In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
Upon realizing that Holly doesn't seem to share his assumption that they're just going to automatically end up dating again, Michael goes into a black funk. Returning from a sales call with Jim, he insists on stopping to pee at a gas station. With exquisite bad timing, Jim gets a call about an emergency involving Cece (don't worry, she's fine, everything's fine) and has to abandon Michael -- with Michael's cell phone and wallet in his car, no less. Thus begins a citywide manhunt that could have been resolved a lot faster if only the documentary crews could communicate with each other somehow.
But since it's apparently impossible to operate a camera and a cell phone at the same time, Dwight, Erin, and Holly hit the streets. Two of them soon realize that the uncanny connection between Holly and Michael is leading them to him -- at least for a while.
Back at the office, Pam is running a cartoon-caption contest. Gabe takes exception, because a lot of the captions make fun of Sabre. So they just end up making fun of Gabe instead.
Finally, through fate, coincidence, destiny, or whatever you want to call it, Michael and Holly find each other. Again. In more ways than one.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Kelly and Ryan come out to the bullpen to make a big announcement. She waves the ring on her finger and tells everyone... they're divorced. With that, she removes the ring and throws it on the floor, where Meredith of course dives for it. Ryan and Kelly lie that they don't want any drama or side-choosing. Pam, who has either just tuned in or is purposely giving them a chance to demonstrate how full of shit they are, asks what happened. Kelly tells a whole story about how they were in the Poconos and Ryan said he didn't think they should be married any more. Oh, right, they got married last week and didn't tell anyone. Ryan plays the "I'm not getting married until everyone can get married" card, and when Oscar says it's fine with the gays if Ryan marries, it quickly gets ugly, and Ryan and Kelly both ask for a show of hands as to who's on whose side. The office appears evenly divided, with nobody on either side. That seems a little generous to both of them.
Jim is waiting to go out on a sales call with Michael, who is impatiently pressuring Holly in the kitchen about when they're going to start dating again, like it's a foregone conclusion (okay, like it's not, but she has to put on a little bit of a show). She tries to blow him off, making some argument about how she can't keep dating people she works with, but he follows her into the annex to continue haranguing. Jim, meanwhile, is whining to Pam about how miserable Michael is going to be in the car. When she's unsympathetic, he says something about something he's done with one of her "doodles" (which he considers art) as a surprise. That gets her attention, but a pissed-off Michael comes storming out and all but drags Jim away just as Jim is trying to give Pam clues about where to find it. Not that she needed any beyond the first one.
Erin bitches to us about how Holly is ruining Michael's life, despite being not that great. She's got the numbers to support it, too, even if they don't all add up.
In the car on the way back from the sales call (which was successful, not that Michael gives a shit right now), Michael's being as much of a pissy little poopypantsed tittybaby as is imaginable, making some really heroic efforts to draw Jim into an argument. In fact, Michael is so childish that he insists on stopping so he can pee, even though they're only ten minutes from the office. Now, do you hear him, NOW!
While Michael is in the gas station bathroom and Jim's waiting in the car outside, Jim gets a call from Pam's mom Helene saying that everything is fine and the baby is fine, which is the most terrifying way to begin any phone call to a young parent. Apparently Helene was going to take Cece to the doctor to check on her fever and ended up accidentally locking her in the car. After banging on the bathroom door for Michael and getting no response, Jim rushes off, leaving instructions with some dude in a name-tagged coverall to tell the guy in the bathroom to call his office when he comes out. Of course the guy in the coverall is a gas station customer, not an employee, so he drives off seconds after Jim does. By the time Michael comes out, there's nobody there to tell him what's going on. He's utterly befuddled! Times like this, it would be handy to be one of those people who are always being followed around by a documentary crew for increasingly unclear reasons.
Jim calls Pam at the office to explain the situation and how he's driving Cece to the hospital (not forgetting to include the panic-inducing "everything's fine" opening), and adds that Michael's at the gas station. And Michael left his phone and wallet in Jim's car for reasons understood only by Michael (and possibly by one other person, but we're getting ahead of ourselves). Pam promises to put out an APB, which she says stands for "Ask Pam Beesly." There's such a long silence Pam thinks the phone died, but no, that was just the joke.
Michael is talking to the gas station cashier, who doesn't want to let him use his phone, and when he does, Michael complains that his numbers aren't on the guy's speed-dial. The cashier snatches his phone back and tells Michael that his friend ditched him on purpose. Back outside, Michael deals with this double dose of rejection by telling us he's going on "walkabout," and picks a direction to wander off in. He's going to walk about twenty minutes, by the way. Hello? Did the internet just cut out?
Back at the office, Holly is ready to go pick up Michael, but Erin wants to be the one to go -- or at least come along. Dwight mocks, "Space Orphan and Princess Nincompoop are off to rescue Michael." In other words, it's going to be a three-person search party. "You drive, I've got a car full of fox-meat," he orders Erin. And he's about to be in another car full of fox-meat, hey-ohh! Sorry, it's been a long day.
Pam has found one of her doodles (an anthropomorphic printer complete with cartoon gloves) tacked up in the kitchen to the fridge, and people have been writing in joke captions underneath it, most of them making fun of Sabre printers. Far from being offended, she brings it out and suggests a proper caption contest. Darryl's pretty confident of victory, based on his years of experience with making Family Circus actually funny for his daughter, and if he can make that shit amusing my money's on him too. "It on, like Genghis Khan, wearing Sean John in Bhutan!" Andy says. This looks like a fun, morale-building activity -- even if Gabe does look a little uncertain about this. Except for the "even if" part.
Holly, Erin, and Dwight are at the gas station looking for Michael. Holly asks the cashier which way he went, and Dwight snaps at her for asking such a stupid question, when it's obvious that Michael went towards the office. Holly argues that Michael might have gone the other way, just to enjoy the smells of the bakery that lies in that direction. The cashier confirms Holly's theory. Elsewhere, Michael is going in no specific direction at all.
After ads, Michael wanders into a pet store to give advice to the puppies, compliments to the parrots, and brutal truth to the snake.
Dwight calls Pam from the road to find out if Michael's checked in, and he hasn't. He's even more brusque than usual, and is even more so when she asks him to pick up some chocolate syrup and paper towels while he's out. Dwight yells at her, hanging up with a rude, "Pam I'm obviously going to get that stuff for you, so just shut up!" Dick.
Pam puts up a new doodle, this one showing a pair of anthropomorphic cartoon dogs in tattered pants, standing on a tiny desert island with a single palm tree. Everyone's all excited, but Gabe will only let this proceed under his rules: no anti-Sabre captions, no pop-culture references (so as to prevent anyone who doesn't get the reference from being left out, like that's anyone but Gabe), and use "Sticky Quips" instead of writing them directly on the picture. Sticky Quips would be a new Sabre product, basically Post-Its shaped like word balloons. After Gabe pitches them to us in a brief talking-head, he tells everyone to go ahead. Everyone heads straight to... their IM chat windows.
Michael is at a hot dog stand, trying to pawn his watch for a hot dog and getting nowhere. Then he spots a Chinese restaurant whose sign boasts eggrolls big enough to feed China. Which may or may not be true, but they're at least big enough to draw Michael into their gravitational pull.
Dwight comes out of the grocery store ("Too many brands," he explains to an impatient Erin) to discover that Holly has been filling out a form for a new cell phone. Both they and the kiosk lady are annoyed to see she was just trying to get a free stress-ball by putting down the name "Fanny Smelmoore." Picking up another form, the sales lady tells her to say hi to "Orville Tutenbacher," a name Erin and Dwight recognize as a millionaire who farts popcorn. A Michael Scott creation, of course. Dwight and Erin realize that Holly is the key -- follow her, and she'll lead them to Michael. Sure enough, Holly has spotted a bench sign with a familiar slogan and muses, "are their eggrolls really that big?"
At the Chinese restaurant, Michael has finished his lunch. He almost gets away with pulling a dine and dash, but once he's outside, he thinks better of it. He comes back in to make a big confession, and to promise to come back later to pay, but the waiter is not impressed. He calls a large chef to come block the door. The entire door. This is a very large chef.
The search party arrives at the Chinese restaurant, but the only remaining sign of Michael is a Polaroid of him holding a sign reading "THIEF." There's a whole wall of these photos, which I can't imagine makes for a very restful dining experience. Holly claims this is all a coincidence, and after Dwight acts like the waiter can't speak English, and the three of them head off downtown to follow up, we get a closer look at the THIEFboard. Yes, of course Creed is up there.
Gabe wonders why there are no captions on the board, on Sticky-Quips or otherwise. They give him shit about how he destroyed everyone's creativity, until an IM chirps and everyone laughs. Phyllis is the only one who can't get her window closed in time, and Gabe physically pulls her away from her computer to hit the print button. He'd better hope the Sabre printer doesn't crash. Hey, this is easy! But at least someone's using the Sticky-Quips; they're on Gabe's back, advertising him as, among other things, a "Doosh." Aw, Kevin.
Michael has wandered into the part of town with the hobos and what not, and disappears down an alley. Literally, he disappears; by the time the camera follows him around the corner, he's gone. Like that camera guy is good for anything anyway.
Gabe is reading off a few of the captions out loud, and complaining about them. Phyllis invites Gabe to try, but Oscar dismisses Gabe's entry "You don't have to sniff my rear wend any more, Bob, I'm the only one here") as tasteless. Gabe says it's no more tasteless than "Is that a palm tree, or did Gabe get skinnier? Either way, let's pee on it." That gets the biggest laugh of all, but no one steps forward to claim the winner. Except in a TH, when we find out it was Angela. Who else? "It was easy once I decided I wanted the dog to piss on Gabe."
Dwight and Erin are still trying to use Holly as the Michael-Whisperer, but the trail has gone cold. After some more bickering, Holly goes off on her own, leaving Dwight to try to think like Michael, which of course doesn't work. Dwight can't even think like a normal person, let alone Michael. "Maybe he's bowling," Dwight finally shrugs and heads off in the opposite direction Holly went. Briefly torn, Erin decides to follow Holly to the nearest high building. She must have crunched the numbers in her head again.
Up on the roof, Holly finds...Michael. He came up to try to spot the office, much as Holly came up to try to spot him. They stand there speechless for a moment until Michael tearfully confesses, "I just miss you so much." With an equal amount of emotion, Holly admits that she missed him too, and finally lets him kiss her. Which he does, big time. That's how Erin finds them when she emerges on the roof. She smiles. Forget the numbers; this doesn't seem at all rushed to her?
In the tag, Phyllis asks Gabe to keep reading captions, most of which are about Gabe. Like Andy's, in which one of the dogs is saying, "I'm Gabe and I'm a weirdo," and the last one: "Gabe's mom? Wait, tall woman? Looks like Gabe? Yeah, I banged her." Thank you for that, Phyllis.
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.
1 2 3