Scratching in Scranton

S09E10

While Jim's off in Philadelphia doing his new job that involves hanging out on the basketball court with Dr. J., Pam finds single momhood somewhat challenging. The most obvious manifestation of this is that Cece came home from school with lice, and Pam appears to have brought them into the office. The good news, at least at first, is that everyone assumes the office epidemic is Meredith's fault, including Meredith herself. Pam puts off confessing until Meredith shaves her head, at which point it kind of seems a little late. Dwight takes command of the situation from inside a hazmat suit, but it's really Erin -- with her history of 22 lice infestations growing up -- who really knows what to do. On her instructions, most of the employees slather each other's hair in mayonnaise. Angela takes advantage of this opportunity to torture Oscar, while Erin and Pete all but make a date out of it. Aside from a bug-bomb mishap or two with Dwight, the situation seems mostly under control, at least until Pam takes an ill-advised speakerphone call from her mom that blows her cover.

Not everyone's bugged, though; Darryl, Phyllis, Stanley and Nellie are sent to the warehouse where they can do their work and remain lice-free. But the other three get into Darryl's hair anyway. After all his hard work getting Val to dump him so he can follow Jim to Philadelphia, the others manage to convince Val to take him back.

And then Pam and Meredith make up over beers and karaoke. The end. Seriously.

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Jim, Darryl and Kevin chat in the break room about sports, until Jim bites his lip and takes it so hard that he lets it ruin his whole day by biting his lip. In fact, he interrupts a TH with a going-home tantrum.

After the credits, Pam comes into the office for the day looking so bedraggled that Erin mistakes her for Meredith at first. Foreshadowing! Pam THs about all the stuff she's been covering (poorly) at home while Jim's been off working in Philadelphia. The worst part is that Cece got lice, so Pam was up all night disinfecting everything. "But don't tell Jim. He has a huge meeting today. Under a lot of pressure, and he's doing it all for the family." Cut to Jim in a crowing-head from the "sports marketing" company's loft office in Philly saying, "I am meeting Dr. J. today!" But like Pam, he'd rather be discreet about his day, because he knows how he'd feel if she were off go-karting with John Stamos. They talk on the phone, each avoiding getting into details, until the limo comes to take Jim to the meeting. Yeah, that's another detail that Jim doesn't get into.

Darryl and Val appear to be having a Serious Conversation in the parking lot. Darryl THs that getting Val to dump him was part of his plan so he can work in Philly, and explains how he made it happen: "First you say, 'what are you gonna do, break up with me?' Like that's a joke. And then you gain a lot of weight."

Pam drops off a request for Meredith, who seems to think Jim left her because of her nagging. Pam looks ready to get into it, but when Meredith starts furiously scratching her head, she bails on the conversation quickly, although Pam hopefully THs that maybe Meredith is just confused.

Cut to Meredith at Reception, where Erin is using a fork and a flashlight to inspect her scalp. "Between the foster homes and the orphanage, I had lice 22 times," Erin assures Meredith knowledgeably. Dwight enters the bullpen just in time to hear Erin's confirmation that yep, the critters are in the house, and he orders a full lockdown. It seems he still holds a grudge against lice since his own childhood trauma, as he explains it a TH: "For fifteen years they called me 'freak' and 'four-eyes' and 'sci-fi nerd' and 'girl-puncher,' all because I had lice when I was seven." Erin inspects Dwight's scalp and declares it the cleanest she's ever seen, and he explains he uses lice shampoo every morning. Then he busts out a can of bug spray to cover his escape from the bullpen.

By M. Giant

Everyone else is assuming this is all Meredith's fault, including Meredith, even as Pam points out they shouldn't jump to conclusions. Erin quickly confirms that Angela, Stanley, Pam, Oscar and others are all infested. Dwight returns wearing a full hazmat suit, and learns that so far Phyllis, Kevin, Darryl and Nellie are all lice-free, but since they do not already own their own hazmat suits, he orders them to the warehouse while he stays upstairs to fight the infestation. "If you don't hear from me by lunch, call me. I might want lunch."

Darryl takes charge of the Bug-Free Four on the way to the warehouse, which he still considers his territory somewhat, and alerts them that Val dumped him. He's still pretending to be broken up over it.

Up in the bullpen, Erin physically restrains Stanley from leaving, breaking a pencil off somewhere in his rolls in the process. And Pam does a heated TH where she defensively argues that maybe Meredith got her own lice all on her own. "Fine, I'll tell her it was me," she finally mumbles shamefacedly.

Jim gets dropped off by the limo, nabbing some snacks on the way out, and is thrilled to find out that he's meeting Dr. J. at his private court.

Pam enters the kitchen to confess to Meredith, only to find her already shaving her head. "I think these critters migrated from down south," Meredith says, a comment that's still less horrifying than the fact that she's SHAVING HER LICE-INFESTED HEAD IN THE OFFICE KITCHEN. WHERE FOOD IS. Pam does another TH in which she promises to tell Meredith at the right time. "There's a right way to do this!" she says, looking a little unhinged.

Dwight, still in his hazmat suit, is giving everyone a presentation on lice in the conference room, making it sound as horrible as possible. but Erin says all they need for their hair is mayonnaise. She explains how it suffocates the bugs and is a healthy alternative to chemical shampoos. Oscar gets all locavore-smug about that, but the mood is ruined when Meredith enters, spear bald. She looks like a light bulb with wrinkles. Erin assures everyone that no one else needs to end up that way. "Not that it looks bad, Meredith. It looks awesome. You look like a baby who suddenly aged fifty years. A cute baby, but something suddenly sucked the life force out of it." Where are we on an Erin spinoff, anyway? Pam offers to go out for mayonnaise, and offers to get something special for Meredith, who gratefully requests a pack of Nicorette gum and a pack of Kools.

Down in the warehouse, the Bug-Free Four are hard at work around a makeshift worktable, and Darryl makes much of a chance encounter with Val. The others ask Darryl what he needs, and after wishing aloud for a chocolate cake, he goes off for a moment to himself, secretly grinning at the camera. Nellie decides that she, Kevin and Phyllis need to give Darryl what he wants most: Val.

Jim's on the court with Dr. J., impressing him by getting nothing but net from center court. He gets a call from Pam, and pretends he's all stressed out while sipping a smoothie delivered by a waiter, and Pam pretends to be totally in control while dropping a jar of mayonnaise on the parking lot. And Dr. J. offers Jim a pair of Japanese Nikes. Remember when celebrities playing themselves on sitcoms used to mean the writers took the week off? Looks like those days are back.

Erin hands out jars of mayonnaise to everyone in the conference room and tells them to leave it in for four hours. Dwight shows off a pair of scissors for when they're ready to get serious, and when Stanley tells him to put them away before he hurts himself, he attempts to twirl and holster them like a gunslinger, only to cut a gash in the hip of his hazmat suit. That only adds to his epidemic-movie cred as he locks himself in Andy's office screaming, "Noooo!" Erin tells everyone to pair up because this works better with a buddy. Angela asks Oscar, to his surprise. Creed asks Erin, but she lies that she's already paired up with Pete. So that leaves Creed with Pam. "Oh, God, stuck with the weirdo," he mutters.

Angela seems to be enjoying dolloping mayonnaise roughly on Oscar's scalp. Meredith does Stanley, telling him he's getting a bargain with a bald partner and all. Creed bails as soon as Pam finishes, leaving her to do herself. And Pete and Erin are having fun with it, of course. Andy, you are an idiot. All I can say is there had better be a good Ed Helms movie year. Last time a core cast member disappeared for this long we ended up with Inglourious Basterds.

Val comes into her office to find Phyllis, Kevin and Nellie waiting for her. They advise her to take Darryl back. Nellie gives it a pretty hard sell, painting a picture of Val's future that's clearly from her own bleak past (and present). Val thanks them and dismisses them, but Kevin hangs back and asks her out. Which may actually do the trick.

Everyone's back at work with their hair looking like potato salad, and Pam's still struggling to grease up her own head when her phone rings. Rather than touching it with her mayo-covered hands, she elbows the speaker button, so everyone in the bullpen hears her mom loudly telling her that the school called and Cece still has lice. Everybody stares bullets at Pam while she manages to knock the phone loose. "Shave her heeeead!" Meredith screams through gritted teeth.

After the ads, everyone's screaming at Pam while she tries to make excuses. She apologizes to Meredith, but Meredith isn't having it. But in a smug TH, Meredith boasts about not being the one who brought lice into the office. "Sure, I gave everybody pinkeye once and my ex keyed a few of their cars, and yeah, I BM'ed in the shredder on New Year's. But I didn't bring the lice in! That was all Pam!"

From inside the manager's office, Dwight uses his megaphone to announce that he's about to toss an insecticidal grenade into the bullpen and they have sixty seconds to evacuate. While he's running down the litany of the toxins within, he drops the grenade and CGI vapors cover the entire window from inside, blocking him from view. When they clear, he's almost immediately tripping, and counts down from ten to purple before collapsing.

Angela has Oscar leaning back against the sink to wash out the mayonnaise, which includes banging the coffee pot against his head and then emptying it on his face. "You're waterboarding me!" he manages to spit. Angela's not too broken up over it.

Kevin's playing with a big roll of bubble wrap and the baler in the warehouse while one of the workers looks on skeptically.

Erin and Pete are for the sink, and he strips to his wifebeater so she can start rinsing the his head. Which they both seem to rather enjoy, given that he's wearing an Elvis Presley pompadour littered with dead bugs.

Warehouse workers run to the bubble-wrap-clogged baler while Kevin feigns innocence.

Val comes up to Darryl and says she's willing to make it work. Darryl says he doesn't want to force her to do anything she doesn't want to, but she insists that she's up for it. "I'm back together with Val. Yaaay," Darryl THs grimly. She kisses him while Nellie, Kevin and Phyllis take a bow.

Dwight packs his hazmat suit into the car, saying it was a pretty good day today. And then a bug grenade goes off inside his car, giving the CGI people another chance to make with the fake vapors. Must be a nice break from pixellating genitals for them.

Back inside the office, Pete asks if Erin already left. Oscar guesses so, but Erin's hiding around the corner, avoiding him.

Jim and Dr. J. are still fooling around on the basketball court, not doing business of any kind that I can determine, and he misses a call from Pam. She leaves him a voice mail saying she hopes his day got better and hangs up. Meredith invites her out for a beer, adding, "You're buying." At the bar, over a pitcher, Pam apologizes again to Meredith and gives her props for not only being a single mom but also rocking the shaved head look. "I got the bartender's phone number while you were in the john," Meredith boasts. "I'm gonna take that freak to Bonetown before the night is over." They clink glasses. And that's it. Well, not quite; in the tag, they do a drunkenly karaoke duet of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." In place of ending the episode with anything resembling a joke. Seriously? I think I preferred the lice.

By M. Giant

Warehouse workers run to the bubble-wrap-clogged baler while Kevin feigns innocence.

Back inside the office, Pete asks if Erin already left. Oscar guesses so, but Erin's hiding around the corner, avoiding him.

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.