing into the bullpen. Everyone's pretty slow to notice, and even Pam, the one with the best view, doesn't see the smoke until Dwight clears his throat at her several times. Everyone starts to freak out, especially Michael. "Stay fucking calm!" he screams. After they try all the doors and figure out that they're trapped, Michael orders, "Everyone for himself!" as a full-blown panic erupts. Angela retrieves a goddamn giant cat from a bottom file cabinet drawer while Oscar climbs up on his desk and into the suspended ceiling. "Stay alive! I'm going for help!" He tells Angela, refusing to pull her up with him. "Save Bandit!" she cries, and hurls the beast up, only to watch it crash through the ceiling a couple of tiles further down. That is one pissed kitty. Amid all the mayhem, Dwight is trying to quiz everyone on proper procedures. Michael uses a chair to try to smash through the conference room window. Kevin has better luck smashing into the vending machine. Just to amp things up a little, Dwight lights a string of ladyfingers. "The fire's shooting at us!" Andy screams. Dwight pulls the fire alarm, kicking things up a few more notches. "I am not dying here," Jim vows, and gets Creed to help him use the copier to try to batter a door open. Everyone's screaming, the place is filled with smoke, and Dwight finally announces that it's all a simulation. Stanley picks this moment to collapse, so suddenly everyone has something else to worry about. ""Barack is president! You are black, Stanley!" Michael screams, and nearly kills Stanley with his efforts to save him.
Now this is a credits sequence, with the whole damn cast in there and then some (the "and then some" being B.J. Novak, of course).
After that's over, Dwight and Michael have apparently been called right to Corporate to answer for this in front of David Wallace and some other dude. Possibly even Mr. Dunder or Mr. Mifflin. Dwight is unrepentant, since nobody died and Stanley should be released from the hospital soon. Michael's also in trouble for letting this happen, so he's going to great pains to associate himself with the angry bosses instead of the people in the doghouse. After moving to the other side of the table, he suggests stripping Dwight of his Safety Officer title and forcing him to donate part of his salary to a charity Dwight hates. "PETA," Dwight mutters. Wallace isn't going to let Michael off the hook so easily. To his credit, neither is Michael.
Cut to the drive home, as Dwight thinks they smoothed things over pretty easily, until Michael tells Dwight he's taking over as Safety Officer. Back in his office, Michael THs that nobody should go to an office thinking they'll die there. "That's what a hospital is for. An office is for not dying. An office is a place to live life to the fullest, to the max, to...an office is a place where dreams come true." He had me and then he lost me.
On the day Stanley returns, Michael greets him warmly at the door. The weird thing is that Stanley responds in kind. In a TH, Stanley admits that he has a history of being "abrupt" (machine-gun montage of some of Stanley's more "abrupt" moments, which were actually pretty scary). "But the doctor said, if I can't find a new way to relate more positively to my surroundings, I'm going to die." That's immediately put to the test when Andy rolls up in a wheelchair, which Michael insists Stanley sit in until he's all better. Stanley concludes his TH with this insight: "I'm going to die."
Michael has brought in a trainer to give a CPR class. "Of course, you can't get the practice dummy unless the instructor comes along with it," he THs. "Red Cross...racket." Kevin goes a round on the dummy, and gives up in exhaustion after 20 seconds. "Call it," he pants. Michael suggests that Stanley, who's still in the wheelchair take the turn. For his own good, of course. "What are you going to do if your heart stops and you're by yourself?" he asks Stanley. "I would die," says Stanley quietly. "And you're okay with that?" "I'm okay with the logic of it." Stanley says. His TH gets a little more grim, as he says he's too old to quit and find another job and has too little saved to retire. "I feel like I'm working in my own casket." Yikes. Although, better that than in someone else's. Michael goes after Stanley. Assessing the situation, he says that the torso-only dummy is not only not breathing, but has no arms or legs. Tangent on whether a quadruple amputee is worth saving, and then the instructor tells Michael to go at a speed of 100 compressions per minute, or the tempo of "Stayin' Alive." After a false start involving "I Will Survive," the session turns into a capella dance party. Of course they lose the victim, which is when Dwight takes over, because he's the only one who knows what to with a dead person: namely, harvest the organs. Dwight yanks a giant hunting knife from an ankle holster and slices open the dummy to look for the heart. Stanley's actual heart if starting to feel a little weird, so while everyone's worried about him, Dwight takes advantage of the distraction to cut the dummy's face off and wear it as a mask. As you do.
So then we're back at Corporate, with Wallace complaining to Dwight and Michael about how they had to pay $3,500 to replace the dummy. Michael says that's why they do training. "We learn from our mistakes, and now Dwight knows not to cut the face off of a real person," Michael assures him.
In the break room, Andy has sat Jim and Pam down with a laptop and a bowl of unpopped popcorn to watch a movie that won't even be out for six months. "We don't normally download films illegally because we're honest, hardworking people," Pam says in a joint TH. "And we don't know how," Jim adds. "But Andy does, so we have to watch it with him," Pam says. "Punishment fits the crime," concludes Jim.
So the movie appears to star Jack Black, Jessica Alba, Cloris Leachman, and a highly intrusive '80s lite-rock soundtrack. In the short scene we get to see, a young woman (Alba) brings her boyfriend (Black, as if) to meet her grandmother (Leachman), and romantic sparks fly almost immediately. I think we're supposed to be ooked out, but obviously if the gender roles were reversed the age difference between the characters wouldn't be so startling. Or indeed unusual. Pam gets a text, which segues into a TH where he explains that her parents haven't been getting along lately. To the point where her dad has been staying at their house. "Jim's been great, but I'm going to need to buy my dad a robe," she says. Jim and Pam quietly discuss her parents, but Andy thinks they're talking about the movie. And since he's not seeing any of what they're talking about, he decides that they're geniuses.
Michael and Dwight return to the office, and Michael makes an announcement that Dwight now has two strikes, and will need to make a statement of regret. Dwight reads from a prepared statement. "I state my regret," Dwight says insincerely, and then expects everyone to sign it. Nobody moves. "Sign it!" Dwight snaps. "Sign it now!"
In the movie, Jack Black walks in on Cloris Leachman in the bath, and when it gets steamy, Jim and Pam wisely disengage, and retreat into talking about Pam's parents some more. "You guys, they're making out," Andy points out.
In the kitchen, Pam asks Jim to try talking to her dad. He really doesn't want to, but she gives him the puppy eyes, and he's screwed.
Michael leads a meditation session in the conference room, with everyone sitting on the floor. Meredith hikes up her skirt plunks herself down in the front row, causing Michael to drone, "Ommmmy god, if you're wearing a dress, please keep your knees together nobody wants to see that ommm..." His current project is making the office peaceful, to which end he's downloaded some relaxing music. "That one makes me think of death," he muses about one selection. Back in the conference room, he's got everyone lying on the floor, while he picks his way among them with a lit candle. Very relaxing. "Don't open your eyes," Jim whispers to Pam, who of course does so and finds herself looking up into Michael's crotch. Oh, Jim, hasn't she seen enough? Stanley's biofeedback monitor goes off, although the beeping slows when Michael moves across the room. And starts again when Michael gets closer. "I think that thing is on the fritz," Michael says, and asks Oscar to try it out. "Touch his thing... that's what he said!" You know, because Oscar is gay. But the biofeedback monitor behaves the same way to Michael's proximity when Oscar is holding it. "Michael, I think you're what's stressing everybody out," Kevin says, as usual the first to state the obvious. Surprisingly, Michael takes this pretty well, as he does a TH in his office where he realizes that he, not Dwight, is the real threat. "You never expect that you're the killer," he THs in his office. "Great twist."
At reception, Pam gets a call from her mom, and then stomps into the kitchen to ask Jim what he said to her dad. It seems Papa Beesly has announced his intention to look for an apartment. Jim has absolutely no idea what he said, and she stomps off. He tries to make light of it in a TH by saying, "Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, so it was her parents or my parents." Okay, funny, but wrong. At least his laugh dies in his throat. Pam is even less amused: "What could Jim have said to make my dad want to leave my mom? And at what point in my marriage is he going to say it to me?" Well, unless I missed an episode, you're not married yet, sunshine.
Michael sits in his office, drinking out of tiny bottles with Dwight. Michael THs about the days when "boss" meant really cool, which made him want to become a boss. "Now boss is just slang for jerk in charge." I don't know if I'd say that. I'd say "Michael Scott" has become slang for jerk in charge.
Michael bursts into the bullpen, announcing that he's figured it out: everyone's too intimidated by him. So he decides to have roast of himself, like on Comedy Central. "You really want us to roast you?" Oscar asks. "Si, Senor," Michael Mexicans. "That's offensive," Oscar says, but Michael says it's okay during a roast. He really wants people to get into the spirit of this, and as he goes on, people start getting on board. Kevin's joy make him even more inarticulate than usual, and Oscar simply THs, "I consider myself a good person, but I'm gonna try to make him cry." Everyone gets busy writing, and Michael excitedly says, "I've got to make sure that YouTube comes down to tape this."
The roast is taking place down in the warehouse, and Dwight is telling everyone to put their name on the sign-in sheet. You'd think that someone would have noticed by now that the sign-in sheet is his apology letter in disguise, but it's too late for everyone but Phyllis. "That was the last signature I needed," Dwight mutters. Michael bounds up onto the stage, trying to set the mood by shouting, "Welcome, welcome, welcome! You are all jerks!" He does about ten seconds of non-comedy before offering to yield the floor, and Angela jumps up there like she's spring-loaded. Michael sits on stage in the roasting chair, which he has thoughtfully equipped with a snare drum and a cymbal so he can supply the rimshots. Angela's jokes are built on the Jeff Foxworthy model, as in: "If you ever put sunblock on a window, you might be Michael Scott." There's a ripple of laughter. "I normally don't enjoy making people laugh," she happily admits in a TH. She finishes her routine, and then Michael kills the laugh by screwing up the old "I don't come to your work and tell you how to make burgers" joke.
is Kelly, who has a list of people she would make out with before Michael. "A turtle, a fridge, anybody from the warehouse, a wood chipper, Kevin, a candle, and Lord Voldemort." This is turning into a great evening for Kevin. "You ran over me with your car," says Meredith. Rimshot. "You posted a picture of my bare boobs on the bulletin board with the caption, 'Gross.'" You are the reason I drink. You are the reason I live to forget." The end. Oscar fails to make Michael cry, probably because he's ranting in Spanish. Michael denies Toby his turn, saying, "Friends only!" Toby shrugs and returns to his seat. Jim produces a list of Michaelisms, like "Spiderface," as in "Cut off your nose to Spiderface." Jim is clearly holding back. When Dwight's turn comes, and he leaps to Michael's defense, while Michael just calls him an idiot for not getting it. And for the first time ever, Dwight loses it on Michael: "Don't you ever talk to me that way, you pathetic short little man. You don't have any friends or any family or any land." And so Dwight ends up getting the biggest cheer of the night. Pam asks to talk to them for a moment about a serious issue: "Once an hour, someone is involved in an internet scam. That man is Michael Scott." Big laugh. "He's supporting about 20 Nigerian princesses." Dwight's getting into it now, and Michael's starting to feel the sting a bit. I'm reminded of a line that shows up in a surprising number of my son's Curious George books: "Soon the fun was gone." Pam's final line goes for Michael's groin, literally: "One time I walked in on him naked...andhisthingissosmall!" She's halfway back to her seat when Kevin supplies the obligatory, "How small is it?" "If it were an iPod it would be a shuffle!" Pam says. Ouuuch. Michael takes a moment to remind everyone that it's customary to say something nice at the end of the roast. You know, just for form's sake. comes Darrell, who says that Michael likes to say everyone at Dunder Mifflin is a family. And he stumps Michael by asking him the name of one of the warehouse employees. Which turns out to be Michael. Andy's roast is of course in musical format, as he plays the guitar and sings "What I Hate About You" to a familiar tune by the Romantics. After finishing, he yields the mic to Michael, who starts by defending himself, not least of all in regards to the size of his thing. He tries to begin his own prepared speech, but it looks like Oscar has succeeded after all. Finally Michael stumbles off the stage, looking like he's racing to the bathroom.
day, Pam takes the latest of several messages for Michael, who still isn't in. Dwight thinks Michael is either depressed, or has been impaled through the brain by an icicle as a result of his habit of staring up at them from directly below. "It was only a matter of time," Dwight says sadly.
In the break room during lunch, Kevin is still getting out a few Michael jokes when Dwight gets a text from Michael reading "Personnel Day." "I think he meant 'personal day,' Pam guesses. "That's quite a leap, Pam," Dwight says. "Give it up," says Creed. "He's dead." Jim reminds Creed that he just sent a text. Creed: "What's a text?"
Michael's at the park, wearing jeans and a turtleneck under his overcoat, trying to feed entire slices of white bread to the nonexistent birds directly from the bag. He tells us that he's imagining a spaceman on a faraway star, to whom all of our problems seems so minor, but who can still feel sorry for Michael Scott.
Back at the office, Phyllis signs for a package, which turns out to be empty. Dwight reels in the clipboard, which has his apology letter hidden inside it, and tips the delivery guy. Whatever else you could say about Dwight, he generally gets it done.
In the movie, Cloris Leachman is breaking up with Jack Black and leaving him via her staircase lift chair. Watching it alone now, Andy weeps openly as Jack Black makes his impassioned speech, begging her in vain to reverse back down the stairs.
Pam's cell phone rings; it's her dad, and he wants to stop by. A moment later, the elder and younger Beeslys are down in the parking lot. Pam's dad is turned away from the camera so he can't see his face, but I briefly suspect that he is in fact James Lipton, which is not what I would have expected. This is shot through the conference room windows so we can't hear what they're saying. Not that Jim doesn't seem to be trying as he watches through the glass. Finally Pam hugs her dad and heads back upstairs. Jim goes to meet her in the hallway, and as she comes off the elevator, she's looking at him in a way that clearly scares the hell out of him. "Was it my fault?" he asks nervously. "Yeah," says Pam, her eyes full of tears. "He said that you told him how much you love me. About how you feel when I walk in a room, and about how you've never doubted for a second that I'm the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with." Oh, he is in so much trouble. "I guess he's never felt that with my mom, even at their best," Pam finishes. Jim asks if she's okay, and they share a big hug. Then Pam does a TH in which she says kids tend to assume that their parents are soulmates. "My kids are going to be right about that," she says happily. And as Andy drifts into the background, she adds, "I guess it also means that sometimes love affairs look different to the people inside them." Andy throws his hands up, like he can't understand how she's doing this.
But he's more philosophical in this TH: "I'm not insightful enough to be a movie critic," he admits. "Maybe I could be a food critic: "These muffins taste bad." Or an art critic: "That painting is bad." Well, everyone needs to have a dream.
Michael enters the office, to varying expressions of concern. "It's really good to see you," Pam says. "Why are you wearing a turtleneck?" asks Dwight. Oscar is the first to try to apologize for yesterday, but Michael has a few thoughts that he wrote down, starting with Jim: "You're six-eleven, and you weigh ninety pounds. Gumby has a better body than you. Boom, roasted!" He goes on to call Dwight a kiss-ass, Pam an art-school failure, and Meredith someone who "slept with so many guys [she's] starting to look like one." He tells Kevin he couldn't decide between a fat joke and a dumb joke, and thus ends up with neither. He insults Creed's breath, and Angela's size, and then turns to Stanley: "You crush your wife during sex and your heart sucks." Stanley actually has a nice, long chuckle at that, and that's when the funereal mood starts to break. "Oscar, you're gay. Andy, Cornell called -- they think you suck. And you're gayer than Oscar." By now everyone's laughing, and Michael says a standup-style farewell before ducking into his office while everyone claps. All better!
In Michael's TH, he says that since laughter is the best medicine, Stanley can throw away his pills. "Actually...better hold onto the pills just in case."
In the tag, Jack Black runs up to Cloris Leachman's house with a bouquet of flowers and a new quad-cane, but looks in her window and sees her making out with some other young dude. She looks back at him defiantly. Jack Black drops the gifts and stumbles away crying like a toddler. That '80s lite-rock is harsh.
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.