The Office – Wouldn’t everyone have seen Meredith’s herpes on casual Friday?

You’d think the longer the cold open on a show lasts, the more it would detract from the episode whose time it was eating into. But The Office succeeds at long cold opens, and this past week was no exception — Dwight picking up undocumented day laborers and getting them “deported,” and then the guy he picked up to serve as the maintenance man at the office was great. I loved the “do or die” challenge in the parking lot, too … why in the world did the guy go with the bat to kill the hornets nest? And what was wrong with the blowtorch as a weapon of choice? It was an awesome scene.

The episode itself also wasn’t half bad. It is hard not to see things like bringing all of Michael’s old girlfriends back through the filter of Steve Carell leaving at the end of the season, and I’m terrified at the prospect of Holly (Amy Ryan) coming back. But it was fun to reconnect with all of the old girlfriends again — Donna (Amy Pietz), Holly, Jan (Melora Hardin), Helene (Linda Purl), and Carol (Nancy Carell, Steve’s wife). What a great walk down memory lane visiting with all of Michael’s former lady friends. Remember when he invited both Carol and Jan to be his date at casino night? Good times.

Andy’s pizza and sex talk was also fun, although I’m not sure why he did all of that if his only goal was to find out if Gabe and Erin were sleeping together … or was he trying to hint to them that abstinence was the way to go? Regardless, it had nothing to do with Meredith. The pros and cons list was funny, and it was even funnier that all of the cons got shifted over to the pros list for one reason or another. Unwanted pregnancy? Pro, because Pam and Jim love their “surprise” baby. Why not?

If we were reminiscing about the past, though, I wondered why Andy’s anger management issues didn’t come up after he hurled a pie of pizza at the wall in the conference room. Even while I wondered about that I was reminded of the episode where he went to anger management, and the thing that led him there — Jim hiding Andy’s phone in the ceiling and then calling it. Remember when Jim was fun like that?

Even working upstairs Darryl still isn’t guaranteed to make an appearance on a regular basis, and this episode proved why that’s a mistake. His contributions at pizza and sex were great, but his non-specific advice to Andy was fantastic. “I don’t know what your problem is, but my advice to you is to stop crying.” Craig Robinson may have bombed on Last Comic Standing, but he’s wonderful as Darryl Philbin.

And then I didn’t even see the closing scene coming. Remember when Michael kissed Oscar so awkwardly in an attempt to show how welcome Oscar’s homosexuality was in the office? That Michael would thread that back into his hunt for the source of his herpes was marvelous on the part of the series. Michael and Dwight’s incredibly offensive list of places that gay men might find themselves having sex was hilarious as well.

Like I said, not half bad.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Oct 17, 2010 @ 14:30 EST5EDT