Michael gets to Nashua, but Holly's not there. And her new boyfriend is. Michael has a meltdown in the middle of his presentation, and ends up finding Holly's desk, where he steals a sleeve off her sweater and a document off her computer titled "Dear Michael."
Back at the office, Jim and Dwight continue limping towards Kelly's party, and end up coming up with a winning theme: TV or nap. Kelly's just weird enough to love it. But at least she's not weird enough to spend seven thousand dollars on a new cat and lick it with her tongue, Angela.
After vacating Nashua, Pam doesn't let Michael read Holly's letter, but she's willing to read it for him. Big of her. She won't tell him exactly what Holly said, but she will say this: "It's not over."
Instead of a teaser this week, we get previouslies. Weird.
After the credits, Angela enters the kitchen in a suspiciously good mood, even making an approving remark to Kevin while he two-fists ice cream treats. She happily announces that she just got a new cat, the offspring of a movie star (her father was in Meet the Parents, which I can't imagine Angela saw, because she certainly wouldn't approve) who among her other fine qualities "doesn't struggle when you try to dress her." Apparently it set her back seven grand. "I could get you a kid for that," Creed claims. As always, I believe him. Angela sold Andy's engagement ring on eBay to swing it, so it's probably just as well that Andy's not in this episode. "Her name is Princess Lady!" Oh, dear God.
So then everyone's gathered around Angela's computer, which she has set up to run a live camera feed of the menagerie that is her living room. She says she normally takes leave when she gets a new cat, but this time she's out of vacation. "This company still doesn't recognize cat maternity," she complains. She should take it up with David Wallace, if only because I'd like to watch that scene.
While on the road, Michael's asleep in the back seat of the car, while Pam exposits to us that they're making a detour to Nashua so Michael can get some closure with Holly. She cracks that Nashua sounded pretty excited on the phone. "Probably because their office is only accessible by cross-country skis!" After waiting for a laugh that doesn't come, Pam readily admits that she's been on the road too long. It's true -- shit gets funny on road trips for no reason. One time in Williams, Arizona, my friend Kraftmatik just said, "Yeah, dude," to my wife and I laughed hysterically for like ten minutes.
Jim puts Kelly's ice cream cake in the freezer, proudly showing off his one party-related accomplishment to the camera as he does so. His pleasure is short-lived, though, because he hears Dwight loudly grilling Kelly. He goes back to the annex, where he learns that Kelly was in juvie back in the day. As long as "learns" doesn't presuppose the verb "cares." Jim points out to Dwight that Kelly was 14 at the time. "If she's old enough to get married, she's old enough to follow the law," Dwight insists. Kelly finally admits that it was for stealing her boyfriend's father's boat after the boyfriend dumped her. Okay, that sounds like something Kelly would do today. She's upset, so Jim tries to smooth it over by bringing her into the kitchen to show her her cake. Which she hates, because it's completely white and blank. It doesn't even have her name on it, because as Jim admits in a TH, he couldn't remember if it's spelled "Kelly" or "Kelley." If only they had access to her personnel file. Kelly asks what the theme is, and Jim mutters "Birthday" while Dwight says, "Frosting." Kelly storms off, leaving Phyllis to passive-aggressively inform the boys, "There's always a theme." Oh, shut up, Phyllis. Party planning is usually done without blackmail, too. Dwight calls Jim a bozo for screwing up the cake, and Jim snaps back, "time, you get the cake and I get to scream at the birthday girl." Suddenly I'm looking forward to the birthday party.
Pam does Michael's sign photo outside the building that houses the Nashua branch. Inside the office, the happy receptionist -- who is expecting them -- tells Michael that Holly's out of the office on an HR retreat. But if he really needs to reach her, he can talk to A.J., one of their salesmen. Who just happens to be Holly's boyfriend. Wow, way to be inappropriate, Nashua receptionist. This is not the kind of closure Michael was looking for.
Pam comes out of the building to find a devastated Michael sitting on the curb. I don't know how he does it, but Steve Carell finds a different way to cry every time. He says he can't give the presentation. Pam tries to draw a parallel to how she felt when Jim was dating Karen, but Michael's not seeing it. "I'm kinda going through something here," he whines impatiently. She rallies and tries to say that when Holly comes back, everyone will tell her what a good job he did on the presentation. Michael follows the scenario to its logical conclusion: "And then she'll come back to Scranton and her boyfriend will die." Pam tells him to take it one step at a time.
Angela's kitty-cam has turned into kitty-porn, with "that ugly cat" (Kevin's words, not mine) Mr. Ash humping Princess Lady. Mr. Ash is certainly getting his seven grand's worth. Angela dashes out of the office to take care of it. Kevin continues narrating. The writers must love having a character like Kevin to help provide exposition when the TH inserts can't quite carry it off.
Jim and Dwight are back at their desks, and Jim is going over a list of stuff they need: "A theme. And ice, and punch, and cake..." Dwight's blowing him off, because he's been busy making a froofy pink sign for the conference room door that reads "Party pushed to 3:00." Jim is frustrated with Dwight for wasting their time on a sign that gives information that could have just announced verbally, and proceeds to demonstrate how that would have been done by shouting, "Hey, the party's pushed back to 3 PM." "I know, I just read it on the sign," Stanley mutters. Dwight gives Jim an exquisite "so there" look.
Michael launches his Nashua presentation with a collage of movie quotes, but then veers into a rant about salesmen. He calls out A.J., and while Pam sits in her corner, regretting having talked Michael into going through with this, he starts asking A.J if he's dating anyone. And if it's serious. And, "Does she ever talk about me?" Of course no one else besides Pam knows what's going on here, least of all A.J, who seems a bit too cool for Holly anyway, if you ask me, and that is in no way a knock on Holly. Before long, Michael pretty much loses it, and actually has to sit down on his trunk to catch his breath. But instead of catching his breath, he goes completely fetal. "Michael, get off the floor!" Pam chirps theatrically, as though it's part of the script, but all Michael can manage to do is crawl out of the room backwards. So now Pam has to take over. She tries to smooth over Michael's exit by saying that in sales you often run into confusing situations. And then she admits that she's just trying make the transition into finishing the presentation herself. Which she then has to attempt to do. Unfortunately, all she has to go on are Michael's movie-quote filled note cards, which she delivers even worse than Michael did. I hate to say it, but this kind of serves her right. She also attempts to demonstrate Michael's name-remembering mnemonic device, except that she only remembers the insulting nicknames for everyone and forgets to tie them to their actual names. After an indeterminate length of time dying of flopsweat up there, she suddenly has a realization. "I have a chainsaw!" she finally announces, and waves Michael's prop around. She'd get a better reaction if she fired it up.
Angela has left her kitty-cam on at her computer, so Oscar and Kevin get to watch when she arrives home, scolds Mr. Ash, and "comforts" Princess Lady. Which includes cleaning her with her tongue. "This is getting weird," Kevin says belatedly.
In the empty Nashua bullpen, Michael has found Holly's desk, with a yellow cardigan draped over the chair. Michael's so moved by this artifact that he cuts off half the sleeve to take with him. When he pushes her chair back, he bumps her mouse and shuts off the screensaver, revealing that her desktop wallpaper is Ed Grimley. Which is way more Holly than the yellow cardigan, if you ask me. That makes him smile through the tears, and then he notices an icon on her desktop that gets his attention: a Word document named "Dear Michael." Instead of opening it, Michael inserts his Flash drive keychain, which starts blinking. I could predict that Michael's accidentally stealing every file in Holly's computer, or worse, uploading his vacation photos with Jan or his Threat Level Midnight screenplay, but I'm just blown away that someone on TV actually uses Windows.
Angela returns to the office, surprised and maybe a bit embarrassed to see that her kitty-cam is still on. Oscar and Kevin claim ignorance of anything that may or may not have happened on it. "I was looking at pictures of food on my computer," Kevin claims. Angela settles down in her chair, and then coughs up a hairball. Which would be funny enough, except then Oscar does a little TH in which he tells us what just happened. It's not like The Office to have to explain a joke like that.
Out in the parking lot, Pam and Michael load his suitcase into their car while the entire Nashua staff watches from the window above. Afterward, at a diner, Michael confesses to Pam what he did, and says he plans to read it. Pam says he can't, because it would be a violation of Holly's trust. "I could read it," she offers. As Michael runs to get his laptop, Pam looks guiltily at the camera and says, "What? I'm not in love with her." Maybe not, Beesly, but you might be a tad over-invested.
In the Scranton conference room, Dwight is still half-assedly blowing up balloons and even more half-assedly brainstorming themes with Jim. At least he admits the "horse hunt" is stupid and lets it drop. Jim asks Dwight of he remembers a special birthday, and Dwight reminds us that the Schrutes don't celebrate them, since the Great Depression. Jim reminisces about his own seventh birthday, when his dad took him to the natural history museum, looked at fossils with him all day, and bought him a little plastic triceratops. "It was awesome," Jim says, the easiest-to-please seven-year-old who ever lived. Dwight agrees that that's cool, but adds, "You know what's even cooler than Triceratops? Every other dinosaur that ever existed." "Didn't see that coming," Jim tells us. He really should have.
Pam finishes reading Holly's letter on Michael's laptop, deletes it, and tells Michael that Holly still has feelings for him. "I can't tell you specifically," she says, "but it's not over." Which is exactly what Michael wanted to hear.
Kelly enters the conference room with the sad little party, and the sad little pile of gray balloons on the table like a stack of giant ball bearings, and her very own cake wreck. It says "Happy Birthday Kelley" and has a single Chiclet stuck in the middle of it. Kelly is not thrilled. Jim and Dwight explain that the Chiclet represents a pillow or a TV -- which means that the theme is her choice: she can pick an hour-long nap or an hour of TV. Kelly suddenly loves it. She picks nap, and Dwight herds everyone out of the conference room while Jim sets her up with a pillow and a blanket to snuggle under the conference table. "Too excited to sleep!" Kelly whispers to us when the lights are out and the door is closed.
Jim and Dwight enjoy some cake together near reception. And at the end of an hour, Dwight walks into the conference room and wakes Kelly up by slamming a couple of metal trash can lids together. Where did he even find those in this day and age? Wisteria Lane? "Now go back and make up for the work you missed while you were taking your nap," he tells a groggy and docile Kelly. "Many happy returns." Pan back to the "IT IS YOUR BIRTHDAY." banner. Well, I think that was the best Dunder Mifflin-Scranton birthday party ever.
Driving once again in the gathering dusk, Michael is so excited about his "closure" that he wants some more. "Let's go apologize to Roy," he suggests. Pam doesn't think so, so Michael starts thinking about other people he can apologize to. Like, "that fat guy from Stamford I insulted." Pam remembers Tony's name, but Michael's too busy using his mnemonic device to remember it himself: he was fat, fat people like pizza, pepperoni, which rhymes with "Tony!" But then he remembers how fat Tony was, and realizes that he could never apologize. Because he was sooooo fffffat. I think Michael grew up a lot this week, don't you?
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.
Sometimes it's comforting to know you're not the only one who's burnt your foot on a George Foreman grill, are we right? Check out our The Office: Most Embarrassingly Roast-able Moments gallery for more perspective.