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Andy's worried about meeting the quarterly sales growth figures he promised Robert months ago. He's bought as much Dunder Mifflin paper as he can, his employees aren't buying any, and Oscar's not willing to stick around and make the necessary "rounding error" Andy needs because he's going to Philadelphia to play bar trivia. Upon hearing about the thousand-dollar purse at stake, Andy rounds up the troops and drags them along to join the contest so he can close the sales gap with the cash prize. Oscar sticks with his original team, while the DMers split into the A-team (Jim, Darryl, Andy, and Ryan), the B-team (Stanley, Phyllis, Creed, and Kathy the temp), and the just-have-fun team (Kevin, Kelly, Erin, and Meredith). But the A and B teams choke, and the confederacy of dunces stumbles to victory. Which is good enough for Andy.
So where are Dwight, Robert, and Gabe? In Florida. Robert's at Sabre HQ, while Gabe is apparently commuting daily between there and Scranton. As if we didn't have enough reasons to hate him, now there's his carbon footprint. Dwight is determined to pitch himself for a manager position, and Robert is determined to avoid the conversation. The stress point is, of course, Gabe, and although he tries to run interference with Dwight, Dwight will not be interfered with. Eventually he forces Gabe to take him to Robert's condo, where Robert makes a couple of efforts to spare Dwight's feelings before turning him down and saying he'll try him out if anything right for him comes up. And that's it. Seriously. No, I did not skip over the funny parts.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Dwight shushes the camera with a mischievous grin and after a few more quiet moments in the office, Jim does a talking head shot. Except he's not talking -- he's writing messages to the camera on a legal pad. Anyway, he notebook-heads, "We're on the longest silent streak in office history! Nobody has said anything in..." He checks his watch and adds, "14 min." Shrug. Back in the bullpen, Dwight's phone rings. Everyone reacts like they're in a submarine movie, and finally Dwight picks up the handset and hangs it right back up. From his office, Andy sees a raccoon eating an abandoned burger down in the parking lot, and excitedly goes out to try to mime the news to the employees. Finally Kevin bites into a candy bar and moans, "Oh, yeah!" That was twenty minutes, and after releasing some pent-up nonsense, they're ready to try again. After watching this episode, I'm wishing they'd made it to thirty.
Truncated cred --
Andy's running a brainstorming session about the uses of paper, which eventually segues into his sales pitch to the employees to buy paper from the company... for themselves. As he explains to us from his office, Andy promised Robert double sales growth by the end of the quarter, which means they have to sell $830 worth of paper by the end of the day. "And then quarter I need to sell the $2200 dollars of paper that's in my garage."
Dwight is presenting himself -- three-piece suit and all -- at the Sabre HQ in Florida to claim a management position that he seems to think is his for the taking, based on some offhand remark Robert made at one point. As if anything Robert ever says is offhand. Dwight encounters Gabe, of all people, positioned at a hallway desk opposite the receptionist's area, in a space surrounded by potted plants. Dwight mockingly compliments Gabe on his jungle-like "office." Gabe explains to us that he's needed in both Scranton and Florida, so apparently he commutes from one place to the other every damn day. "I can think of no better way to confront my deathly fear of flying," he THs. That's also such a stupid waste of corporate funds that I totally believe it. Robert comes in and greets Dwight, congratulating him on his initiative, and says he'll be right with him after "settling in," leaving Dwight to wait out in the reception area to Gabe.
Back in Scranton, Andy asks Oscar to make the "rounding error" that will get them to their sales target. Kevin offers to take this on, since making mistakes is kind of his forte, but both Andy and Oscar figure this kind of error is beyond his capabilities. But Oscar has plans to leave early for a trivia contest in Philadelphia. And not just any contest, but "Triviacolypse," with a thousand-dollar prize at stake. Andy gives Oscar his blessing to go.
Then, in his office with Jim and Darryl, he's gotten no farther than "trivia" and "Philadelphia" before they're both on board with whatever he's planning, sight unseen. They may not be as on board with the idea of using the prize money to cover the sales goal, but they pretend to be. The only downside, Andy warns, is that they'd have to leave right now. Jim and Darryl's only problem with that statement is the word "downside." Wonder what Pam might think.
In Florida, Dwight overhears Gabe low-balling a bagel vendor over his phone, and starts to mock him for being the "bagel guy." But Gabe boasts that he's like the most important appliance in a home: the office's toilet, flushing away problems so people can keep their hands clean. Dwight makes an excellent point: "You could have gone with garbage disposal, incinerator, or eraser, and instead you chose toilet. God bless you, you are an American classic." Robert comes out to tell Dwight that he doesn't have time for him today, but Bill the COO will meet with him later. After Robert breezes out, Gabe mockingly assures a flustered Dwight that he'll really like Bill. "He has me toilet a lot of people for him." Just then Gabe's desk phone rings; it's Robert, calling from outside the elevator to tell Gabe to listen to Dwight's pitch himself after twenty minutes. "Make him feel valued. Make him feel heard." Gabe says he's on it. Sure he is.
Oscar's with his nameless trivia teammates at the bar in Philly when Andy walks in with what looks like the entire office. Obviously Oscar's not happy to see them all, even when Andy offers to make him the Dunder Mifflin team captain. In fact, Oscar's amazed that Jim thought this was a good idea. "I thought it was a fun idea," Jim corrects. That is a vital distinction that I have made many times. Darryl's making a whole speech about the doubts he experienced on the 2½ hour drive when he suddenly interrupts himself to realize aloud, "This is a gay bar." Oscar, disappointed that that isn't enough to drive them away, bitterly wishes them luck, and Andy says he and the other Scrantonites will need to break up into teams: the have fun team, the backup team, and the A-team. Jim tries to follow the backup team, but Creed tells him he doesn't belong, so he ends up with the A-team: Andy, Darryl, Ryan, and... Kevin, who is at least smart enough to take the hint that he's in the wrong group in under an entire minute. Off to the have-fun team with Kevin. The first question is the capital of a state Ray Charles famously had on his mind. Now, this bar trivia is completely different from any I've ever been to, but then I've only played it at four bars in two different states and only have a few first-place wins under my belt with such teammates as Miss Alli and Montykins. Usually the host asks ten questions in a round and each team fills out a quiz sheet as they go, turning it in to be scored at the end of the round. But apparently in gay bar trivia -- or at least gay bar trivia in Pennsylvania, or at least gay bar trivia in Pennsylvania on The Office -- the host asks a single question and then each team has to hold up a miniature dry-erase board with their answer on it after a certain amount of time. Most people hold up their boards reading some variation of Atlanta, except Kevin and the good-time team, who, because Ray Charles is blind, came up with "What is SEE-attle."
Gabe breaks the news to Dwight that he's the one who will be meeting with Dwight. "I can see you in the jungle."
There's an NBA question, which Jim and Darryl both blow and Kelly and the good-time-team get right, based on Kelly's reality show knowledge. Andy doesn't take it well.
Dwight is giving Gabe a passionate speech about why he deserves to be in charge of southeast printer sales, and Gabe is having trouble keeping a straight face. At the end, Gabe puts out a hand like he's offering Dwight a fist-bump, but invites Dwight to put his hand on it instead, When Dwight does, Gabe turns his arm into a pretend-toilet handle and says, "Flush!" Wrong move; Dwight grabs Gabe's arm and twists it around behind him, demanding to be taken to Robert immediately. "Listen, you're a fine toilet," Dwight says. "I'm just an extraordinary piece of crap." Nice of him to let Gabe save face like that.
The trivia guy orders Ryan's smartphone confiscated, which gives him such acute separation anxiety that he bails on the A-team. "I want to be with my phone," he whines, running out. The host reads down the standings, and wouldn't you know it, Oscar's team ("Aesop's Foibles," which is appropriately pretentious) is in first place, the A-team has four points, the B-team five, and "The Einsteins" have eight points. Who are the Einsteins, you ask? Why, they're the Dunder Mifflin "good time" team, of course. "So our best chance of hitting our mark is now in the hands and brains of Kevin, Meredith, Erin, and Kelly. Do I like these odds? My answer is no." The Einsteins do a shot, and apparently that's considered a funny enough moment to go to commercial on. I wouldn't call that a funny enough moment to end a scene on.
It's nighttime in Florida, and Dwight has dragged Gabe to the courtyard of some executive housing condo complex, but Gabe doesn't know exactly where Robert's place is, so Dwight starts hollering Robert's name until he comes out on a balcony in sweaty workout clothes. "How nice of Gabe to show you where I live," Robert says.
At the trivia contest, everyone gets an answer about Albert Einstein right, except of course for the Einsteins. On to the speed round for the top three teams, which will be The Einsteins, the "Queerenstain Bears," and Oscar's team, Aesop's Foibles. The board also has a team called "Jason Su-Gay-Kiss." I was going to accuse the writers of wasting their time coming up with funny trivia team names instead of jokes, but clearly that would be completely unfair of me. Desktop bells are handed out to the top three and the speed round begins. Erin rings the Einsteins' bell halfway through a question about Salman Rushdie, but neither she nor anyone else on her tem actually knows the answer, so Oscar steals the point. But then she's the one who gets "flying jib" correct, for reasons that are never explained. The excitement builds, at least on the other side of my TV screen.
Robert lets Dwight and Gabe into his apartment, where he's taking a wrestling lesson in his living room. He explains that a nine-minute bout is equivalent to running uphill for three hours. "I could go to the gym three times a week or I can wrestle Stu once a month." Back to the mat. Dwight and Gabe just stand there trying heroically to make this seem funny by looking confused.
Meredith gets the right answer about the most common learning disability in adolescents, probably because her kid has all of them, and Andy gets up and dances. "Dial it back, this isn't Tailfeathers," the host tells him. Andy looks as abashed as he would if he understood the reference.
Robert offers Dwight a plate of Oreos (Gabe has departed, probably to catch his evening flight back to Scranton) before settling down and listening to about ten seconds of Dwight's pitch. He soon interrupts to tell Dwight that his "drive" and "ambition" (read: "insanity") would be wasted in a manager's job, and Dwight doesn't want to live in Florida anyway. "Florida is America's basement. It's wet, it's filled with mold, strange insects, alligators. Alligators are dinosaurs, Dwight. You know that right?" Dwight: "It's complicated." During this speech, Robert has been rummaging in a drawer, and finally comes up with a medal which he offers Dwight instead, saying it was his grandfather's. Robert's a man who knows his audience, at least. Dwight seems starry-eyed for a moment, then snaps, "It's a job interview, not a flea market." Robert drops the medal and all pretenses, saying the job isn't right for Dwight, and when something comes along he'll try Dwight out. Dwight is still puffing with pride at hearing Robert say this when Robert adds, "Now get the hell out of my place." Can we get a joke first?
It's down to the last two teams for the final trivia round: the Einsteins versus Oscar's team. Kevin knows the maximum capacity of a standard scale, because of how he's fat, so his team gets that point. But the final question is about a French film, so Oscar rings in with the answer. Too bad for him, he's wrong. Worse, the correct answer is one in which Kevin informs us, "Marion Cotillard exposes herself several times." And that makes the Einsteins the winners of Triviacolypse. Kevin THs that it might be a fluke, but a fluke is one of the most common fish in the sea. "So if you go fishing for a fluke, chances are you just might catch one. Obligatory shot of Meredith, Erin, and Kelly trying to lift Kevin on their shoulders and being unable to. Because of how he's fat.
And the tag is The Einsteins trying to repeat their past triumph at another bar trivia night and failing spectacularly. Symbolic, somehow.
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.
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