After the musical number, a quick post-summer update: Erin and Gabe are dating, Kelly completed her Minority Executive Training and now at least looks smarter, Dwight is now Dunder Mifflin's landlord, and Michael hired his nephew Luke as an intern. Turns out Luke sucks even more than Michael does, but Michael resists pressure from everyone to do anything about it, until he loses his temper and spanks the kid. Which solves one problem, at least.
Also, Pam messes up a prank Jim wanted to play on Dwight, so to make it up to him she has Kevin sabotage the elevator. This kind of backfires on her, as she subjects herself to being trapped in there with a very well-hydrated Dwight, but Jim has forgiven her, so it's all worth it. Whatever.
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The elevator doors open to reveal Andy, casually standing against the back wall wearing his earbuds and fiddling with his iPod. The song, which we can hear, is "Nobody But Me" by the Human Beinz, which you know even if you don't recognize the title or the band. Andy suddenly starts lip-syncing as he bounds out of the elevator, the shades inside the office window flip to reveal the handwritten words "LIP DUB," and Andy pulls the door open. There's Pam, bopping along backwards as we follow her into the office. Kelly and Oscar and Kevin jump out from behind her, Erin's dancing on roller skates, Jim's participating by holding a sign that says "Boogaloo," and it just keeps going. Andy does a confetti-tossing cartwheel, Oscar wheels Erin backwards past Stanley, who is holding the kitchen door open and warning, "You're falling behind." Kelly vamps in the kitchen, then opens a door to reveal Ryan wearing a "Wuphf" t-shirt, which is clearly not part of the plan. Every time you think you can't hate Ryan more, he takes it to the level by spelling the name of his idiot social networking thingy like that. On past Gabe, doing a dorky kneecap dance, and an obviously confused Creed, and into the break room, where Kevin is wearing Meredith as a backpack. Back to Creed, who has gotten with the program and is miming the guitar solo on his Strat while taking on his Bluetooth; past Kelly and Ryan arguing; Stanley warning, "still behind;" Angela closing Darryl's office door ("I didn't want to be on the internet!" she bitches); past Phyllis dancing exuberantly; and into Michael's office, where he is of course wearing a tuxedo and an ill-fitting top hat while doing cheesy magic tricks. Back out to the bullpen, which erupts in thrown streamers while Dwight simply erupts, getting into the moment by leaping on a desk and threatening everyone with a hunting knife. Everyone dances while the song fades out, with Michael jockeying with Dwight and Andy for front-and-center position, and finally Andy asks, "Toby, how'd we do?" "Well, that was better," Toby says uncertainly from behind the camera, shrugging almost audibly. Everyone cheers. Because in case you've forgotten, it's all about the small victories here in Scranton.
Cool, an almost totally new credit sequence!
Michael talking-heads about the end of his great summer, which included losing a lot of weight due to West Nile Virus, getting an infected foot wound, and seeing Inception ("or at least I dreamt I did...").
Andy is chatting up Erin at Reception when in walks Gabe. The awkward moment gets even more awkward when Gabe and Erin kiss! Gabe THs that he started dating Erin over the summer ("exquisite" is his one-word review), and Erin THs that Gabe's accomplishments are impressive, both "careerwise and heightwise...Thank God he's my boss because I would not have said yes to a first date if I didn't have to." Andy rhetorically asks if he's angry, and reminds us that he' s been through Anger Management. To demonstrate, he goes to his happy place, which includes a humpback whale. "He's eating Gabe."
Pam goes to adjust the thermostat, but Dwight locks it up, telling them to sit on an ice pack if they're cold. Jim pipes up, "I don't know if you've heard, but we're supposed to be drinking out of weird backpacks instead of cups like regular people -- oh, you did hear." Because that's what Dwight is doing, because he's just too busy for anything but "hands-free hydration." Remember how he bought the building? That opens up a whole rich new vein of comedy potential. I hope.
Kelly THs that she spent her summer in the Minority Executive Training program at Yale. "You could ask me, 'Kelly, what's the biggest company in the world?' and I'd be like, 'blah blah blah, blah blah blah, giving you the exact right answer." I guess we'll have to take her word on that. Her hair looks fabulous, though.
A mop-topped intern enters with a coffee tray, late. He hands out the goodies along with some nicknames like "Big O" for Oscar, "Tiny" for Kevin, and "Darryl Hannah" for Darryl. Darryl's willing to let that slide, but not the fact that it's decaf. The intern reluctantly "offers" to drive all the way back, but Darryl lets that slide, too. He THs about his summer of being laid up and watching CNN, but mostly how he hates the new assistant. Andy agrees, objecting to the intern's calling him Nard-Man. "I'm the Nard-Dog. The Nard-Man is my father." Maybe the intern is just getting a bum rap? No, he introduces himself by saying his name is Luke Cooper. "I love cinema. My favorite movies are Citizen Kane and Boondock Saints." Okay, he must die.
In the kitchen, a bunch of the staff are complaining to Michael about him, but Michael defends him until he takes a sip of his drink and realizes his order was wrong, too. Whereupon he agrees to "look into it."
Dwight arrives at his desk, dropping a key ring the circumference of a hubcap. "Bigger the keychain, more powerful the man," Dwight points out. Jim agrees, "A janitor said that." He then says the raccoons are back, moving around inside the ceiling and the walls, and hands an all-too-willing Dwight a stethoscope and a hammer to deal with the problem. Jim gives us a TH update on his summer: "Dwight bought the building, so actually this has been the busiest summer of my life." Imagine how busy he'd be if he and Pam had a baby. While Dwight's distracted with sounding for varmints, Jim snags Dwight's key ring and adds a few keys to it from a giant pool of other keys he's got stashed in his desk drawer. Pam laughs loud enough to tip Dwight off, which is a total rookie move, and Dwight reclaims his keys, throwing the fakes one by one into Jim's face. "Sorry," Pam says, Jim shrugs that he was only going to add one key a day until Christmas and make Dwight's pants fall down. "So unprofessional, Mrs. Halpert," he says, getting up and leaving the desk, "I love you," she calls lamely after him. But that doesn't prevent him from pretending to not be as upset as he is, and pretending poorly.
Phyllis gets off the phone to call over to Luke, who answers, "What's up, Venus?" It seems a shipment of samples she promised someone didn't get received, but he's not worried about it. Meredith chases Luke away from her desk. Seeing this, Michael gives Luke some cash to make an ice cream run. Then he THs, "Another thing I did this summer: I hired my nephew." Figures.
But who knew Michael even had siblings? Back from the ads, he explains that his half-sister cut him off fifteen years ago, which he remembers because the last time he saw Luke was on the opening day of Ace Ventura 2. I'm a little curious about the story behind that. "Anyway, I lost him in a forest," Michael explains. Okay, I don't need the rest of the story.
Michael is giving a presentation in the conference room consisting of "Don't Bother Luke." Except he's added a circle with a line through it, which they point out is like a double negative in visual aid form. Michael tries to clarify, getting no help from anyone, until Phyllis points out that Luke deserves some bothering. Michael says they don't want word to get back to Sabre that they yell at assistants. Dwight asks who would tattle, Gabe? Gabe plays along, getting a laugh (at least from Erin) and Michael says there actually is someone else in the office who's close to Luke. Dwight wonders how close. "Well, Dwight, he wiped his butt. Is that close enough for you?" Close enough for Dwight. Toby makes the stunning conclusion that Michael and Luke are related, which Michael briefly denies before confessing. He makes the case for mixing family and business: "Do you think they should have held open auditions for the band Hanson? What if no one named Hanson showed up? That wouldn't even make sense. Or what if they just hired the littlest kid and a 50-year-old guy who's a murderer? Really safe." Creed is just utterly stimulated by this debate. Michael points out that God hired his son Jesus to save the world, and while he's not comparing himself and Luke to God and Jesus, he asks, "Why does God get to do something that I don't?" Oscar points out that Luke sucks anyway, but Michael protests, "He should not be punished because he is related to me and bad at what he does." Out of nowhere, Kelly points out that a level playing field Darryl mentioned earlier is actually a zoning issue. If nothing else, that at least shuts everyone up for a minute. Oscar asks why Michael kept it quiet if there's nothing wrong with it, and Michael had planned a whole joke about genes while wearing jeans that's now been ruined. I actually completely believe that.
Anyway, here comes Luke, and Michael tells them all to treat him like his nephew. They give him a warm welcome until they discover that all he brought was a couple of quarts of soy ice cream and bagel chips.
Pam is still feeling guilty about blowing Jim's prank, even after trying to treat him to anything he wants from the vending machine. "I need to make this right," she THs.
In his office, Michael gets a text that turns out to be from the staff down in the parking lot, who are converged around Luke's car. In the back are all the packages he was supposed to overnight and didn't. Andy threateningly tells Michael to make Luke open his car, "or I'm going to do it myself. By calling Triple-A." Meredith's already slim-jimmed the door, and everyone retrieves their materials, complaining that Luke is costing them sales. Oh, and Michael's pants didn't get returned.
Gabe is in Michael's office, talking to Jo on Skype about the situation. Jo tells him, "Lower yourself, Gabe, I don't want to have a conversation with your crotch." Gabe sort of perches on the arm of Michael's chair, which is the most awkward of several awkward options that were open to him. Jo asks what's up with the kid, and Michael explains, "I love him." "How far has it gone?" Jo asks seriously. Michael explains that Luke is his nephew, which doesn't cut much ice with Jo, who has a nephew of her own that doesn't work for her. "You know why? Cause he's a screw-up!" Michael's sticking to his guns, and Jo warns that Michael's accountable for him and has to "cover his ass like tighty-whiteys." "I will cover his ass like moss on a Mississippi tree stump," Michael agrees. Jo doesn't like the new saying, and disconnects with a curt, "Deal with it, boys." Which isn't really a strong act-out line, but there it is.
Michael VOs about how he's been working with Luke, and he's had to push him, and then Luke slows down, and then Michael pushes him again. This is during a montage of Michael picking up Luke's slack while Luke fucks around.
Pam is making Kevin tamper with the elevator controls to mess with Dwight. "Just let me take a look at the circus board," Kevin says, pulling it away from the wall. "Dwight is about to get so Pammed," she says, earning a nation of eye-rolls. Then she actually gets in the elevator with Dwight, I guess so she can record this on her phone for Jim. The prank seems to be going okay, until the elevator gets stuck. Dwight panics, ordering Pam to pry the doors open. He's already peeing in the corner. "I've got 56 ounces of fluid in my bladder and we have to establish a pee corner!" This is already scarier than the previews I've seen for Devil.
Luke is disrupting a staff meeting with a laser pointer, and after chasing him out and then trying to take the pointer away, finally Michael gets angry enough to take action: he bends Luke over a desk and spanks him, yelling at him to learn to be more professional. Luke takes one look at the employees who saw the whole thing through the conference room window and runs out, cursing and crying. This still isn't as bad as losing him in a forest. Michael returns to the meeting, mildly remarking, "There are many different schools of thought in... capital punishment..." "That was awesome!" Kevin interrupts. "Texas justice," Stanley agrees. Creed remarks that Luke had been trashing them all on Twitter. "You follow him on Twitter?" Jim asks. "Finally a kid who's not talking about Betty White," Creed THs. "Of course I follow him." Hee. I think the funniest thing The Office could do right now would be to get into a feud with Community, but I think that was probably just the beginning and the end of it. Back in the conference room, Gabe wants to have a private talk with Michael about how he just physically assaulted an employee. "And what is this in reference to?" Michael asks solicitously.
Out in the hallway, Jim discovers the open elevator stuck between floors with technicians working on it. Pam proudly tosses him her phone with the video archive of the prank and boasts. "They don't call me the Bart Simpson of Scranton for nothing." After a brief but necessary digression about whether they actually call her that, Jim offers her a hand down, but she pleasantly demurs, "Nope, scared of gettin' cut in half. Also, there's pee on the floor. "'Course there is," Jim agrees, and suggests Chinese that night, so I guess they're good. A somehow oblivious Dwight crouches down to say hi, and Jim comments that he must almost be out of water. "Stop drinking the water!" Pam orders.
Back in the bullpen, Andy and Phyllis are doing reenactments of the spanking, like no one ever does, and while Michael VOs about how working with family rarely works out except for the Ringling Brothers, they invite him out to join in. Dwight takes a turn, but as always, it's a little too real.
In the tag, Michael sits with Toby and Gabe in the conference room and learns that to avoid a lawsuit, they're calling it a "stress-induced outburst." Michael's punishment; six weeks of counseling, which even he can't believe his luck. Gabe appreciates Michael's positive attitude and says they can start right now, because all of their HR staff are certified counselors. Michael's a little slow to catch the snap that that means Toby, whereupon he asks about other options. Gabe says it's either this is termination. Michael, predictably, has to think about it all the way into Outsourced. Which I do not have to think about at all.
Watch this episode below, discuss it in our forums, then see Michael Scott's greatest career moves!
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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.