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It's been a year since the events of last week's episode, and the documentary crew is supposedly back to shoot some "where are they now" bonus footage, but really to wrap everything up. Which takes roughly five acts.
First, it's the night before Dwight's wedding and things are going great for him. He's chosen Jim as his "Bestisch Mensch," and Jim promises to rise to the occasion with only good pranks or guten pranken. Andy (now Internet-infamous as "Baby Wawa" due to his disastrous audition going viral), Darryl (currently living the good life in Austin with the company Jim left behind) and Toby (long since fired by Dwight and now trying to be a writer in New York) are all in from out of town so they can join the bachelor party for which Jim has arranged for Dwight to fire a bazooka, receive a lap dance and do something else I'll get to in a minute. Angela's bachelorette party goes less smoothly, however. Rachael Harris is almost completely wasted as Angela's sister, the stripper turns out to be Meredith's son and Angela herself is kidnapped by Mose, who has apparently been acting weirder than usual. However, we soon find out that the abduction is a Schrute tradition that requires Dwight to find the kidnapper at a bar and buy everyone drinks. Which brings us to the third thing Jim has arranged: a chance for Dwight to make up with Kevin, who now owns said bar after Dwight fired him. Dwight does so and retrieves Angela from the trunk of Mose's car.
The morning, the local PBS station is hosting a panel at the local cultural center where the public can come and ask the employees (and ex-employees) questions. Stanley has flown in from Florida and David Wallace is also there for some reason. There are a few uncomfortable moments where Jim and Pam are put on the spot regarding the relative rockiness of their marriage over the past season, but all that gets back-burnered when Joan Cusack comes to the microphone to ask about Erin's search for her birth mother. Who she, of course, is and she's brought Erin's birth father (Ed Begley, Jr.) with her. Obviously it's a joyous reunion, even if everybody else has clearly forgotten that Erin is her middle name and everyone called her Kelly until she started at Dunder Mifflin.
The third act is Dwight's wedding. Original Kelly has returned with her boyfriend Ravi. And so has Ryan, with his baby. Yes, Ryan has a baby, who his girlfriend ditched with him. Kelly and Ryan end up running off together, abandoning her fiancé and his son at one stroke. Nellie is only too happy to take possession of Ryan's child and return to Europe with him, and the kid seems more than aware that he's caught a break. As for the actual wedding, it runs into a hitch or two. Angela's legs are still non-functional after her time in Mose's trunk, so Phyllis has to carry her down the aisle. And Jim tells Dwight that the Bestisch Mensch must be older than the groom, so he's not able to be there for him. Fortunately, Jim has managed to wrangle up a last-minute replacement: Michael Scott. Michael's a little grayer, and he's left Holly at home with the kids (!), but in Jim's own words… best prank ever.
Or is it? Because in act four, when Jim and Pam get home from the reception, Carol the realtor is exiting their house with a couple of potential buyers. This is quite the surprise for Jim, which is exactly how Pam wanted it. Turns out Pam's been showing the house for the last two months, so that she can show Jim how much she loves him and that he doesn't have to give up anything for her. And thus it looks like they're moving to Austin so Jim can rejoin Darryl at Athlead. Sorry, Athleap now. Clearly Jim's first day back at the new job is going to have to involve doing something about that name.
Finally, everyone proceeds to the after-party at Dunder Mifflin. There's a reception at the warehouse, where Pam unveils draft two of her warehouse mural. It turns out to be a cast portrait, which the warehouse workers should be thrilled about. However, the real after-party turns out to be the one with the core cast in the bullpen, saying farewell to each other and to the people behind the cameras and to us. But mostly -- and most importantly -- to the people behind the cameras, because come on.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!"one year later..." reads the subtitle as Dwight's new muscle car roars down the street. He asks why the film crew is back, a year after the documentary aired, and an off-camera voice explains that it's bonus footage for the DVD. As if this wouldn't have come up while they were getting into the car. Dwight sneers a bit about DVDs and PBS, and brings us up to speed as his car passes some campaign signs, including one advertising Oscar for state senate. The entire Scranton paper market is in Dwight's back pocket, his wedding is tomorrow and there will be a "mini-reunion" at a local theater. "I haven't seen Kevin since we let him go," he muses. Cue a clip of Manager-Dwight rolling three huge cakes into the conference room. One is to commemorate Stanley's retirement, and the second is frosted with a message for Kevin to get out. Everyone protests at Dwight's callous treatment of him, and although they fall silent when Dwight asks for a merit-based argument to save Kevin, Pam points out that Toby always stops everyone from getting fired. Which turns out to be what the third cake is for. "Bye-bye, Toby!" Dwight sings as he Pollacks a squiggle of frosting onto Toby's cake. "At least I got chocolate," Kevin sobs through the mouthful that he's eating with his bare hands.
Full credits, which include the names of all the regulars during the theme song. I was hoping they'd do that. I was also hoping for shots of them individually, but this is better than nothing.
Jim pedals his bicycle into the parking lot, an endeavor that seems to be going better than when he tried it in Stamford. "Saves on gas, cheaper than a vasectomy, and, oh yeah, it's good for the environment," he smirks. With that, he hurries to join the tai chi class Dwight is leading. Pam's already there, so I'm not sure about the total effect on the Halperts' carbon footprint. He VOs that things are great with him and Pam, who finished her (long-forgotten) mural for the Irish cultural center. "And Dwight is imitating Japanese business practices for reasons he explained to us in Japanese." As the tai chi proceeds, Pam and Angela have a whispered conversation that doesn't have much purpose other than to show how they're apparently friends now. Dwight adjourns the class, and Angela comes up to give him a kiss, which requires quite a vertical leap on her part. She's excited about the wedding, but Dwight says he's going to miss some of the old gang. Angela says it only needs to be the two of them. "And the old man to feed us the cheese that he's been fermenting since the day of my birth," Dwight reminds her, setting up a bit that never pays off.
In the bullpen, there are some new people wandering around who Dwight brought in "And one old one," Dwight THs. Hey, it's Devin! "I hired him back after Creed faked his own death in the baler the day after the doc aired," Dwight THs. "The only person he fooled was Kevin. Then the police showed up. Turns out Creed was in the band The Grass Roots in the 1960s." We see a wanted poster in the elevator lobby as Dwight explains that Creed was wanted for drugs, trafficking an endangered species meat and stealing weapons-grade LSD from the military. Dwight actually seems kind of impressed by all this, but I'd be more impressed if any of this meant Devin got a line. In either case, it's clear that Creed never sold a drop of that LSD, and kept it all for himself.
Phyllis offers some of her homemade fudge to the young new African-American man who sits across from her now. "After 16 years, it's strange sitting across from someone who isn't Stanley," she THs. "But he'll get there."
In the conference room, Jim, Oscar, Pete, Clark and Dwight's cousin Zeke are sitting around the table discussing the bachelor party. Turns out Dwight made Jim his "bestisch mensch." Jim THs that this is Schrute for best man, and he's rising to the occasion, leaving behind his twelve-year history of pranks and tricks on Dwight. "Tonight, only good surprises. Guten pranken." Back in the meeting, Dwight sticks his head in to make sure there will be no accidental murders like in the movies, and exposits that Mose has been acting weird since he had to stop sleeping at the foot of Dwight's bed. "So unlike him," Jim marvels.
Darryl's all Mr. Big Shot in a suit and tie as he heads for a limo at the airport. Spotting Andy waiting at the taxi stand, he ducks inside to avoid being seen himself.
Now we're in the back of Andy's cab, where he explains how his crying audition not only made it into America's A Capella Sensation, it also went viral, making him famous as "Baby Wawa." We even get to see a cheap Filipino parody, and a considerably less cheap bit with Seth Meyers and Bill Hader doing their own take on it during Saturday Night Llive's Weekend Update. Must be nice to be on NBC. Andy goes on to say that he even got a call from the double rainbow guy and Star Wars kid about their support group. "Not really my scene," he says.
Oscar appears to have moved into Darryl's old office, from where he's currently running his campaign as well as acting as Chief Accountant. The young, blonde accountant who must have replaced Kevin comes in to ask him about an odd symbol that keeps popping up on the account sheets. Oscar explains that it's Kevin's magic number that he used to use to make the figures add up, "Kleven" -- in other words, the reason he got fired. Oscar adds that Kevin said to Dwight, "A mistake plus a Kleven gets you home by seven," on a day Kevin got home by 4:45.
Nellie has also flown in for the wedding and the reunion. She explains that she now lives in Poland, "The Scranton of the EU." She thanks the doc-makers for flying her in and says she can't wait to see everyone. "Well, almost everyone." Cue Toby running up to her excitedly at the taxi stand. "Are you still with Pyotr?" he asks. "No, and I thought I unfriended you," she says. He points out that anyone can follow a Twitter feed, and offers to share a cab. Cut to Toby in a cab by himself, saying he moved to New York to write the great American novel. "I have six roommates, which are better than friends, you know, because they have to give you one month's notice before they leave."
Andy shows up in the bullpen like the conquering hero he isn't. "That's Baby Wawa, right?" Phyllis's new deskmate asks incredulously. Phyllis runs to him and gives him a long, smothering, concerned hug. Darryl shows up right behind him, plays off their non-encounter at the airport, and says he never called because he figured Andy changed his number. Which, no. "All good, though, phone never rings," Andy shrugs affably. Dwight comes out of his office, surprised to see them both. Darryl explains that the panel got moved to the same weekend as the wedding. "It was kismet," he says. But Jim straightens us right out in a TH, saying he and Pam made that happen by manufacturing excuses for every other weekend so it would have to be this one. "You remember my two lap band surgeries, right? Neither do I. Guten prank number one." Back in the bullpen, Pam comes in and hugs Andy and Darryl, saying "we're fine" and she's sure Andy's fine too because why wouldn't he be? She asks Darryl about his life in Austin (aw, jealous) and the merger of Athlead, which is now Athleap. Ugh. Jim gets a text notification that the limo has arrived, and Pam tells them all to have fun. "You too, Andy," she adds as though speaking to someone in hospice.
Out in the parking lot, the guys all pile into a mile-long limo, including Oscar, who refused to go to the bachelorette party with the girls. "I just have to remember how I acted before I came out," he THs. Judging by his behavior in the limo, that's still a work in progress. "WASSUUUUP!" he callbacks. Well, at least he's got the date right.
The limo's first stop is somewhere out in the sticks, where Jim pushes an alarmed Dwight out of the car to face a man in fatigues armed with a bazooka. Dwight thinks he's being whacked, but Jim says Dwight's doing the whacking, as the man presents the weapon to Dwight. Dwight is touched, and we get to see him blow up a stack of oil drums downrange. "Guten prank number two," Jim says.
On to a private room at a German restaurant. Before they step into the back, some douche recognizes Andy and mocks him. Jim steps to Andy's defense, but Andy calls him off, saying he doesn't want Jim ending up on the guy's cell phone and going viral too. As they sit down, Andy claims things are going pretty well. "I spoke at Cornell during commencement week," he says. Well, he was invited as a joke, but it led to a gig at the admissions office. People are still feeling pretty sorry for him, though. I don't know why they're so sure his Zen-like calm is an act, given that it's an act he's never been able to pull off.
The bachelorette party is happening at Dwight's new house, the one that used to be his Aunt Shirley's. It includes Angela's sister Rachel (Rachael Harris because how perfect is that?), and although they can't agree on which of them is the big sister, they have their own special language, which Rachel uses in front of the other guests before they both laugh. "People love it," Angela claims.
Dwight's getting a little impatient, not to mention hungry. When a stripper comes in (and not just any stripper -- I'm 99 percent sure that's Elizabeth from "Ben Franklin" and "Fun Run"), she's laying it on pretty thick, but Dwight is totally oblivious, thinking she's a waitress and trying to put in their order even as she's grinding against his chair.
Something not entirely dissimilar is occurring at the bachelorette party, when Erin lets in a skinny "plumber" with a face tattoo. Meredith is going to be all over this, even when the kid turns out to be her own son Jake, who I think was last seen in "Free Family Portrait Studio." She proudly tells him to go ahead and do his thing, which he somewhat reluctantly does. Meredith is not only cheering him on and dancing with him, but giving him tips and a demonstration on how to most effectively crotch-thrust the bride-to-be. The only thing that could make this weirder is if Mose were lurking out on the porch and peering in through the curtains... which of course he is.
Dwight is still impatiently trying to get the stripper to take his order, while Jim impishly films her lapdance-in-progress on his cell phone.
Post-strip show, a spooked Angela asks Phyllis to go lock the door. Phyllis opens it wide to show that the noise Angela heard is just the wind. When Angela gets up to handle it herself, Mose appears out of nowhere, grabs her around the waist, and snatches her out of sight. I suppose we should have seen this coming.
In the limo leaving the restaurant, Jim gets a call from Pam with an update. "What!?" he exclaims. "Angela's been kidnapped? Phyllis left the door open and some freak came and grabbed her and fled," he relays to the stunned bachelor party. Dwight's reaction is unexpected: "Good old Mose," he chuckles. "They think it was Mose," Jim adds, which is what anyone would think even if they hadn't seen him. Dwight explains about how Mose is executing a "brautenfahrt," a traditional bridal kidnapping where it becomes the groom's job to find her at a bar and buy drinks for everyone. Jim suggests the last pub Dwight would ever set foot in, and tells the driver to take them to 3030 Adams. His camera-smirk portends anther guten prank.
They do indeed find Mose at 3030 Adams, along with Nate and some Schrute-adjacents, and Dwight and Mose go through the ceremonial bride-claiming and drink-demanding, not that Angela's anywhere in sight yet. Dwight goes to the bartender, and is rather buzzkilled to discover that it's Kevin, who somehow owns the place. After making the most of his literal "well, well, well" moment, Kevin tells Dwight to get out, and Dwight turns on Mose, demanding, "Why did you pick this place?" Mose points mutely at Jim, who says this isn't the prank Dwight thinks it is; it's time for Dwight to make up with Kevin. In a TH, Jim says he knows Dwight misses Kevin by how he saw Dwight creating Kevin's portrait with a Wooly Willy toy, and you shouldn't be anything but happy on your wedding day. Dwight earnestly explains to Kevin that his firing wasn't personal. "It's just that you were terrible at your job." Kevin thinks Dwight's just trying to make him feel better, but Dwight runs down a whole litany of non-personal reasons Kevin sucked as an employee. Finally convinced, Kevin gives Dwight big hug over the bar and they say they missed each other. "Guten prank," Mose tells the camera. "Yes, Mose," Jim agrees at his side. "Guten prank number three." And they clink glasses. Then, the drinks distributed, Mose leads Dwight and Jim out to his car, where he's got Angela stashed in the trunk of his car. When he opens it, Angela pops out with an almost unbroken string of bleeps. Jim's shocked look at the camera seems to indicate that he realizes this part didn't turn out so guten.
The morning, Saturday, is the panel at the Scranton Cultural Center. As the cast mills around on the stage waiting for it to start, Dwight explains to Jim and Pam how Angela's giving it a miss so that they won't see each other before the wedding. "Also her legs are still numb from being in the trunk." Stanley shows up on the stage in full-on Florida mode, much as we saw him during last year's Tallahassee arc. Apparently he now lives in a shack on the edge of the Everglades, whittling wooden birds. "The man who delivered my divorce papers came by fanboat," he shares.
While they're waiting in front of the near-empty auditorium, Andy blames the poor turnout on himself and the auto-tuned version of his audition video that has made people hate him. Which, yes, exists, and we get to see it. Kevin even has it playing on the TV at his bar, saying it's on his jukebox and people dance to it. "None of the money goes to Andy, though," he smirks. At the stage, Kevin chuckles to Andy, "Yeah, people hate you." Andy gets up to go see if they should just all go home, only to run into a crowd of people in the lobby lined up to get in. Spotting him, they launch into a chant of his sometime-catchphrase, "Riddit-dit-didoo," which Andy can't resist responding to.
We join the panel in progress. An audience member asks what it's like to see their lives played out on TV. David Wallace answers that it's like seeing a documentary on how your food is made. "It's kind of disgusting. You learn a lot, but I didn't want to know any of it." Dwight crackpots about how we're all under constant surveillance anyway. Pete pipes up, "Nobody recognizes me, but now all my friends call me Plop. So, thanks, PBS." Someone asks Pam how she paid Jim back for leaving Athlead, as though that whole debacle wasn't a yearlong dick move on Jim's part. Pam flounders a bit, claiming to be working on something, and Jim gallantly says she pays him back every day by being his wife. And then he's rather taken aback by the "aw" that sweeps the room. Some other woman gushes about how if she had Jim he could do anything, in a tone that clearly translates to "anal." Another guy asks Pam what the teapot letter said, and Pam says there are some things she wants to keep private. He totally gets what she's saying, but repeats the question. Someone else asks, "Do you find that your life feels pointless now that nobody's actually filming you anymore?" "Yes," Toby answers readily, and alone. Asked if they felt whether their portrayals were accurate, Meredith complains that they never showed the parts where she was getting her PhD in School Psychology. "Yes, I was getting hammered, but hey, it was college." There's another question for Jim and Pam, asking how Pam could dare doubt the fact that she and Jim are soulmates. Jim jumps in, saying (correctly) that he didn't handle the whole situation very well on his end. Pam cuts him off, saying that people would tell her that she had a fairytale romance, but that last year didn't feel like one. "But then it got deeper and it got stronger, and now it's better than a fairytale." She compares it to a long book that you never want to end. "Like Harry Potter?" the woman asks. Yes, let's go with that.
Another audience member played by Joan Cusack has a question for Erin, saying her favorite part of the series was Erin's search for her birth mother. I barely remember any of that, and Erin's practically my favorite thing in the last three seasons. "So my question is, don't you hate her?" Erin admits that she sometimes does, but more in the sense of an angry teenager. Joan Cusack is getting pretty emotional as Erin's little scenario plays out, and everyone on the stage is realizing, one by one, what's going on here. Everyone except Erin, of course, who asks, "Is there a follow-up question?" Finally grokking the way everyone's looking at her, Erin at last gets up out of her chair and runs into her mother's arms. And then Ed Begley, Jr. steps up to the mic and asks, "Erin? Same question, but about your dad." Two-fer! With that, the moderator calls it a day. Erin and her parents walk out together while the panelists start removing their body mics and the moderator plugs week's step-dancing finals. The camera zooms in on the applauding audience, which includes a bald, bearded Creed.
At the Schrute house, guests are filing past the gift table and filling up a basket with the live kittens they all apparently brought. Creed's among them, selling his new fake identity a little hard. The ceremony is taking place out in a field, with the guests sitting on hay bales. There's Kelly, back from The Mindy Project and sitting near the back to her fiancé, Ravi. She tells him she saved him six hundred bucks by not wearing her Jimmy Choos out here in this mud. "Thanks for helping out, sweetie," Ravi says in a voice that indicates the novelty of her has long since worn off. Ryan comes up to them with a baby strapped to his chest. "Are you like a manny now?" Kelly asks indulgently as he sits down to her. Ryan shares the frankly horrifying news that the baby is his own, and THs that "I was dating this girl, and one day she went out to get a new charger for her e-cigarette and never came back. Oldest story in the book." The kid looks pretty happy, though, smiling at the camera as though it's the funniest thing he's ever seen. Ryan tells Kelly the baby's name is Drake, not like the hip-hop artist from 2011, but "a mix of Drew and Blake." Because that's so much less toolish.
Angela's legs aren't still working right, and she angrily blames Phyllis for her three hours in the car trunk, right in front of Pam and Rachel and everyone else. Then she relents and says it'll be okay as long as she gets to the altar. Phyllis promises to make that happen.
As Dwight finishes getting ready and psyching himself up in another room, Jim breaks some bad news to him: the minister just told him that it's tradition for the bestisch mensch to be older than the groom. This is the first Dwight's heard of it, but Jim insists that he has to bow out. "I can't be there for you," he says sadly. "I just really wish there was something I could do." And he looks over Dwight's shoulder, and yes, we all see it coming, but it's still A Moment when the camera pans over to the doorway, and there stands Michael Scott. "I can't believe you came!" Dwight gasps in amazement. And we know exactly what Michael has to say to that, don't we? Do I even have to repeat it? Okay, fine: "That's what she said." They hug happily, and Jim THs, "Best prank ever."
You can tell it's a The Office wedding: Angela is being carried down the aisle to the altar on Phyllis's back while a bluegrass combo plays "Sweet Child of Mine." Both bride and groom stand in shallow pits, as the minister explains in a German accent that they're standing in their open graves, "as a reminder that this is the only escape from what they are about to do." Nellie whispers to Erin's mom that she gets that, but asks, "Why are the graves so shallow?" Michael hugs Angela, who comes up to about his waist at the moment. Oscar has the honor of carrying little Phillip to the front row, although the kid hasn't aged a day in the past year. As Kevin does a reading, Phyllis and her husband Bob smile at each other, Kelly and Ryan shamelessly eye-fuck, and Mose casts a romantic glance to his true love, a dress-wearing scarecrow in the adjoining field.
The minister pronounces Angela and Dwight man and wife, allowing them to lean as far out of their graves as they can for their first kiss as a married couple. Nate opens a wicker chest for the dove release, although none of the birds moves until he reaches in and reams his hand around among them. Dwight boisterously thanks them all for coming and asks them to take their hay bales into the reception for seating. "Complimentary hay hooks are placed along the aisle." And we go to the ads to the sight of well-dressed guests trying to wrestle the heavy bales and failing miserably.
At the reception in the front yard, Dwight and Angela have their first dance, in which her feet never touch the ground. Pam kisses Jim on the dance floor in a way that makes him say, "See, now you don't owe me anything." Ryan brings his apparently sick baby over to Ravi for an examination, and sends them both into the house so Ryan can have some alone time with Kelly. "I let him suck on a strawberry. He's allergic, but he'll get over it." Kelly is stunned. "You gave your baby an allergic reaction just to talk to me?" And of course they start making out.
Over shots of Pam and Michael laughing over his phone, Pam explains, "Michael has so many pictures of his kids he had to get two phones. With two numbers. And he pays two bills. He's just so happy to have a family plan," which is so Michael. Erin dances with her dad, who has similar moves to hers. Toby ugly-cries right in Pam's face on the dance floor. "Is it me?" she asks. "Is it Nellie?" "It's everything," Toby sobs inconsolably. Phyllis and Stanley are also dancing, saying they missed each other. Phyllis THs that people think Stanley's a mean old grump, "but would a grump make this?" She shows off a carving of herself that Stanley must have whittled on his porch. It has bird feet, but it's her.
Ryan and Kelly are running down the driveway together, declaring their love for each other and planning to be together forever. "I've finally mastered commitment!" Ryan says as he abandons his baby with her boyfriend.
While Dwight and Michael dance lustily to Bruce Springsteen, Ravi, still holding Drake, comes up to Kevin asking where Ryan and/or Kelly are. Kevin explains how they left, hoping Ravi could keep the baby. "That's it," Ravi says in exasperation, handing Drake off to Kevin and telling him to call Child Services to report an abandoned baby. "They'll find a better parent than Ryan in no time," he says as he abandons the baby with Kevin. Kevin's not so sure, so Nellie volunteers to help Kevin out with that, and he happily hands the kid over. Nellie THs, "If Ryan wants his baby back, please tell him where to find me. We'll be somewhere in Europe." She looks almost as happy as the baby does.
Michael wells up as he watches Dwight, Angela, Pam and Jim chat together at a table. "I feel like all my kids grew up," he says, "and then they married each other. It's every parent's dream!" I appreciate how the finale isn't about Michael. The last couple of seasons haven't been, so it would have been totally unearned. But I could have stood getting a little more of him.
As some of the guests are leaving, Val (who we haven't seen in forever) mentions the doc-makers' after-party in the warehouse. Darryl says it sounds lame, and Toby says he might turn in early. But the others coax him into coming, and give a little cheer when he agrees. Things are looking up for Toby already.
Jim and Pam make it home, Pam saying she needs to get out of her dress. "I need to get out of this dress," Jim cracks. In case you didn't see the episode, Jim is not actually wearing a dress. He's pretty surprised, however, when Michael's ex-girlfriend Carol comes out of their house with another couple. Carol, you may recall, is a realtor. "What's going on?" Jim asks as though he missed something. Carol apologizes that the other couple was late, but Pam clearly has an explanation overdue, so she gives a whole speech about the choice Jim had to make. "But I never want you to have to give up anything! I just thought that if I could get us an offer then there wouldn't be anything standing in or way and I could come to you with this big 'Jim gesture' and show you all at once just how much I love you and how much I really do believe in your future." Jim asks how long she's been showing the house, and she says about two months. "That's why it's so clean," he figures, but he's surprised that she's doing this without him. She gives him an "O RLY" look, reminding him that he bought it without telling her, so she figured she could sell it without telling him. He seems to accept that, but asks where they would go. "Austin? Maybe?" Wherever the talk is going after that is cut off when the other couple announces that they want to buy the house. Jim makes sure Pam really wants to do this, which she does, and he grabs her up in a big, happy, series-finale-style hug.
The warehouse is all decked out like Casino Night, with the whole cast and plenty of extras there. Jim secretly breaks the news to Darryl, who looks way excited. Phyllis and Stanley do a minor bit with some The Office merch and PBS pledging, while David Wallace agrees to contribute to Oscar's campaign. Out of nowhere, Pam takes the floor to tell the story of being commissioned for her first mural, here in the warehouse. It started out as the history of paper, and then someone spray-painted butts on it, so she started over. "But it all worked out for the best, and I think I've painted the perfect thing, which is the history of us. All of us. And this is for you, Jim." She gives the signal, and there's her painting of the whole cast at their places in the office. Which I'm sure the warehouse workers will love looking at every day. Prepare for more spray-painted butts, Pam. She invites the gang to pose for a picture in front of the mural, and everyone in the room joins her, including all the people we've never seen before. "I kind of meant just everybody from the office," she tries to clarify. That gets an indulgent chuckle, but nobody moves as the photos get snapped. While this is happening, Phyllis and Stanley share a little side-eye, as do Meredith and Toby. The photo op breaks up, and the office employees start sneaking up the stairs to where they belong...
...which is an after-after-party going on in the bullpen, as Kevin raids Meredith's liquor drawer. When Pam and Jim join the party, the phone at Reception rings. Seeing Erin engaged in conversation, Pam takes it, saying, "Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam," as though she never stopped. "I'm sorry, Jim Halpert doesn't work here anymore," she tells the caller, and they grin at each other from their original desks like old days. Pam THs that she couldn't watch the whole documentary. "I kept wanting to scream at Pam." Yeah, that must have sucked for you. Clips from the old days start playing -- and will continue for the duration -- as she goes on, "Jim was five feet from my desk and it took me four years to get to him... It would just... make my heart soar if someone out there saw this and she said to herself, be strong, trust yourself, love yourself, conquer your fears... [this over a rather on-the-nose shot of her walking on the coals in "Beach Day"]... just go after what you want, and act fast, because life just isn't that long." Neither is the grace period at the end of my scheduled DVR recording, so let's keep this going, Beesly.
Kevin has also learned a lesson from the experience, which he shares as we watch him trying to get all Cocktail while using a file cabinet as a bar: "If you film anybody long enough, they're going to do something stupid. It's only human natural!" With some humans, however, it takes longer than with others.
Dwight and Angela show up, Angela saying the honeymoon can wait until tomorrow and this is where they wanted to hang out. "When are we all going to be here together again?" she asks, sweetly out of character. Dwight squats down between Jim and Pam, inviting them to a little three-person conference room meeting just for fun when he gets back. "What is that meaningful look?" he asks them. For now, Jim just says they should talk. Before they can, Darryl calls everyone over to Nellie's old desk (and before that, Andy's) to show them something. It sounds like the start of Andy giving a speech, but before we hear more than a few words, we cut to Jim and Pam in Dwight's office, breaking the news of Jim's departure as gently as they can. "No, don't say it, you're fired!" Dwight snaps. "You're both fired!" Jim asks him not to end on a bad note, and Dwight chills out and says, "Don't be an idiot, it's for the severance. And the best that I can do is one month for every year you've been there. That's the max." So that's about a year, right? Jim thanks him and starts to offer their hospitality if he's ever in Austin, a city Dwight openly sneers at. However, he says that if they ever come back, they'll always have a place to stay. "In my barn." Jim: "There it is."
In a TH, Dwight asks rhetorically, "Do I get along with my coworkers? Well, first of all, I don't have coworkers any more, I have subordinates. So, have I gotten along with my subordinates? Let's see. My supplier relations rep, Meredith Palmer, is the only person I know who knows how to properly head-bang to Motorhead." Shot of them doing so in her van. "Oscar Martinez, my accountant, is now godfather to my son." Shot of Oscar bouncing Phillip on his hip. "Angela Schrute, my former accountant, is now my wife." Shot of Angela back when she received Dwight's key. "My top salesman, Jim Halpert, was best man at my wedding." Shot of Jim and Dwight hugging, sometime long ago. "And office administrator Pamela Beesly-Halpert is my best friend." Shot of the two of them from "The Injury," with Head-Wound Dwight affectionately and drunkenly beeping Pam's nose. "So yes, I'd say I have gotten along with my subordinates." Aw, that last one is so sweet, and yet sad, and I didn't realize until just now that at some point I can't quite put my finger on, it became completely true.
Back to Andy's speech at Cornell, which is titled "Baby Wawa Cornell commencement" on the video site and ends with his invitation, "Say it with me: 'I can so just sit here and cry!'" Oh, Andy, don't encourage the Millennials. But after seeing the mass of red-gowned grads cheering, Darryl tells Andy he did good. "Thanks dad -- Darryl," Andy says. He THs that he spent all his time at Dunder Mifflin thinking about his old Cornell pals, but now he's got his dream job at Cornell. "And I'm still just thinking about my old pals. Only now they're the ones I made here. I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them. Someone should write a song about that." Actually, it's completely out of character that Andy isn't already singing eight of them.
Oscar does a TH with a little origami demonstration. "You take something ordinary, like a piece of paper. It's not much, but if you see it in the right way..." after some more old clips, he holds up a little paper crane and says, "And that's what you did with this documentary. But seriously, you made a nine-year documentary and you couldn't once show me doing my origami?"
There's laundry hung up in the utility closet that was Ryan's office for a while. And Creed comes out of the men's room in his boxers, brushing his teeth. The party goes quiet in a hurry. But then we cut to him, dressed and joining the group in the bullpen plucking an acoustic guitar while everyone sits around listening, including Pam in Jim's lap. It's a song about old friends, appropriately enough. Over still more old clips, Jim says, "Imagine going back and watching a tape of your life. You can see yourself change and make mistakes and grow up. You could watch yourself fall in love, watch yourself become a husband. Become a father. You guys gave that to me. And that's an amazing gift." When did this become about the people making the show instead of the people on the show?
Back in the bullpen, Phyllis tells Jim out of nowhere that Flonkerton during the "Office Olympics" was awesome. "I still have my medal from that," Creed says. "Do you even have a mattress?" Angela asks. "No, but I still have my medal from that," Creed insists. Kevin tearfully turns to Oscar and says he thinks he's gay because he's so emotional. Oscar insists that Kevin is not, not gay.
There are more shots from past seasons as Creed's song goes on. Erin THs, "How did you do it? How did you capture what it was really like? How we felt, and how we made each other laugh, and how we got through the day? How did you do it? Also, how do cameras work?" Darryl says that whenever he came to work, all he wanted to do was leave. "So why in the world does it feel so hard to leave right now?" In a rare moment of lucidity, Creed says it seems arbitrary. He applied because they were hiring, he took a desk at the back because it was empty, "but no matter how you get there or where you end up, human beings have this miraculous gift to make that place home." As everyone files out at last, Pam hangs back. Remember her watercolor of the building that Michael bought and framed and hung on the wall outside his office? Pam now steals that for herself. "Let's do this," Creed says as he is led away by police.
Meredith THs, "I just feel lucky that I got a chance to share my crummy story with anyone who thinks they're the only one to take a dump in a paper shredder. You're not alone, sister. Let's get a beer sometime." Phyllis says she's happy it was all filmed so she can remember everyone and what they did. "I worked for a paper company all these years and I never wrote anything down." As everyone's hugging their goodbyes down in the parking lot, Jim THs that he sold paper here for twelve years, and talks about his now-former job the way he did in the pilot. "Even if I didn't love every minute of it, everything I have I owe to this job. This stupid, wonderful, boring, amazing job." Pam THs, "I thought it was weird when you picked us to make a documentary. But all in all I think an ordinary paper company like Dunder Mifflin was a great subject for a documentary." As we see the old clip of Michael first hanging Pam's watercolor that we just saw her steal, she goes on in VO, "There's a lot of beauty in ordinary things. Isn't that kind of the point?" An the last shot of the series is her watercolor fading into a shot of the actual building.
And so it ends. Damn, this show was a pain in the ass to cover sometimes -- both when it was brilliant and when it wasn't, for entirely different reasons. But I'm glad these last two episodes will allow me to remember it fondly, rather than the way I've been thinking about it the past couple of years. And no more Thursday Thweecaps for the foreseeable future. See you in the summer for Suits and Big Brother, everyone. And thanks.
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.