In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
Jim's persistent absences have caused David Wallace to decide that the company needs to hire a junior salesman to fill the gap. And he's put Dwight in charge of the search. Clark wants the gig and insists he deserves it, but Dwight has brought in all his weird friends, a couple of cousins and even his former babysitter to interview for the job. As the interviews progress, however, even Dwight has to admit that he has made a huge mistake with this collection of weirdoes and losers.
As for the potential future coworkers of the weirdoes and losers, nobody is more worried about them than Jim. After all, whoever Dwight hires is going to end up sitting to Pam, which is one more source of stress that their already-strained relationship doesn't need. He asks David Wallace for a vote in his replacement (and also, embarrassingly, for some venture capital for his company), and gets not only the brush-off but a pay cut. Fortunately, Dwight realizes he's going to have to alienate all his friends by not hiring a single unqualified one of them, and he begs Jim to deliver the bad news, which Jim does, but everyone still blames Dwight and ostracizes him en masse. Pam's new desk-clump-mate will be Clark, who she's fine with. And Jim's pleased with how he engineered the important matter of who gets to go to work and look at Pam all day, like he did, and ended up falling in love with her.
Which reminds me -- Brian's still on the documentary crew and he's still enjoying holding a big long fuzzy cylinder over Pam's head a little more than maybe Jim would like him to.
Think you've got game? Prove it! Check out Games Without Pity, our new area featuring trivia, puzzle, card, strategy, action and word games -- all free to play and guaranteed to help pass the time until your show starts.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Pouring out a 40 for 30 Rock, which I rarely got to see because I don't have much time to watch TV for free any more. But if Tina Fey had asked me to for once get a sub for American Idol, I would have.
One of the documentary cameras is sitting on the bullpen floor behind Meredith's, but it's rolling. So we get a bug's eye view of Pam coming up to Brian, having heard he got in trouble after last week, but he plays it off and asks if things are cool with her and Jim. Pam's called away for a phone call, as if anybody wants to talk to her, and Meredith shows up to address Brian as "Boom Guy" and ask him, "when you gonna boom me?" Brian says they're cracking down on talking to the subjects and basically flees. [Note: So, nothing about how a documentary crew filming in this setting, with their subjects wearing microphones, would need a boom to begin with? Or how it's strange a boom guy would keep the same job for nine years? Or how this documentary crew was okay with not interfering during so many other more actually dangerous times in the office, like when Dwight started a fire and nearly killed Stanley? 'Kay. -- Rachel.]
Full credits this week, and Ed Helms is still in them for some reason. I guess someone figured we needed to be reminded what he looks like.
Clark finds Dwight in the break room, wondering what's up with him bringing in new people to interview for a sales job. Dwight tweaks him a bit holding up a hand and saying you have to be "this cool" to be in sales, then THs that Wallace is letting him hire a Junior Sales Associate to fill in for Jim. "Finally, I'll have someone at my desk clump who gets me," Dwight says. Back in the break room, Clark says he deserves this job, after the suit warehouse thing and going above and beyond with Jan for the White Pages account. "And under," he adds. Dwight promises him an interview, but smugly THs that his friends Rolf and Trevor are up for the job too, so Clark has no chance. Clark is bitter about the twelve grueling weeks he's sunk into this company that have led only to competing for a promotion. "I thought this was an office, not the Thunderdome."
Back in the bullpen, Dwight teases Jim and Pam for how the balance of power will be changing at their desk-clump, and Jim THs about how the last thing their relationship needs right now is "doubling the Dwight in her life."