The good news is that Jim and Pam are about to do their first sales pitch together, and that's not even particularly good news. The client? Donna, the restaurant manager from "Happy Hour" who almost ejected Michael and ended up flirting with him. Michael thinks she's totally into him, and she is giving some mixed signals. Except for how she keeps not letting him kiss her. Yes, you heard me. Even Pam, his biggest cheerleader today, has to admit that she's just not that into him. Donna manages to escape without getting kissed, but when he rushes out to return a dropped barrette, she's still there -- and she kisses him.
Dwight, annoyed that Darryl is considering joining Sabre's Minority Management Placement Program, decides to prop up Kelly as a candidate instead, hoping to have his own pet manager someday. By the time he realizes what a terrible idea that was, it's too late, and she's in. Namaste to Dwight's worst nightmare.
And then nobody believes Michael when he tells them what happened with Donna. Which is totally understandable, if you know what I mean.
Michael is making everyone in the office speak Spanish, because of our neighbors to the south, and healing for North America, and of course his vacation week to Cancun. He practices with Jim, who shoots back a bunch of junior-high Spanish that totally throws him. Dwight, on the other hand, thinks this is a waste of time, as everyone will be speaking German in 20 years, or a German-Chinese hybrid. Only if civilization is destroyed except for German DVDs of Firefly. Oscar talking-heads that Michael is having trouble remembering the genders of nouns, so he suggested marking everything with gender symbols. "I should have been more specific," he adds, holding up a pair of blurred-out Post-Its. Back in Michael's office, which is plastered with similar tags, Oscar complains, "Your office is full of genitalia." Michael spits out a phrase in Spanish, which Oscar translates as, "That's what he says?" Enter Angela, who Michael calls "Angelo," because that's more Spanish. After she corrects him, Michael Post-Its a pair of boobs onto her forehead. Someone probably should have done that a long time ago.
Jim and Pam are working on a joint sales presentation, and Pam keeps coming up with corny jokes to throw in. Dwight complains about it, and Michael says he picked the two people who would put the best face on the company. Dwight protests, "Why would you pick two people who have never cut the face off of anything in their lives?" Jim says that's a fair point.
In a joint TH, Pam and Jim explain what they're doing, and she makes another corny joke, complete with Vaudevillian inflection. "I don't even know who you are any more," he tells her.
Donna, the manager from the barcade everyone visited in "Happy Hour", (Sid & Dexter's, not to be confused with Dave & Buster's) comes in looking for Michael. Jim and Pam start to step up to greet their new prospective client, only to be cut off by Michael popping out and asking, "Somebody order a hooker?" Donna finds this a lot funnier than Jim does. Michael THs about the passionate love affair he and Donna are having, which they're not actually having, but Donna is there to maybe buy printers. And she's not the only one who's going to be asked to buy something this episode. Back in the bullpen, Michael introduces the Halperts as the Wonder Twins, and Donna can see the family resemblance. "I knew it!" Angela cuts in. "You should see their baby."
During the sales presentation Jim and Pam are trying to give Donna in the conference room, Michael busts in to offer Donna the Victoria's Secret catalogs he's been getting by mistake. She seems to appreciate this extra touch of customer service, but I don't see her making sure the pages aren't stuck together.
Gabe is telling Darryl about Sabre's "Print In All Colors" Minority Executive Training program in the kitchen, and of course Dwight wants in, as the minority he tries to claim to be: "Glasses wearers? Cholera survivors? Geniuses? Non organic family farmers?" Not what Gabe is looking for. Dwight hates how much attention Darryl is getting, which of course makes Darryl like it even more. So in a TH, Dwight rhetorically wonders which minority he'd rather see in management: "The competent, hard-working one who does things his own way, or the malleable simpleton who can be bought for a few fashion magazines?" Is it a spoiler to say he's just going to end up making himself miserable? Because I think you knew that already.
Back to the annex, where Dwight sucks up to Kelly and asks her how many Indian CEOs she can think of. She can't think of any CEOs at all, so Dwight suggests she could be the Indian Bill Gates or the Indian Ted Turner. She's thinking more Indian Julia Roberts, and Dwight wants this bad enough -- or wants this to be over bad enough -- that he just goes along with it.
Michael has apparently not only chases Jim and Pam out of their PowerPoint presentation, Michael has inserted a few slides of his own, which are photos that are ostensibly to show off the printers' color capabilities, but just happen to focus on his "Shrek-green eyes," the "crisp, gorgeous white" of his teeth, and the "crisp gorgeous black" of an African American underwear model. That last one is part of a subliminal campaign to turn her on and associate it with Michael himself, that seems based on an incomplete understanding of that Old Spice commercial with The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. There's even a brief flash of the word SEX up on the screen. Donna seems impressed, and Michael starts to lean in for a kiss. Which gets dodged. Looking up and seeing Jim and Pam watching in horror through the window, Michael yells, Jim, what was that printer we were looking at?" I believe it was the LaserJet 1030 AARGH.
After the ads, Jim and Pam are in Michael's office, and Jim points out that maybe Michael shouldn't try to kiss people at work. Look who's talking. Michael makes this exact point, and Pam agrees with him: "If she was really that upset, she wouldn't still be here." That sounds like a good basis for a relationship.
Donna does her one and only TH about how getting hit on frequently goes with her job. Plus it's flattering, at this point in her "late 20s."
Pam suggests that Michael take her place in the pitch. Jim is horrified at the idea, but she thinks it's worth losing the sale if there's a chance Michael can find love this way. "Good luck, wingman," she tells Jim with a salute. Negative, Ghostrider, the pattern is full!
Dwight is practice-interviewing Kelly about her hardships as a minority, which seem to consist mainly of her parents pressuring her to settled down and marry an Indian guy, and "Indian guys wear their cell phones outside their pants. It's so dorky." Dwight, with his phone outside pants, demonstrates how accessible that makes it, pretending to call 911 about the Scranton Strangler. I don't know if I'll be more upset when this Scranton Strangler crap pays off or when it doesn't.
Everyone in the bullpen is watching Michael and Donna continue to flirt in the conference room. "Some people just ooze sexuality," Phyllis says as though she's speaking in the first person. Creed remarks that you can only ooze two things, sexuality and pus. Ever notice that I never skip quoting Creed?
Donna is angling for a discount, underlining her point by taking her jacket off and revealing that in addition to the low neckline, her shirt also has shoulder cutouts. Although Jim is firm on the price, Michael thinks there's some wiggle room. He's firm in another way.
Michael goes to Oscar about the discount, who says he ran the numbers: "In this case, it makes more financial sense to gain money." Jim suggests Donna might just be flirting to get a better price. "If she is, it's working," Michael says appreciatively.
Jim and Pam spar about this very subject in a joint TH, and how you can flirt with people you are both attracted to and want something from. For example, herself. "I was after your money," she tells Jim. "Well, the joke was on you," he says. "Yes it was," she agrees.
Dwight finds Kelly and Ryan wasting time, and says he thinks Kelly should keep practicing for the interview, but Ryan has coached her to turn every question around on the interviewer. As an example, he tosses her a sample question and she snaps, "'Would you ask that same question if I was white?' We're so in." Dwight asks what "we" means, and Kelly says that when she's a minority executive, she'll make Ryan manager. "And then the two of us are cleaning house," Ryan boasts. Dwight THs, "If you'd have told me this morning that today I'd be creating a monster capable of my own destruction, I'd have thought you were referring to the bull Mose and I are trying to reanimate." Yeah, but anyone would think that.
Michael goes over the contract with Donna, and per an earlier suggestion from Kevin, offers her a mint to gauge whether she's interested. She offers him one back, and when she's not looking he tries to eat it out of her hand. Yeah, that was a bit much.
In the kitchen, Michael complains to Jim, Kevin, Andy, Oscar, and Pam that he can't stop himself from kissing Donna. "Now you know how I feel, sitting to those M&Ms all day," Kevin says sympathetically. "Why don't you just move the M&Ms?" Andy wonders. "WHY DON'T YOU SHUT UP!" Kevin screams at him. Michael's up for another try, which Jim, Oscar, Kevin, and even Andy are against. Pam says it's unlikely but not impossible. She's still hung up on the fact that Donna hasn't run screaming from the building yet. "Most printer sales are done over the phone, Ms. Boobshirt!" she THs indignantly. Thank you, Angela. Michael says he's going with "Pam's group." The guys all follow him back, trying to talk him out of it, but it isn't happening. Because he's like Rudy, in the movie Rudy. Seriously, he says this.
Dwight bursts into Gabe's office to say Kelly is DQ'ed, on the basis that Indians migrated from the Caucasus region of Europe, which makes her Caucasian. Or, at the very least, lighter than Darryl. Gabe says Darryl withdrew his application anyway, for reasons having to do with softball. "I got my whole life to be a minority executive," Darryl THs. "I only got about a year left in these knees, though." That means Kelly is the only applicant. "Namaste," Kelly says from the doorway in a pink sari, rocking a fresh bindi on her forehead. As Dwight goes rushing out like the room is on fire and he needs to find a dark-skinned fire extinguisher, Gabe asks about the bindi, saying he doesn't mean to be offensive. Kelly: "I do find that offensive, actually." Ryan's plan is working perfectly.
Donna is putting on her coat to leave, and he follows her pathetically, like if he can just make the goodbye long enough, something will happen during it. He gets a handshake, and then a hug that he makes all long and creepy before she heads out the door. And then he follows her all the way out to the hallway, and although we can't really see them all that clearly because they're mostly blocked by the doorway, you can hear the Venetian blinds behind her crunching as she slowly backs up from his seemingly inexorable approach. When she finally escapes unscathed into the elevator, Michael returns to the bullpen, where everyone's been watching. "How did it go?" Kevin asks in all seriousness. I think he wants to know what he should tell the police when they get there.
Dwight is pitching the program to Stanley and Oscar, with some unsolicited yet amusing backup from Erin. Stanley threatens to slap Dwight in the face with a rainbow, so Dwight focuses on Oscar, calling him a double minority because he's gay. No, that's really the end of the sentence. But they already know that Kelly applied, and they're scared to get on her bad side, as anyone would be, minority executive or no.
In the interview with Gabe, Kelly is claiming to have hobbies like "yoga, belly dancing, snake charming, beds of nails..." Dwight drags in Hide from the warehouse, and Kelly storms out so Hide can sit down and start telling his heart surgeon/yakuza boss story.
Michael sits in the chair outside his office to pout. Taking her cue, Pam says she was wrong too. Phyllis steps up to say she's also guilty of some occasional flirting. "Usually I don't let it go too far." That wiped the complacent smile off Jim's face. Andy talks about the hot urologist he saw for his torn "scrote," and how he misinterpreted things with her too: "Touchin' around down there, it's easy to get confused." Just then Erin comes up with a barrette Donna dropped, and Michael seizes on it as a sign; he thinks she wants him to return it to her, at her work, right now, this minute. Everyone, including Pam, says she doesn't, and that it doesn't mean anything. He heads back into his office, defeated, but then dashes out into the parking lot. Where Donna calls to him from inside her car, I guess because she has a flat or something and can't leave. "Oh, you're still here!" Michael says in surprise. "I have your baguette."
Gabe enters the bullpen to introduce Kelly to everyone as the newest member of the Sabre Minority Executive Training Program. He THs, "They're going to be pretty pleased in Tallahassee that I snagged an Indian." As he says, the program is mostly black, "Almost too black. That didn't sound right." Gabe looks like he's about to throw up now. Don't worry, Gabe -- you'll soon learn that nobody in your plane of existence ever watches this footage.
Kelly is talking to Erin about the new clothes she gets to buy with a company stipend, and offers to sell Erin the clothes she was going to give away. Dwight comes up to congratulate her, and offers a gentlemanly handshake. Kelly hugs him and says she'll never forget what he's done for her. "Because I never forget anything." Yikes! Dwight THs, "Just once, I would like to be a puppetmaster and have nothing go wrong! Is that too much to ask?"
Out in the parking lot, Michael is telling Donna that everyone told her she wasn't interested, and he didn't believe them, and he was wrong. She says he wasn't, and pulls him in for a kiss. What?
In the tag, Michael returns the bullpen, pretends to be happy about Kelly for about a second, and then announces, "I did it! I kissed! We kissed!" Nobody believes him, including Jim, who asks, "Who?" As proof, Michael holds up the barrette he returned. Which...yeah.
In his office, Michael THs that he knows it happened, and that's all that counts. "I did do it!" he yells out toward the bullpen. Awesome: Michael is dating Snuffleupagus.
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.
Don't believe Michael's claim that he got kissed? Watch the episode to find out.
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