Jim and Pam are back from their honeymoon, and the first thing Michael does is tell Jim he's dating Pam's mom. After getting over the initial skepticism and horror, Jim tells Michael to keep it quiet and end it immediately. But Michael can't do the first part, let alone the second, and when Pam finds out, she has a total "Luke, I am your father" moment. Actually, that's pretty much her whole day, as she proceeds to lose her entire freaking mind over this. And you can imagine Jim's discomfort, as he's caught between his new wife and his new co-boss in what turns into some pretty ugly arguing. So he's in no mood whatsoever to put up with Dwight's weak attempt to bug his office. After playing Dwight for a disappointingly short period of time, Jim punishes him by making him wash their car, which cheers Pam up quite a bit. But Jim doesn't know that there's been a real listening device in there all along, capturing all his boring sales conversations. Diabolical.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see why, despite their occasionaly terribleness, Jim and Pam are perfect for each other. And check back soon for the full weecap!
Jim and Pam are back from Puerto Rico, and there's the expected overinvested reaction from everyone to their return. They do a joint talking-head about Frank and Benny, another couple they met on vacation. They tell us that it always makes them laugh to say "Frank and Beans!" in a funny voice. That's going to be put to the test, I'll tell you right now.
Michael comes out of his office wearing sunglasses, pretending to be blind. Jim and Pam play along patiently, but only because Michael doesn't push it too far by groping Pam's boobs. He just gropes Jim's. He THs in his office about his new improv character, "Blind Guy McSqueezy." Apparently the women in the class hate him. I think that makes Michael Andy Kaufman.
Meredith asks Pam what she brought them, and isn't satisfied with candy. "Oh, because you spent so much on the wedding," Meredith snarks. "It's good to be home," Pam tells us.
Dwight comes to visit Jim's office, first to bitch about Jim leaving a pen on his desk and to stick it in Jim's pen holder, but really to present Jim with a peace offering: a wooden duck decoy. Actually it's a mallard, as Dwight will be correcting people throughout the episode, but I'm just going to take care of that right now and you can just assume it happens at every opportunity for the rest of the half hour. Dwight lets us in on a little secret: there's a "listening device" stuck in the bottom of the mallard. It's a baby monitor, actually. He sets it on Jim's desk, apologizing for "bugging" him all these years.
Pam tries to place her container of Puerto Rican candy on the reception desk, but Erin won't accept it before checking with Michael.
In the kitchen, Michael breaks some news to Jim about how he's taken a lover. Pam's mom, of course. So that's still going on, apparently. "From the wedding?" Michael reminds Jim, as though he doesn't know who his mother-in-law is. Jim thinks Michael's messing with him, until Michael tells him what kind of car she drives (with seats that go all the way down), and Jim lets out a bleep/blurred curse. He's horrified, obviously. "First of all, never tell Pam," he says. But he never gets to the second item before Michael says it may come out when they tell Pam that night over dinner. Poor Toby happens to come in at the wrong time and gets yelled at by both of them. "What'd I do?" he mutters to himself, exiting with his tail even further between his legs than usual. Jim tells Michael to cancel dinner and never see Pam's mom again. Michael thinks Pam wants him to be happy more than anything. "Not more than anything," Jim insists. But Michael gives in. "Okay so we're good," Jim says, walking stiffly out. As though it's ever that easy.
Michael tells Erin to change his dinner reservations from four people to two, and clears her to put the candy on her desk. "Thanks for asking," he adds. Erin tells Pam they're good, and Pam brings it up, wondering what's going on there. Don't expect to find out tonight.
Pam comes into Jim's office, they exchange a dorky "Frank and Beans!" and then Pam wants to give Michael his gift. Jim tries to put it off, but Pam's insistent. Jim reluctantly follows her out, but not before noticing the feedback noise coming from his duck decoy. He picks it up, sees the baby monitor taped inside, rolls his eyes, puts it down.
In Michael's office, he opens the bottle of rum shaped like a parrot as Erin stick her head into say his reservations are changed. Pam picks up on the fact that Michael has a date, and sweats him a little before Jim calls her off. He tries to say he doesn't deserve the gift. "Just take the parrot," Jim bosses. He and Pam are about to leave, but Michael keeps talking, opening the door to Pam asking more questions, until Michael says the person is the mother of not just a friend, but a coworker. Jim gets more and more bleak-faced as Pam's face goes from excited about gossip to horrified. The stomps out, slamming the door behind her and screaming, "No! No! AAAAAAGGH!"
Michael THs, "That could have gone one of two ways, but I never expected her to get upset." What were the other two ways?
She's spent the whole ad break screaming out in the parking lot, looks like. Dwight comes in to Michael's office, offering to help him out by giving him the chills, grade-school style. Michael tells Dwight about Pam's mom, and Dwight, after the initial surprise, expresses annoyance at not knowing that Michael's into moms. "I could have introduced you to mine," he grumps.
Pam's now screaming at her mom over her cell phone, and hangs up on her when Jim comes out with her coat, a cup of coffee, and the news about the listening device in the duck Dwight gave him. "If I play it right, I think I can get him to play out the plot of National Treasure." Pam is in no mood. "Your mother is sleeping with Michael Scott," she says, stomping off yet again. She's really getting her stomp on this episode.
Back upstairs, Jim calls Andy into his office. After a brief talking-head shot where he doesn't so much talk as hold up a sign reading, "DWIGHT PICKED THE WRONG DAY TO PUT A WOODEN MALLARD IN MY OFFICE," Jim asks Andy for advice, and plays some loud opera that not only overwhelms Dwight's bug, but floods the whole office. Creed is moved to tears. Dwight can't hear a word as Jim tells Andy he was thinking of getting this opera for Dwight's birthday. Andy shoots down the idea, and when he returns the bullpen and Dwight asks him what went on, the only answer he gets is, "Trust me, it would only make you mad." Jim waves unsmilingly at Dwight from his doorway.
Michael and Jim are talking to the troops about a community outreach program. After a digression about Dunder Mifflin's Peruvian paper mill and whether it was or was not responsible for a cancer cluster (because what's funnier than cancer?), Jim says the prize for the best idea is a $50 restaurant gift certificate. Dwight suggests volunteerism, and says he puts in time at the animal shelter. "Last Sunday I had to put down 150 pets all by myself." Pam speaks up with her idea to make Scranton better: Michael can leave it. Michael plays along and gets a laugh, but Pam's not kidding. In fact, she keeps pushing, trying to lead a chant about no more meetings. Nobody joins in, but behind her, Stanley looks happier than he has in months. Michael's cell phone rings, and Jim tries to keep the meeting going while Michael steps not nearly far away enough to answer a call from someone he calls "Boo." Uh-oh. Angela's trying to share her idea, and Jim is of course encouraging her to speak up loudly. But everyone would rather listen in to Michael's call, to the point where Angela gets shushed. So they get to hear Michael finish up his call with Pam's crying mom with an affectionate, "Bye, pickle." Jim struggles to keep things on track, but now even Michael has abandoned him. "Pamela Morgan Beesly, you need to apologize to your mother," Michael orders. Morgan? Pam demands an apology from Michael in return, and when Michael refuses to apologize "for seeking happiness in the arms of a lover," Pam shouts, "Don't call my mother your lover!" So it's out, and most of the employees are kind of disgusted. Even Creed judges, "That's messed up, Michael." Michael asks to say one thing: "What is so wrong about me?" That wins some people over, but not Pam. She yells at Michael some more, and yells back, "I am your boss, and I may someday be your father." Pam spits, "You will never be my father. So you get out!" Michael tells her, "I hope that you are willing to die in this office, because I am." "So am I," she says. Could Jim be more in hell right now? Well, maybe if one of the parties here called on him to take a side, which lucky for him doesn't happen before the commercials hit.
Pam delivers something to accounting for a signature from Oscar, and Angela sings, "Pa-am, how's your day going?" Oscar volunteers that Pam is overreacting. She turns it around on him, asking how he'd feel if Michael was sleeping with his mother. He says his mother's in a wheelchair. Which makes it a little awkward when she needs him to sign a second page.
Dwight listens in on the mallard channel, but instead of Jim, he's hearing Kelly talk to Ryan about the hat he's wearing, which I've been trying to ignore up until now. Dwight charges back there and demands it back. Kelly refuses, but when Dwight offers five bucks for it, Ryan demands twenty. They settle on ten, and Kelly smiles at her hero. Who pockets the ten and says, "That reminds me, you owe me three bucks for gas." So clearly the hat isn't making him nicer.
Michael comes back to the annex to apologize to Toby for his earlier tone. Toby accepts the apology and invites Michael to have a seat on the shredder. Michael asks Toby to intervene in this dispute, and Toby offers to talk to Pam. Michael thanks Toby with a hug, giving us a conspiratorial look over Toby's shoulder, but Toby is completely fished in. "I always knew that if Michael took the time to know me, we'd become friends," he THs. He's going to kick that football so far this time.
Then he goes over to Pam's desk to try to quietly invite her into the conference room for some conflict resolution, but she loudly refuses. Toby picks up his binder and turns back to his "buddy" Michael to apologize, but Michael's done with him now and back to calling him "jackass." He tells Pam she's as stubborn as her mom. "When you don't want to do something, you just don't do it." Stanley's chuckle in the background is worth a whole season of "That's what she said"s. Michael says Jim was right that he shouldn't have told her, and -- yes, there it is -- Jim's day just got worse. "Frank and Beans," he says weakly. Michael and Pam's argument spills into the kitchen, him offering to stop dating her mom if she wants, and her taking him up on it, and him refusing, saying he thought she wanted him to be happy. "I could give a shit about your happiness!" she yells. "Stop dating my mother!" Of course she could also be saying "fuck" or "tampon" in place of shit it's hard to tell with the FCC. Michael vows to date her even harder. She storms out, barely sparing Jim a "shut it" on her way through the bullpen.
Jim's not even in the mood to keep messing with Dwight when he returns to his office. "Dwight, you brought the mallard back," he whispers into the duck. From way over at his desk, Dwight says he had to, and stops when Jim holds it up so Dwight can see him whisper into it, "Hi, buddy." Busted, Dwight comes in and sits down to apologize. "I was jealous that you got the promotion over me," he admits. Jim tells Dwight he's terrible at it, and "not equipped for espionage." "Oh, I'm equipped," Dwight starts to bluster, but gets shut down in a hurry. Jim agrees to not tell Michael, but Dwight will wash and buff their car. Dwight nobly accepts the punishment.
Michael tries to TH about how he has plenty of female friends without Pam, but since they include the Quizno's lady and an aunt who blocked him on IM, it's not all that convincing. On he way out he tells Pam goodnight and thanks for the rum, and gets the silent treatment. Which he seems smart enough to realize is an improvement. Jim calls her into his office so he can show her the nice thing Dwight's doing for them. Yes, he's claiming that Dwight's washing their car to help make up for the rough day Pam had. They stand and reminisce about Puerto Rico (including one more obligatory "Frank and Beans"), and Pam admits that maybe she's overreacting. Jim agrees. But Pam doesn't think she is. Jim is smart enough to agree with that too. Michael starts to come back into the office, but thinks better of it.
On the way out, Kevin asks Ryan where he got his hat. "I'd rather not say," Ryan says. After everyone's gone, Dwight goes into Jim's office, plugs a little electronic thingy onto the pen he brought in earlier, and listens to recordings of Jim selling paper over the phone. "I've got eight hours of this," Dwight boasts, saying that the mallard was a decoy in more ways than one. He knew Jim would find it, and that was all part of his plan. "I'm not insane," Dwight says. And then he settles in to listen to more paper talk.
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.