Last week, The Office was off, leaving the less than stellar taste of "Pool Party" in my mouth for an extra week. This week, however, it was back, but would it be better than ever? No, of course not. Don't be an idiot. Anyway, what did Thursday's episode of The Office, entitled "Jury Duty," provide us?
When things begin, Jim returns to the office after a week off due to jury duty. However, we then find out that Jim only really had a half a day of jury duty, then proceeded to take the rest of the week off to help Pam with their two children. When Jim realizes that his week off was a burden to his fellow employees, he feels bad, and becomes concerned about people finding out. Jim slips up when he tries to make up a story to satiate his fellow employees, referring to a food truck as a restaurant. Dwight, having been to Los Angeles after being tricked into believing he was going to be on NCIS, takes this to mean that Jim is making things up, and he sets out to prove Jim a liar.
Dwight thinks he has him caught, but Andy rises to Jim's defense, before casually saying that if Jim was indeed lying he'd fire him for the offense. So now, the stakes have been raised. Jim then quickly tells Andy the truth in privacy, and, of course, Andy doesn't fire him. Instead, he agrees to help Jim cover things up. At this point, I presumed the rest of the episode would be spent on the cover up, with things coming to fruition through some mistake, presumably by Andy, late, and then Jim would have to win everybody back. However, things unfolded slightly differently.
First, Dwight brings in the food truck guy, a Latino gentleman named Ernesto, who recognizes Toby but doesn't recognize Jim. Andy quickly panics, and says he drove Jim to the court house every day. Eventually, not wanting to continue the charade any longer, Jim tells the truth, and then apologizes. Everybody is annoyed, and Dwight assumes Jim will be fired as per Andy's statement. However, this is not the case, much to Dwight's annoyance. Dwight then becomes preoccupied with the goings on of the "B" story, so he drops out at this point, and it stops being Dwight versus Jim.
Instead, Jim brings in Pam and his two children to try and smooth things over. It was nice to see Jenna Fischer back, although she wasn't given a ton to do in her time on the episode. Aside from a weird joke about Creed wanting to put his finger in the baby's mouth, there wasn't much positive going on here at all frankly. Jim and Pam try and pass off drawings as being from CeCe, although they are presumably actually by Pam. How Pam managed to draw like a child I do not know, but the jig is quickly up when Kelly rips a picture in half in from of CeCe.
Then, the kids start crying and screaming and carrying on and everybody feels bad for Jim because his children are obnoxious and unbearable. They even let him leave early with Pam and forgive him because clearly his week off was far from a vacation. Of course, the problem here is that the two kids screaming and crying was incredibly annoying to me as well. It's one thing to have the audience perceive something as being annoying to the character. It is another thing to annoy the audience. Plus, I hate it when kids that young are used in television or cinema, because they clearly don't know what is going on and they are just being used as props.
This "A" story was simply not very good. It wasn't really funny, it unfolded poorly, and then it annoyed me. It's one of my least favorite stories the show has ever done. It was "Mafia" bad. Seriously, I can't think of many laughs off the top of my head. When Dwight was trying to catch Jim, there was some potential, but it didn't really go anywhere. While I've grown tired of "Andy tries to please everybody" stories and "Andy and Erin stories" and pretty much anything to do with Robert California, that doesn't mean I want those storylines replaced by something as tepid and at times dull as this.
Was the "B" story a respite. Oh, how I wish. Angela had her baby after eight months, leading Oscar to presume, as one would, it is a tiny premature baby. He, Erin, Kevin, and creepy ol' Gabe (who loves maternity wards) go to visit her and her closeted gay man/politican husband (he's a closeted gay man first, politician second in my book). When they arrive, they see a healthy, large baby, one that clearly was not born premature. Oscar thus presses Angela, who says that the baby was born out of wedlock due to a wild night spurred on by cooking wine. However, when Dwight arrives to see the baby, Oscar tells him when the baby was born. This leads Dwight to believe he is, in fact, the father, which pretty much everybody saw coming probably.
Dwight inspects the baby, and it has Schrute characteristics, and Dwight is fairly sure it wasn't Mose he posits in one of the few moments in the episode where I actually laughed aloud, or LAed as it were. Angela tries to deny the fact, even as Dwight describes their interactions in the most straightforward, clinical way possible, which is classic Dwight which is almost always funny. Angela never relents, but Dwight remains sure that he is the father. Also, whe Angela is going to feed the baby her husband leaves because he doesn't want to see it because he is, of course, a gay man and gay men be all like, "Eww that's gross" in situations like that, am I right, ladies? That isn't to say there aren't squeamish gay men out there, but it just felt like the joke was "He's gay, so he's grossed out at the notion of Angela feeding the baby," which fell flat to me.
In the tag, Dwight struts into the office, cigar aflame in his mouth, secretly reveling in his presumed fatherhood. He's so happy about it he even forgives Jim. So, it's come to this. Dwight is a father. Maybe, I suppose. Maybe it will all turn out to be a swerve. Maybe the senator is the father. Maybe Andy is the father. Maybe Creed is the father! Regardless, I presume this is going to be a major storyline, and I am not happy with it. Once upon a time, I don't think the show would have stooped to this, but I would have trusted them to handle it well. Now? Not so much. I can only imagine this going poorly. As such, I did not enjoy the "B" story either. It wasn't all that funny, and it makes me afraid of the future.
The cold open saw Andy ask everybody to leave the warehouse so he can dance out his anger a la Footloose, something we've presumably all seen before. It was kind of amusing, but not all that original.
I was disappointed in "Pool Party" two weeks ago, but I still thought it was a pretty good episode. "Jury Duty" couldn't even reach those levels. I don't like either storyline and I didn't get a lot of laughs. This wasn't even a decent episode. It was mediocre. If you have read my Office reviews in the past, you know that even when I have reservations about an episode, I still generally tend to like it. That wasn't the case this week. This was one of the worst episodes in the show's history. It annoyed me more than it made me laugh, and it set up a storyline for the future I am not looking forward to. That's not good. I've defended The Office longer than most, but after two substandard episodes, I'm starting to get concerned myself. Say, does anybody review Parks and Recreation for Examiner?
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