(Attempted) Coupling

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It's after 5:00 on Friday in both Scranton and Tallahassee, but nobody's finished working. In Scranton, everyone stays late to go through the away teams' accounts, and Andy has food delivered by none other than Val's boyfriend Brandon -- who takes the opportunity to call out Darryl in front of everyone. Darryl is ultimately forced to read everyone all of his personal texts to Val, including one that ends with an incriminating five dots. Awkward.

And at the hotel in Tallahassee, everyone's got an agenda. Nellie has yet to name a VP, and both Dwight and Packer want the position. And when Dwight realizes that Packer plans to get the position under Nellie by taking another position under Nellie, he decides to try to beat Packer at his own game.

After Jim wearies of this scene, Kathy shows up in his room half-dressed claiming her room's overheated and asking to hang out. Jim is awkward and lame and can't figure out how to get rid of her, until he calls on Dwight to come up and do an impromptu bedbug fumigation. And even that doesn't work until the second try.

Also, Ryan makes a move on Erin, and she seems receptive, but when she says something about waiting six months, he tells her he's in love with Kelly. The sad thing is that Kelly would have been thrilled to hear it.

After the ugly scene in Scranton, Pam and Andy give Darryl conflicting advice. He follows Pam's, and hints to Val how he really feels. Who knows what might happen between them ....

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Pam goes over to show Angela a cell phone picture of her baby and Oscar wants to get into the action with pictures of his dog. In a joint TH, the two mothers agree that nothing you didn't carry in your belly for nine months is anything like your kid. "Unless you adopted, of course," Pam amends. Angela: "That is where we disagree." Hilarious. Later, in the break room, Angela claims to Pam and Oscar that her baby is already crawling, leading to Pam sharing a TH with Oscar where they call Angela a liar. And then after Pam tells Oscar and Angela how much harder it is with two kids, Angela and Oscar joint-bitch about Pam. Then Andy comes in with a picture of his brother's new sailboat, saying there's nothing harder than taking care of a boat. Oscar, Angela, and Pam: "Unbelievable!" It's funny because people are all dicks.

Short credits, and then we're at Sabre HQ, which looks like a sawed-off Luxor from the outside. Nellie calls it a halt to the work week, but Dwight is pressuring her to pick a VP already before they adjourn for the weekend, trying to get her to choose him. It's just another sign of how unrealistic this show has gotten that any title with the word "Special Projects" is seen as anything other than the kiss of death. While Dwight's pushing, Jim teases him from behind while Kathy laughs at his side, like Pam used to do but with less subtlety. Nellie eliminates three no-names right off the bat (and Packer adds his own unnecessary dismissal), and invites everyone to a compulsory meeting at the hotel bar that night at seven. As the group breaks up, Kathy chats with Jim, who THs that she's been great and "normal." As it turns out, the hanging with Stanley thing turned out to entail a lot of Stanley hitting on cars full of women. Jim certainly wouldn't want that to put him into some kind of awkward position.

It's also 5:00 back in Scranton, where Andy and Pam try to get everyone all excited about the "late night work jam" they have to do to cover for the people in Tallahassee. Pam says they could have been doing this all along, but "someone dropped the ball." Andy recovers quickly, saying a ball-dropping can be beautiful. "For example, when it turns an awkward soprano into a rich, full tenor." But when that same rich, full tenor rips open his scrotum doing the splits, those same balls dropping are less lovely. As we've seen.

At the hotel bar, Packer and Nellie are debating Bond vs. Bourne until Dwight puts in a vote for Genghis Khan. "He would eviscerate babies and hang them from poles outside of villages!" And when Packer tries to resuscitate the buzz Dwight just killed by suggesting a drinking game, Dwight hijacks that too, suggesting his own game in which the person with the least buttons in their pockets gets kicked. He's got a pouch of 40, as always, but of course Kathy and Jim team up and turn it around on him, so Dwight's the one who gets kicked. Packer declares Dwight's game "lame," earning a compliment from Nellie for the quick wit shown by the double meaning of the word. Packer accepts the praise as though he intended anything of the kind.

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http://www.brilliantbutcancelled.com:80/show/the-office/after-hours-3-1/
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2018-04-21
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recap (100%)
Wayback Machine
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