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At the company picnic, Michael's got an agenda to try to win Holly back from her boyfriend, which he plans to accomplish by putting on a comedy routine with her. It goes from long and unfunny to upsetting and unfunny when they basically announce the imminent closing of the Buffalo branch. Oops. That kind of puts a pall on the picnic, and Michael decides to hold off on telling Holly how he feels for now. "I'm in no rush," he tells us. Hey, dude, this isn't just about you.
Meanwhile, Scranton vows to avenge Buffalo on Corporate in the final game of the volleyball tournament. Unfortunately, ringer Pam hurts her leg, and Wallace and Charles insist Jim take her to the hospital, ostensibly to protect the company but really to get her off the court. Which Jim does, while Dwight stalls for time before calling in a sub. At the hospital, though, getting Pam back to the game becomes moot when she and Jim get some news. Some big, big, big news. How big? Big. I don't want to spoil it now, but we'll learn more when the new season starts in nine months. Oops, I mean three months! Three. Not nine months.
(…gosh, nine months? What was I thinking?...)
Look back at Michael's career highlights.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Let's just forget that last week ever happened, shall we?
New Kelly has already learned the fine art of covering for Michael, in this case because he's dead-asleep with his head on his desk. As Jim explains in a TH, Michael ate a whole 9-inch chicken pot pie for lunch and crashed out. "So we're all trying to be very quiet so as to not wake him up before five PM, which..." Jim holds up the wall clock and spins the hands from 12:50 to 4:50. "...actually should be in about ten minutes."
Outside Michael's closed office door, Jim and Pam stand in their stocking feet, conspiring in a whisper to change Michael's computer clock and watch. "What do you need from me?" Dwight whispers. He THs that he normally wouldn't condone this, but he has an appointment with the horse doctor. "How that horse became a doctor, I don't know," he borscht-belts, cracking himself up before saying he's kidding. "He's just a regular doctor who shoots your horse in the head when its leg is broken." Dwight goes down and changes the dashboard clock on Michael's car while PB&J are busy in his office. "Like clockwork," Dwight smirks.
With everything in place, including the office lights off, Jim gives a silent countdown. On zero, New Kelly flips the lights on and everyone starts laughing at once. Michael wakes up, laughing harder and longer than anyone else, and notices the clock at 5:01. "See you all tamale," he says. Everyone assembles in the parking lot to watch him drive out, and they give themselves a big hand.
"Welcome Family & Friends to the Annual DUNDER MIFFLIN INC COMPANY PICNIC," reads the big sign after some severely truncated credits. Jim and Pam, wearing red baseball shirts with "Scranton" across the chest in script, enter the busy event, clearly not looking forward to a lengthy stay. "Should I have left the car running?" he jokes before they notice the camera. In a TH, they explain what happened last year. Apparently some drunk guy hit on Pam. "Yeah, you don't grab these for balance," Pam points out. Jim doesn't seem to think it's such a bad idea. In fact, he's suddenly looking a little tipsy right now.
Dwight has brought a friend, and it's obvious they're made for each other. They're using light meters to calculate the ideal SPF for the day, and Dwight busts out a homemade jar of sunscreen/repellent. "You think the EPA would ever allow that much DEET?" he asks, and they cackle. Dwight THs how he and Rolf met, in a shoe store: "I heard him asking for a shoe that could increase his speed and not leave any tracks."
Kevin points out Holly to Michael. Indeed, here she comes, walking with her boyfriend A.J., both wearing green Nashua shirts and laughing happily. "We're just friends," Michael assures Kevin, then walks over to meet them. He and Holly do the same lame, "Who let you in?" routine to each other, then hug longer than strictly necessary before Holly introduces A.J. An even more unnecessary hug follows. Michael awkwardly offers her/them lemonade, but then ends up making an iced tea run instead.
"I lied to Kevin," Michael THs outside the refreshment stand. "Holly and I can never be just friends." He whips out a list of reasons he and Holly should be together, which, since item one is that they are "soup-snakes" (he means "soul mates"), probably needs a punch-up before he tries them out on Holly. Or at least a spell-check. And that's coming from a sympathetic audience.
Charles greets Pam and Jim and tells the latter, "Must be nice to get a rest from all your rest." He walks away, to Jim's confusion. "Want me to beat him up for you?" Pam offers. He tells her not to ask him things like that. "You should just do it." They seem to have wandered into a team meeting led by Dwight, holding a clipboard for the volleyball lineup. Andy asks to be positioned to New Kelly, and Dwight says he gets it. "You want her to set you up so you can spike it!" Andy chuckles uncomfortably, and Dwight puts him to Phyllis, who Dwight says is the best setter on the team. "Sly dog."
Michael sits at a picnic table across from Holly and her boyfriend A.J. He asks them what's up, and Holly hems and haws, so he says they're designing a house. "Cool, for who?" Michael asks. A.J. duhs that it's for them. Michael swallows his dismay and modestly says, "I'm designing a chair." Holly laughs warmly, remembering Michael's "chair-pants idea." "Put me down for a pair, I'm a size 34 waist," A.J. says gamely. "All right, fatty," Michael agrees, and tells Holly they should rehearse. A.J. asks if they're really going to do it. "You bet your fat ass we are," Michael says pleasantly.
Michael and Holly do a joint TH about how they're going to do a "presentation." "The old comedy team is back together again," Holly says. Fortunately the scene ends before they can get more than a couple of seconds into it.
A volleyball game is underway between Scranton and Albany (in light blue), and New Kelly biffs a bump. The competition is triggering Andy's old rageaholic tendencies, because he demands of her, "Are you blind? Are you blind?" She shakes her head, and Andy "saves" it by asking a guy in sunglasses on the other team if he's actually blind. "These are expensive Ray-Bans, jackass," comes the answer. Although I think we know who the real jackass is, Albany guy.
From a platform, Wallace uses a microphone to address the troops, welcome everyone to the picnic, and introduce a song. "Uh, it's a sketch now," Michael says from behind a tree. Wallace introduces Holly and Michael and disclaims, "I have not seen this," before yielding the stage. Yeah, that's not really going to cover it. I already want to make this stop. They've come up with "Slumdunder Mifflinaire" The Slumdog Millionaire parody goes on roughly forever, with possibly made-up facts of the company's history and absolutely no jokes. Everyone in the audience is bored ad irritated, up until the $500,000 question about which branch is closing : a) Scranton, b) Buffalo, c) Utica, or d) Toothbrush (teeth-brushing is the closest thing to a running gag here). The final answer turns out to be b). Obviously the orange-clad Buffalo contingent, which happens to be right up near the stage, is not taking this well. When Holly and Michael play the interrogation scene where Holly asks Michael how he knows that, he says, "David Wallace told me!" Buffalonians call David out. "They didn't know?" Holly asks Michael. "I guess not," he whispers. Oops. Wallace reluctantly announces that yes, they're going to be closing Buffalo. Over general consternation, Holly and Michael decide this is probably the time for them to take a bow.
After the break, Wallace is chewing out Michael and Holly (mostly Michael) for what he's going to have to deal with now, at what's supposed to be a fun company picnic. "A little boy just walked up to me and said, is my daddy going to have a job by Christmas?" "Oh, he's just thinking about his own gifts," Michael scoffs.
Meredith, Pam, Dwight, and Oscar are debating whether to go on with the tournament. "If we don't play, then the other team wins," Dwight points out. Oscar finds the truth in that and says, "Dwight's right. Corporate deserves to get its ass kicked." With that, they're all on board.
When the game is underway. Jim spikes the ball over the net, and over the cheers and applause, Charles says, "Look who just woke up!" volley, Charles returns the spike and boasts to Jim, "I've been up for a while!" Boo-yah! "Its six to six. It's a nail-biter," Kevin tells the camera, just before the ball bounces off his chest. "Kevin!" Angela snaps from the sidelines. "Now it's seven-six, or is that too much accounting for you?" Standing to her, Rolf retorts with an accounting question of his own: "What does one fiancé plus one lover equal? Answer: one whore." Dwight calls Rolf off, and Angela smiles a bit. New Kelly wins the point, and Andy is smitten. volley, Pam hurts her leg, and Wallace and Charles insist she get it looked at. Jim calls them on just wanting to get Scranton's best player out of action, but they're adamant. Dwight quietly tells Jim to get her to the hospital not far away while he stalls the other team. So Jim picks Pam up, and Dwight pretends to be so angry at Pam's injury that he kicks the ball into the woods. "I'll get it," he offers, starting off in a slow amble.
Michael and Holly talk about how maybe they shouldn't have mentioned Buffalo. Michael thinks it went well up to that point, but Holly has her doubts, even though she's glad they did it. "Me too," Michael says, and shifts around. Holly waits expectantly, clearly open to whatever it is Michael's about to say to her, but when he opens his mouth, all that comes out is, "We have a lot of good material for year's sketch." Holly pretends not to be disappointed. "I can't wait," she says.
Jim's at the hospital, on the phone to Dwight and telling him to keep stalling. In the background, a nurse wheels Pam toward x-ray in a wheelchair, asking, "No other radiation this year, no metal plates, no chance you're pregnant?" Pam asks to hurry this up, because she has a game to get back to. "Oh, good," the nurse snarks. "My question was do you have a game to get back to?" Nice try, hoping to breeze past that pregnancy question. You don't pull that out in a season finale unless you plan to use it.
Michael and Holly meet up with A.J., who's dutifully polite about the sketch, except about how the end went on a little long. After he and Holly take off, Michael THs that the reason he didn't say anything to Holly was because he didn't have the perfect moment. For some reason, he's decided that their future will begin with a long story about how they got together. "I will see her every now and then, and maybe one year she'll be with somebody, and the year I'll be with somebody, and it's going to take a long time, and then it's perfect. I'm in no rush." Let's see how Zen he is when Holly and A.J. move into that house.
Anyway, the translation of all this is that Amy Ryan is too expensive. Dammit, why does she have to have such a successful film career? Maybe we could sabotage it by starting a rumor that she hates special-needs children. And then: welcome to the cast!
Wallace and Charles push for a sub, but Dwight continues to stall -- by counting.
Jim tells Dwight over the phone that they're almost done, and then Jim gets called in for an update. We don't hear a word, but we can see into the window where Pam is sitting in an exam room with the doctor, looking somehow both shell-shocked and happy. Jim listens, and his face goes from shock to joy, and he and Pam hug each other tightly, looking happier than we've ever seen them. After a moment, Jim comes back out of the room to call Dwight back. "Dwight?" he says, almost tearfully. "Send in the sub!" And then he dives back into the exam room for more happy hugging.
So what do you think they told 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.