Yes, the Michael Scott Paper Company, Inc. has its own office space now (complete with a new opening credits sequence), but it's pretty small, and the company's three workers are getting on each other's nerves even more than they normally would be. Plus it's not like there are any customers banging down their door. It gets bad enough that Pam even goes upstairs to ask for her old job back.
But she's out of luck, because the position is filled. The new receptionist is named Kelly. And now that Dwight and Andy have become best friends in the wake of the whole Angela debacle, that threatens to go south when they both find themselves digging New Kelly. Another duel ensues, but this one is of the musical variety. And they end up better friends than before. If not, as New Kelly suspects, actually gay for each other.
Things aren't going as well for Jim, who spends the whole day trying to do what Charles has asked, a project that is complicated by the fact that he doesn't know what Charles actually wants from him and is too chicken to ask. Man, Charles is so convinced that Jim's an idiot that it's starting to come true.
Finally, just when it looks like the Michael Scott Paper Company, Inc. is about to crash and burn ugly before it even gets off the ground, Pam makes a sale. So it's getting off the ground after all, which means that when the inevitable crash and burn comes, it'll be even uglier.
Get the inside scoop on the show from Rainn Wilson via his Twitter.
Michael drives his PT Cruiser into the shot, top down, blasting Lady Gaga (who he thinks is Britney), sporting a new haircut and sunglasses, and boasting about his new company. But then he bumps into a car trying to parallel park on the street, and drives off to try somewhere else.
Ryan slinks across the parking lot, wearing a tie and untucked shirt, and Jim calls out to him, "Love the hair." Ryan doesn't respond. Walking in with Jim, Pam calls "good morning" to Michael, who's crammed his car in a non-spot so tight he has to crawl out over the side. "They took away my parking spot but they can't take away my pride," he says inaccurately, wriggling out with a briefcase and a big Costco jug of cheeseballs. In the hallway, he tries to cut the ribbon stretched across the door with a hedge clipper, which doesn't work so he has to pull it down, and then leads Pam and Ryan inside. "Welcome to the Michael Scott Paper Company," he declares. The centerpiece? A poker table. Looks like they're all in.
Get this: totally new credits! After Scranton Welcomes You, there's a shot of the three companies' names -- Dunder Mifflin, MSPCoInc, and Vance Refrigeration -- on the signboard in the front lobby. Steve Carell's shot in the credits is him in his new suit, in his new office, talking to his new team. He's hung five clocks on the wall showing international times, and their copier has "TRASH: written on it, presumably because it's the old one salvaged from upstairs. Rainn Wilson's shot in the credits shows him stopping short outside MSPCoiInc.'s door, to that of the ladies' room. John Krasinski only exists as a photo on Pam's "desk," in golf gear. Jenna Fischer is shown busily typing away on a laptop, on the poker table. And B.J. Novak is stapling like a madman. And with a few shots of the three of them bumping into each other in the cramped space and Michael playing with a desk toy that is not a Dundie, we're into the show.
Kelly perches on Jim's desk, distractedly droning about nothing (even more so than usual) while staring in at Charles, who is now occupying Michael's old office. Charles calls, "Kelly!" Kelly hops down and runs into Charles desk, but he meant "that Kelly." Jim THs, "Our new receptionist is also named Kelly. So Kelly Kapoor has decided to hover around my desk so that she can run into Charles's office every time he calls for Kelly. She thinks that if she says, 'You wanted me?' enough, he will in fact want her. It's not the worst plan she's ever had." Indeed. But back in Charles's office, he's deciding to address the Kellys by their last names to avoid further "confusion." New Kelly would rather be called by her middle name, Erin, and when Charles says that's pretty, Kelly snaps, "You know what my middle name is? Rajanigandra. And I hate it. I HATE IT!" Exit Rajanigandra. Which Kevin thought was a boy's name.
Michael tries to make the best of the noise from the exposed toilet pipes running through the office space by philosophizing vaguely. His project? A pancake luncheon, for which he has sent out an Evite. "Six yeses, one maybe, only eleven nos," he THs. "And 788 not-yet-replieds. But of that group, 782 have viewed it!" Back in the office, Michael wants 800 copies of a coupon for "unparalleled customer service, and he puts it on the poker table between Pam and Ryan. Neither of them touches it. Pam THs if she makes one copy, she'll end up being the receptionist again by the end of the day. Too bad, because she likes making copies, with the paper coming out warm and everything. "And it's cold in there, 'cause it's technically a closet."
Up at Dunder Mifflin, Andy enters the office in brand-new hunting gear. Okay, it's a preppy hunting jacket and an earflap cap over his usual tie and sweater, which isn't good for hunting anywhere other than in Cornell's production of Brigadoon. Dwight peers at him through a rifle scope (in a rare display of Schrutian restraint, the scope is not attached to a rifle) and says, "Clearly a hunter!" Dwight THs that he's taking Andy hunting after work, and as we see Andy hiding behind the sparse potted plant, Dwight continues, "Not long ago, we were sexual competitors. I used to hate him, hate him, hate him, hate him." They continue fooling around, spilling over onto Jim's desk and everything, as these things always do. "I studied him to figure out why I hated him so much. But that blossomed into a real friendship. As these things so often do." Well, this is a promising development. Andy + Dwight + Guns? What could go wrong?
Downstairs, Ryan's on his cell phone with someone, inviting them to Scranton. Michael says he thought Ryan was going to be out of town this weekend, and we don't need to have that explained to us. "Please don't listen to my phone calls," Ryan snits. He continues, "She'd probably be a six in New York but she's a seven here in Scranton. And then my boss is my old boss." Pam looks stunned. Well, Pam, he did say not to listen.
Charles asks Jim for a rundown of his clients, and Jim is so eager to please Charles right now that he forgets to ask what a rundown is. So he goes back into Charles's office and tries to get clues on what he wants without actually asking, but all Charles will say is that he wants it ASAP. I've had bosses like that.
In the kitchen, Dwight tries hitting on New Kelly by telling her about the ghost of a prostitute that haunts the hallways. He's dorky and creepy about it, but she doesn't know any better than to buy the whole story. Finally he tells her he's kidding, and by the time she turns to leave, they're friends. But then when she turns to leave she runs into Andy, who turns a near-collision into a mini dance party. Having been flirted with awkwardly by two nerds in as many minutes, New Kelly finally escapes, leaving the two good friends alone. "Hey, buddy," Dwight says.
Michael asks Ryan to quit watching YouTube and make those copies already. He tries to push it off on Pam, who objects to being described as "better at that stuff." Ryan insists he's not judging. "I could run GM, but I couldn't fix a car." Sure he could run GM. I wonder how many times Obama would fire him. Finally Michael shuts Ryan's laptop and snaps that he wants copies. He tries to calm down their squabbling, but the only thing that slows them down is the sound of Toby in the bathroom upstairs, talking to someone on his cell phone about how great Damages is. "Just make the copy, okay?" Michael whispers helplessly over the sound of Toby's urine flowing past them. He sinks into a chair so we can better see the epigram he's written on the whiteboard in the background: "'You miss 100% of the shots you don'ts take -- Wayne Gretsky' -- Michael Scott."
After the ads, Pam is still arguing with Ryan , who is too busy to make copies because he's busy setting his desktop wallpaper as a picture of himself on a Thai beach with a topless babe. When Pam protests, he retorts, "You could be hot too if you made any effort at all." There are like nine million potential responses to suck a toolish line, but Pam goes with, "Like how? Dyeing my hair blonde?" Michael's on the phone to his mom across the room, complaining about "R" and "P" When Pam says they can hear him, Michael says he'll call back. "P's being a giant B," he explains. And so R and P get back into it.
In the bullpen, Dwight sits down to Andy and says he noticed that when Andy talked to New Kelly, Andy's pupils dilated and his skin flushed. "And," he whispers, "I'm assuming a little bit of blood rushed into your penis." The best part is Stanley's slow burn as he looks up in the background. Dwight confesses to Andy that he felt the same way, and asks what they should do . They get all "After you," "No, after you." But then they both agree that they'd just rather hang out with each other. Bros before New Kelly.
Downstairs, Michael tries to make peace between "people in this office." He thinks it's because the space is too small, so he wants to give them each a corner they can retreat to. "We could work from home," Pam suggests. "Or you could fire one of us," Ryan suggests. "Whichever one of us has less education." He tries to get them excited about the new plan. Which is tough, because there's not really room to get excited in there.
Jim asks Oscar what a "rundown" is. Oscar has Jim use it in a sentence a couple of times, but since Jim's sentences are even more vague than Charles's, Oscar can't really help. He suggests Jim just ask Charles himself, but he can't do that, since it was hours ago. "What have you been doing?" Oscar asks. Kevin has a suggestion: "Try another sentence."
Pam gets tired of listening to Ryan talk about his sophomoric exploits from the night, and goes to sit in her corner, which is one foot away from her workspace. As bodily waste rushes past her, Michael claims that as his corner. Which leaves Pam's corner the one with the copier. "Pam, I don't make the rules," he says. Rather than arguing the point, she gets up and leaves.
Jim types away on his computer, and Charles happens by to ask how the rundown is coming. Jim says he's just taking a break with this, and asks Charles for a sample rundown. "Just keep it simple," Charles says. A typical Charles/Jim conversation ensues, until Charles goes into his office, having once again not seen anything that reveals Jim as anything other than an imbecile.
Pam enters the office and goes right past Jim, saying she's there to see Charles. She walks straight into his office and asks for her job back. He tells her it's taken. She offers to come back as a salesman, or a personal assistant. Personal shopper? No to all of the above. "Well, it was great catching up with you," she chirps on her way out. But instead of going right back downstairs, she's in a TH in her old spot in the conference room, saying she's just going to sit there for a minute. She doesn't remember the air smelling so good, or the chairs being so comfortable. Too bad Dwight and Andy aren't here to serenade her with an appropriate Cinderella tune.
Down at MSPCoInc, Phyllis and Stanley poke their heads in. Which is about all there's room for. Michael offers "the tour," which they decline on the grounds that they can see the whole space from where they're standing. Stanley chuckles awesomely at Ryan. Michael adds Pam's around somewhere, and Stanley mentions that she's up talking to Charles. Even Michael doesn't miss the significance of that. "Are we staying till five?" Ryan asks. Michael THs that this was a huge mistake. So what's he going to do about it? "I should leave. I should go and start my own paper company. That'll show 'em!"
The "pancake luncheon" is happening down in the parking lot, and it's basically Michael flipping large, rectangular pancakes while Ryan sends text messages. When Pam rejoins them, she says, "I had to take care of some stuff. That's as specific as I'd like to be."
Jim enters Charles's office with the rundown, just hoping that this is what Charles wanted. Without looking at it, Charles tells him to fax it to everyone on the distribution list. Jim not only isn't sure what Charles means, he doesn't know which distribution list. "Just faxing... my dad...a rundown," Jim says. Okay, right here is when I decide that the batch of webisodes has to be Jim and Pam at home, asking each other, "So how was your day?"
In the parking lot, Pam is trying to give contact info to some dude, but since they don't have business cards yet, she's reduced to writing it down on a scrap of paper. Creed and Meredith talk to Michael about the pancakes, and Creed calls Michael "boss" as he complains about the pancakes not being round. "They're shaped like paper," Michael explains lamely. Creed's so turned off that he gives back the stack he stole.
Up in the break room, Dwight and Andy are having a jam session on guitar and banjo, respectively. Andy seems to be trying to teach Dwight "Take Me Home, Country Roads" by John Denver. New Kelly wanders in and starts singing along. Andy shows Dwight up on the banjo, and pretends to be embarrassed when New Kelly is impressed with his chops. So now it's on. They continue to try to one-up one another, with Dwight singing in both English and German, while Andy harmonizes. New Kelly is blown away each time one of them unspools another inch of their musical dicks. But as inevitably happens in these situations, the musical duel morphs into a performance that brings out the best in both of them, and the thing you know they're each more into what the other is doing than how it's affecting New Kelly. As they totally forget she's there, New Kelly suddenly gets a look on her face like she's walked into a makeout session, which she kind of has. She ducks out, and the boys continue jamming until Toby comes and taps on the window that connects to the bullpen. "You have to stop," he says through the glass, which apparently hasn't been muffling the sound at all.
After the pancake luncheon, which was clearly a failure on every possible level ad a few impossible ones, Michael gathers his employees back in the office and starts to tell them about a dream he once had about a peanut butter and tuna fish sandwich. It was delicious in his dream, but when he woke up and made one in real life, it was disgusting. Gosh, where could Michael be going with this? We don't get to find out, because the phone has started ringing and he tells Pam to pick it up. It's "Russell from the pancake luncheon." Looks like a sale is happening, and Michael and Ryan swarm all over her while she tries to close the deal. Which she does. They celebrate, and Michael THs, "Who would have thought that the thing to save this company would be work? And a pancake luncheon." As they leave for the day, Ryan going out to get in his mom's Taurus station wagon and Pam kissing Jim in the parking lot and Michael climbing over the side of his still-trapped car, he goes on in VO and TH about the things that are important to a small company, pausing only to wait for the noise of a flush from above to subside. I'm thinking the documentarians may need to come up with some workarounds for this space.
In the kitchen, Dwight and Andy wander through while Andy talks about the wonders of a capella. Sitting at the table with Oscar, Angela just rolls her eyes. Roll all you want, lady, but their relationship with each other is already better than what either one of them had with you. Give Bandit a kiss for us, 'kay?
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 , or just e-mail him at m.giant[at]gmail.com.