The Office- Counseling recap/review

FINALLY a decent episode of The Office. Does that mean the show is getting back to form? Here's hoping. The first good choice was having Mose and Dwight construct a day care center in the office building. They gave Jim and Pam a tour, and the center turned out to be a room with a box full of plastic utensils for the kids to play with, four buckets, the word “FUN” on the wall, and an Insane Clown Posse poster with the first and last word crossed out. Jim and Pam, wisely, turned down day care by Dwight, but it was an hilarious proposition.

Michael was due to spend six hours in therapy with Toby, who has a social work degree. Michael attempted to waste the time by dodging Toby’s questions (“I was probed by ALF”) and being ridiculous. Poor Toby was taking the therapy seriously and really trying to help Michael. Toby tricked Michael three hours into the therapy by making him just play games, draw pictures, and talk. Michael opened up to Toby a little, and he was horrified when he figured out that Toby had tricked him.

Pam realized that she couldn’t actually make any money in sales, because she is bad at selling things. She's been doing this since last season and she's just now realizing that? So she pretended that she was the “office administrator” and set about tricking everyone and corporate into thinking that she was given the job a few months ago, but had not yet been paid for it. This plot point was the only thing we didn’t like. Although we admire her cleverness in weaseling money from the morons at Dunder Mifflin, we don’t like that she is essentially stealing from a company. Just because people are stupid doesn’t mean you can steal from them. She got her way, in the end.

The best plot was Dwight-centered (as good Office plots usually are). He had gone to a store in the mall to splurge on an expensive object, only to be turned away, laughed at, and photographed with cell phones, presumably for looking like a poor rube. The increasingly hilarious Kelly suggested that Dwight Pretty Woman the place. You know. The part where, after Julia Roberts was turned away from a high-priced story for looking like a hooker, she went back to the store with bags in her hands and said, “You remember me? You work on commission? Big mistake. Huge!” Everyone in the office loved this idea, so Andy and Jim dressed Dwight up to look like a weird British gentleman from Sherlock Holmes’ days and took Dwight to the mall for his “revenge.” Dwight’s revenge did not go well, because he ended up buying his desired object (a pewter wizard figurine holding a crystal). Also, the store clerk showed Jim and Andy a picture of Dwight on the day he was turned away from the store because he looked threatening, not poor. Dwight had beet-stained hands which looked like blood-stained hands and a pair over overalls. He looked ridiculous and angry. We laughed pretty hard. We loved when Dwight started to call the store clerk “IDIOT,” but then had to change it in the middle of the word to “good sir” when he remembered he was supposed to be a gentleman.

Dear The Office writers: Take this episode, then improve a little on it, we will forgive you for season six.

Episode grade- B

Watch this episode: http://www.hulu.com/watch/179299/the-office-counseling#s-p1-so-i0