Pam THs that she's looking forward to Take Your Daughter to Work Day, because she wants to get better with kids. "Because I'm getting married," she concludes. It's not immediately clear how A relates to B until you take a moment to think about whom she's getting married to. She talks about all the extra candy she's setting out on her desk. "Just like the witch in Hansel & Gretel," she realizes. Michael comes in, acting gross, and Pam tells him to knock it off, pointing to the big WELCOME DAUGHTERS banner she's hung up behind her desk.
Michael complains in a TH about how his R-rated self is not suitable for exposure to kids. "I am like Eddie Murphy in Raw, and they are trying to make me like Eddie Murphy in Daddy Day Care. Both great movies, but still." He had me, and then he lost me.
Michael tries to duck into his office, but Pam tells him to say something to the kids who are there, orbiting their respective parents. Why she wants to warp the minds of her coworkers' offspring (and Kevin's future stepdaughter) I have no idea, but Michael grudgingly introduces himself. By way of explaining his position, he calls himself Superman and the employees citizens of Gotham City. "That's Batman," Jim and Dwight say in perfect unison, the first time that has ever happened. Michael decides to be Aquaman instead, shutting himself in his office with a muttered, "I work with a bunch of nerds." Wet and ready, bro!
Toby herds his daughter Sasha, an adorable little girl of about four or five (I can tell because she's older than my son and younger than my niece), past Dwight in the break room as Dwight intones at her, "Hello, tiny one. You are the future!" Move faster, Toby.
Kevin is boringly explaining the various parts of his workspace to Abby, his fiancée's daughter. I'm guessing Abby is about nine or ten, but that may not be reliable, given the fact that all of my recent experience with that age group was in recapping Kid Nation. Abby politely listens and nods. She's obviously way smarter than Kevin, who is already wondering how he's going to fill the rest of the day. But in a TH, he remains hopeful. "I just hope she doesn't look on my computer," he cracks, and then dashes off as he realizes that isn't actually funny.
Michael drops a folder on Stanley's desk, and Stanley reintroduces his daughter Melissa. Michael dutifully makes some polite noises, then, because he can't stop himself from being gross about Stanley's daughter, keeps going about how good-looking Melissa is and to keep the frat boys away from her. Melissa is, of course, in middle school. "An extraordinary time," Michael flounders. And then he THs that he'd rather be a fun uncle than a dad, because nobody ever rebels against a fun uncle. They do when they learn the word "drunkle." Which Michael probably hasn't.
Later, he's trying to talk to Meredith at her desk. Normally, this would be very weird, because he's talking seriously about work stuff in a normal voice without any goofy digressions. But the moment is saved from the threat of productivity by Meredith's mean-faced kid Jake (ten or eleven, I'd guess), who stands there throwing gummy bears at Michael. Meredith THs that thanks to getting permission to bring her son to Take Your Daughter To Work Day, she doesn't have to pay for a sitter for her suspended-from-school kid. She's also in a good mood because the hair and makeup people appear to have temporarily dropped whatever vendetta they've had against Kate Flannery all this time.
While Angela and Kelly are setting up for a little reception in the conference room, Toby brings his little girl in so she can offer to help. Angela turns her down flat. "We'd have to explain everything," she says, almost apologetically. Toby wasn't expecting that (where does he work?) and takes Sasha to go draw instead. But where will he find her any paper? Kelly gushes about how cute the kid is, and how she can't wait to have babies of her own. Did I mention that Ryan is in the room too? And that his blood apparently just turned to Freon? He THs that he and Kelly agreed to just have fun. "And I'm learning that fun for Kelly is getting married and having babies. Immediately. With me." Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
Okay, this is starting to freak me out: Michael is, once again, working. He's having an adult, businesslike conversation on the phone when Toby's daughter Sasha wanders in and stares at him over his desk. Michael stares back at her like she's a hooded cobra ready to strike. Is that reaction because he doesn't know how to deal with kids at all? Or is it because this particular one has Toby's genes?
At Reception, Pam offers to let Abby help her shred documents. Abby passes. We don't yet know that shredding documents is one of Kevin's favorite things, so she probably gets plenty of that at home. After a TH in which Pam expresses her desperation to get just one kid to like her, Jim asks Abby what she's reading. It's The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. And just like that, Jim has a new best friend. As Jim effortlessly recruits Abby to help him with some sales, Pam looks on with envy, and not a little admiration.
Michael wraps up his phone call so he can devote his full attention to being freaked out by Toby's daughter. She plays with some of his toys, and the ice is finally broken when she finds his train whistle and he makes her laugh. It's kind of sweet, because in another year she's going to be too old to find him funny at all.
Jim shakes Abby's hand and pretends to be hurt by her strong grip, which turns into Dwight calling Jim weak. After that, Meredith's kid, Jake, comes over to bobble Dwight's heads and generally be an obnoxious little asshole. We also learn that he calls his mom Meredith. "That's very disrespectful," Dwight says. It's kind of cute, because he's not so much disapproving as he is saddened. But he rallies, smiles, and offers to let the kid call him "Mr. Schrute." Jake thinks that's hilarious. "Mr. Poop?" he "repeats." "Schrute," Dwight corrects pleasantly. Jake leaves with a derisive "Sure, Mr. Poop." Dwight looks over at Jim and Abby, who are quietly giggling. And to make things worse, Angela is looking over at Dwight with a glare of disapproval. Well, really. Who wants to be a in a secret office romance with Mr. Poop?
Sasha visits Phyllis. "Are you Mother Goose?" Sasha asks. Phyllis actually has to think about it. I maintain that the Ghostbusters Doctrine would apply here; if someone asks if you are _______, say yes. That's how I got to be Jeff the purple Wiggle for a day once, and was thus allowed to nap through a kid's birthday party.
Stanley's daughter Melissa chats up Ryan in the break room, asking for his number and e-mail address. Seeing this through the window, a jealous Kelly goes straight to Stanley and tells on...Ryan. Cut to Stanley ripping Ryan a new asshole in the break room. And later, outside, a clearly PTSD Ryan tells us, "That was one of the most frightening experiences of my life." No doubt. Stanley can be quite the sleeping giant.
Dwight is "entertaining" the kids in the conference room, starting with a ditty on his green plastic recorder and following that up with a gruesome German fairy tale from the 1860s that involves little kids getting their thumbs cut off. Standing in the doorway, Michael tells Dwight to cool it with the stories from his "Nazi war criminal grandmother." Sasha asks what a Nazi is, and Dwight launches into his walking-Wikipedia thing until Michael cuts him off and kicks him out. "Bye, Mr. Poop," Jake calls after Dwight. "There goes Mr. Poop," Michael agrees, and asks who likes Dane Cook. Well, at least this time he knows his audience.
At the copier, Angela comes up to Dwight and says something about her disciplinarian father. "I can only hope my mate has some of those same qualities," she says pointedly before leaving. Translation: Jake better not leave today without a size-13 Birk-print on his ass.
Michael gives the kids a tour of the office, and ends up getting bogged down in a discussion of their outdated business model, as compared to that of Office Depot. "We have better service than they do!" Dwight hollers from across the floor. Michael becomes so desperate to change the subject that he leads the kids over to meet Creed. Which is like showing them around a slaughterhouse and asking, "Who wants to crawl through the separator?" Creed greets the kids as pleasantly as a TV host, and asks them, "You ever seen a foot with four toes?" Well, Creed knows what kids are into. Michael quickly stops Creed from untying his shoe. "The hair covers it up mostly," Creed protests, as though that makes it better.
Back in the conference room, Michael is sitting on the floor with the kids and claiming he used to be the star of a kids' show. They don't believe him. So Michael dispatches Ryan to go break into his mom's house to get a tape labeled "Fundle Bundle" as well as Michael's guitar and tambourine. "Do you know how to play the tambourine?" he asks Ryan, which makes me wonder for how many years Michael's mom made him take tambourine lessons as a kid.
Over a brief montage and kids hanging with adults in the conference room while everyone enjoys pizza, Michael VOs about how raising kids is so much easier than everybody says. "You joke around with them, you give them pizza, you give them candy, you let them live their lives. They're adults, for God's sake." I would point out to Michael the havoc that becoming a parent wreaks on your social life, but I suspect that area would be a wash for him anyway.
Michael sets up the clip of the old TV show. It's obviously one of those crappy little local kids' shows that used to fill time on Saturday mornings before there were such things as infomercials. You know, a brightly colored set, and hosts with cutesy names in anachronistic costumes, and a few lint-covered cartoons and maybe a "Little Rascals" short or two. And then when it was over you might listen to the Victrola or take the horseless carriage down to the soda fountain for a Sarsparilla. Right, Creed? Anyway, Fundle Bundle, like many shows of this type, also featured hand puppets interviewing regular kids who showed up in the studio for taping. The one on this show is a cat reporter, name of Edward R. Meow. Michael has them fast-forward to the part where Meow is interviewing kids. One of them is apparently a very young Chet Montgomery, whom everyone recognizes as a weatherman on channel 5. "I wanna be on TV!" Chet confidently tells Meow. Everyone marvels about that, and how it came true. Michael shuts them up so they won't miss his bit. Sure enough, the kid to be interviewed has slicked, side-parted hair and is wearing a suit and tie. Yes, it's miniature Michael Scott. It's a terrifying vision. Meow asks Mini-Michael what he wants to be when he grows up, and Mini-Michael babbles, "I wanna be married and have 100 kids so I can have 100 friends and no one can say no to being my friend." Which explains...this entire series, actually. Meow's puppet face goes slack-thumbed for a minute, before he recovers himself and throws it back to the host. As Michael wonders where the rest of his "performance" is, the kids all ask him how much of that came true. Michael has to admit that none of it did, and decides to get back to work. Everyone looks sad for him, no one more so than Jim and Pam.
Later, Pam and Jim are still worried about Michael, while Roy roughhouses with Jake. And later still, Pam tries to talk to Melissa about Melissa's mom. "That woman is not my mother," Melissa says coldly. "That woman is my stepmother." So Pam is 0 for 2.
Jake comes up to Dwight at the copier with a news brief: "You're ugly." Dwight is momentarily flustered, but the look he gets from Angela gives him the strength he needs to spit back, "Well, at least I'm not a horrible little latchkey kid who got suspended from school." Jake runs off calling for Meredith as Angela gives Dwight an approving smile. She's clearly not into men who pick on people their own size.
Toby comes into Michael's office to return an armload of toys that Sasha apparently scored from him, as well as his watch. Noticing that Michael is just staring forlornly out the window like the French Lieutenant's Woman, Toby asks if Michael's okay, and admits that he's only asking because he has to. But then Toby ends up sitting in Michael's guest chair as Michael wonders whether it's too late for him to have kids. Toby suggests Michael start by getting a wife or girlfriend (not Jan), or possibly look into foster parenting. Michael thanks Toby, and asks if Sasha has a godfather. Yikes, forward much? That's like proposing to someone on your ninth date.
Pam finally gets somewhere with a kid. Yes, she struck out with Abby and Melissa, and Sasha is so covered with Michael-cooties by now that Toby's barely going to want her back, but Jake clearly approves of the shredder. I think this may make Jake the second thing that Pam and Roy have in common.
Getting right on that becoming-a-parent thing, Michael has decided to sign up with an online dating service using the handle "Little Kid Lover." Splendid.
As Kevin and Abby are leaving, Abby asks Jim to come over for dinner that night. Jim regretfully says he has plans, which Kevin calls him on. "You never have plans," he says. Jim assures them that he has a date. A date?!? Obligatory non-reaction reaction shot from Pam, whose thoughts are clearly along the lines of !?!! . But before everyone goes, Michael says there's one thing left to do.
In the conference room, to a captive audience of the whole staff and their four kids, he and Dwight sing "Teach Your Children" together. Ever the polymath, Dwight plays guitar and Michael plays tambourine (finally, the lessons pay off). From the open doorway, Jim asks Pam why Michael owns a guitar he can't play. "I think he thought his ukulele skills would transfer," Pam speculates. Jim chuckles and backs away from the door, so that when Pam turns back to Jim to add something to the thought, he's already gone. On the way to his date. HIS DATE!!! WITH SOMEONE WHO IS NOT PAM!!!!!1!!
As the "song" continues, and Michael's high harmonies pose no threat to those of Stephen Stills, we cut to the parking lot. Jim drives off toward his DATE, and Michael helps Toby put Sasha in her car seat. He gives her a sad farewell look, like he's not going to see her again until the Take Your Daughter to Work Day (even that is optimistic, I'd say). And then the song ends, only to have Michael say, "One more time! Teach..."
In the tag, Dwight THs about the value of children to the Schrutes of yore, for their ability to work the fields and help produce the food. And also to be food if necessary. Then Dwight's deadpan fa&cced;ade cracks and he says that didn't happen. "It never came to that," he assures us.