With what started out as one of the most hysterical cold-opens in the history of the show, The Office’s latest episode turned out to be an absolute heart-breaking mess for fans of Jim and Pam Halpert. Before I rant about that, I’d like to talk about the other episode plots, which proved to be gut wrenchingly funny.
The first scene of the episode is of an out of order sign on the elevator informing employees that they’ll have to take the stairs, what blasphemy! This proves to be unchallenging for all except Stanley (Leslie Baker), who is by far my favorite minor character on the show. His struggles of the stair climb were one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Later in the episode, Dwight, in an effort to get Stanley down the stairs to visit a client shoots tranquilizer darts into Stanley’s chest. This dark bit of humor was absolutely hilarious to me and was perhaps one of my favorite moments of this season.
In another sub plot, Andy (Ed Helms) pursues his longtime dream of becoming an actor. Driven by semi-positive reviews of himself on the promos for the documentary, he goes to visit an acting agent who is played by Roseanne, star of the self-titled 90s sitcom. Later in the episode, Andy is signed on as a client for the acting firm. That being said, I really do hope that Andy gets his dream of fame. He’s far more suited for acting that managing a paper company, and I hope the series ends with his character getting everything he deserves.
In the most important part of the show for me, Jim and Pam’s marriage woes seem to be never ending at this point.
It was revealed in this episode that their marriage has gotten to the point of needing outside help.
Meaning, the couple has decided to enter marriage counseling. While we have yet to see an actual appointment of theirs, we did get to see Pam talking to Erin and Jim confiding in Toby. Pam revealed that she’s tired of not having a say in major plans for the Halpert family. While this made me unhappy, I have to agree with her. Jim has made many important decisions without Pam’s input, and while most of them proved to be harmless, taking a job in Philly without consulting her first was out of line. I love Jim Halpert more than I love most people; but when he did that I couldn’t help but feel upset with him. Surprising Pam with a house is one thing, taking a job in another city is a completely different one. I know that Jim’s dream has always been to work in Philly; but had he consulted Pam before making this decision I don’t think they’d be in this predicament.
In Jim’s scenes he justified his actions by saying Philly could be so huge for the Halpert family. While I really do want his new business to succeed, I don’t want it to destroy their (life? family?) in the process.
The next dialogue completely broke my heart; in the shot of Pam talking to Erin she said “I don’t want to give him an ultimatum, but I’m not moving our family to Philly,” in Jim’s scene with Toby he said “If Pam won’t go, then we’re going to have a lot more problems than marriage counseling.”
This scene, despite being a few seconds, seemed to last an hour. My heart sank and I thought to myself, that’s it, they aren’t going to make it.
While I still don’t think that the writers would be so cruel to have them get divorced before the finale of the show, I don’t think they’re ever going to be the same again. To me, this season has changed their prior relationship forever. The writers don’t have time to properly amend this situation and I’m worried that it’ll end with some sort of compromise that makes either Jim or Pam extremely unhappy.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see because this is what we were left with. The writers only have four more episodes left to fix open plot holes, stay tuned for more reviews!
