This is the one that hooked me.
At Reception, Kevin pitches his band to Pam for her wedding. In a TH, Jim insists that he doesn't mind constantly overhearing Pam talking about her wedding preparations. After all, she has to hear him talking about his social life (suuure she does), and they both have to listen to Dwight order deer urine. "So it evens out."
In the break room, Angela overhears Phyllis and Pam talking about Pam's save-the-date cards, and says she hasn't gotten hers yet. In an explanatory TH, Pam explains that she's not inviting everyone. "It's my wedding," she says, "and I don't want anyone there who has called me a hussy." Jeez, bridezilla much?
Michael accepts an unheard compliment from the producers on his Fantastic Sam's haircut and explains, "We're doing ID photos today. Gotta represent."
I should probably mention that the guy taking photos for the ID badges is being played by Scott Adsit. So please consider it mentioned. Phyllis prepares for her photo, and Dwight can't help noticing the amount of makeup she's wearing. "Is that a disguise or something?" he wonders. Dwight then THs that security badges are long overdue. He even tells us about the time he brought his potato gun into the office. "Can you imagine if I was deranged?" Well, I probably could, but I don't want to strain anything.
Michael's got Ryan in his office, trying to get him to swap neckties with him for the ID photo. "Let's...keep our clothes," Ryan says uncomfortably. Suddenly they're interrupted by the sound of Oscar freaking the fuck out all over Toby in the conference room door. Michael goes in to check it out, and Toby explains that he's just letting Oscar vent about something to do with Angela. Normally Toby uses the break room for stuff like this, but that's been commandeered by the ID photographer. Toby then pulls Michael aside and says that if he just listens, things like this have a way of working themselves out. "What do you know about conflict resolution?" Michael demands. "Your answer to everything is to get divorced." Michael calls Pam in to the conference room, and tells her to bring Angela along. He's taking over. Why work when he can humiliate Toby?
Michael starts this little Oscar vs. Angela session by opening a training manual and making everyone sit there impatiently while he starts describing the various conflict outcomes, beginning with number one, "lose-lose." Angela wants to skip right to number five, "win-win." Michael does her one better and offers "win-win-win," in which Michael also wins for having successfully mediated the conflict. In other words, Michael thinks he just got written permission to make this all about him. Which he normally has to muddle through without.
Michael comes out into the bullpen and asks who has filed a complaint. Almost everyone raises their hands. He follows up by asking if their complaints were resolved, or just listened to and forgotten. "Listened to and forgotten," everyone murmurs. So Michael has decided to resolve everything. He wants to start with Phyllis vs. Angela. "You already did me," Angela says. Jim lip-syncs Michael's "That's what she said." Michael pages through the file, pointing out that Angela has complained about everyone except Dwight, which makes her the only one. Before she and Dwight can get too uncomfortable, Michael asks Toby to define "redacted." The reason he asks is that there are a bunch of complaints against Dwight that were redacted six months ago. Dwight loudly wonders why anyone would do that. Spotting Angela's uncomfortable reaction, Pam comes to her rescue for some reason, stepping up and changing the subject to complaints against herself. There's only one in there, but it's withdrawn, so Michael wants to move on. But Pam can't let go of the idea that someone might have ever thought she's anything less than perfect, so she makes Michael read it: "Does she have to plan her wedding on office time? Shouldn't she do that at home?" With six months? Even I know that isn't enough time to plan a wedding, and I barely got to mine on time. Pam turns and gives Angela a look of betrayal. Angela just looks back at her like, "What?"
Pam THs that she's kept Angela's secret all this time, gave her a save-the-date card, and now this. "What the hell!" she fumes.
Michael gets to a complaint from Kelly. "'Ryan never returns my calls.' Join the club." Ryan tries to blame his voice mail. Kelly says she wants her complaint withdrawn. Toby agrees, "Fine, I'll take your name off, so no one will know." This last is directed pointedly at Michael, but it goes right over his head. Jim makes a heroic attempt to derail all this nonsense: he raises his hand and says that Dwight tried to kiss him, and he hadn't told anyone because he isn't sure how he felt about it. Dwight demands it be redacted, but Jim says he isn't making a formal complaint. "I just thought we should talk about it." Awesome. Dwight asks Toby something about the file in New York. "Sure," Toby lies. As Michael moves on to Stanley, Pam stands up and hisses at Angela, "Thanks for ratting me out." Angela denies it, but Pam doubts her, since the only one Angela hasn't complained about is "Bobblehead Joe." Meanwhile, Stanley denies filing the complaint that the men's room is whites-only, which it of course isn't. "Then why is there a picture of a white man on the door?" Creed demands. Moving along.
Michael unlocks the conference room door and emerges into a bullpen that's nearly abandoned. Completely abandoned, if you don't count the three people who are sitting there pissed off, glaring at nothing. Going through an inhabited but hostilely silent kitchen on his way to the break room for his ID photo, Michael compares the day's experiences to his understanding of shiatsu massage: painful and vomit-inducing while it's happening, but great when you're finished. As Michael sits for his photo, he sees through the glass wall to where Toby is nodding at him knowingly. Michael has the grace to look ashamed as the camera flashes.
Back in the conference room, Jim and Dwight are talking about Stamford. Jim jokingly suggests they both go, but Dwight says he has a girlfriend. "Sure you do," Jim mocks meanly. Michael returns, saying they'll get to the rest of the complaints later. Dwight doesn't want to be put off, but Michael manages it anyway.
If you're watching this on DVD, get ready to pause. As the photographer is on his way out, Michael stops him and asks for a group photo. The photographer will only do it if Michael pays him twenty bucks. Michael does it, and then gets everyone to gather in front of reception. He can't make them smile, though -- not in their current collective sour mood. So he ends up paying another twenty, and another, and another, trying to get a decent shot. While the group is posing, Pam decides this is the time to confront Angela, and Jim realizes that the only way to stop that is to confess that he was the one who complained about Pam's wedding planning on the clock. He tries to downplay it, saying he was just venting and he didn't know Toby was going to write it down, and then he took it back anyway. "Okay," Pam says stiffly, from the place where her heart used to be. "Oh, dear," Phyllis murmurs, apparently involuntarily. Shipper.
As the camera keeps flashing Andrew Jacksons right out of Michael's pocket, Michael VOs about the difficulty of getting a picture of fifteen people. Got your finger on the pause button? "But I'm sort of an expert at Photoshop, so it turned out fine in the end." Pause right now, on the shot that is the final product of Michael's "expertise." Michael looks fine, but everyone else has faces that are at the wrong angles, the wrong sizes, under the wrong lighting, and possibly cut from photos that were taken from the wrong photo shoot on the wrong day in the wrong universe. It's a Dali-esque nightmare, and it is glorious. Michael continues his content-free blathering about conflict and cage matches, as we see that Jim is at Corporate in New York, meeting with Jan. "Sometimes you have to open the cage," Michael concludes, "and that is something that Toby will never understand." Nice save, Michael.