Michael Under Oath
Jan and Michael face off over a lawsuit. Steve Carell and Melora Hardin by Byron Cohen/NBC.
Episode Recap: The Deposition (November 15, 2007)
Was anyone else convinced that Michael and Jan were going to break up before the end of this episode? They're hardly a stable couple even in the best of times, but here it was practically a competition to see who could do the most vicious thing to the other (or at the very least, to reveal who had acted worse in the past). Let's see: Michael emailed a topless photo of Jan to everyone in the company, so in turn she stole his diary and handed it over to her lawyer as evidence. She gave him a terrible performance review (okay, that one was probably justified), and he in turn sided with Dunder-Mifflin in her lawsuit, effectively destroying her case. Their horribly awkward conversation during the car ride home was nothing less than a look at a relationship on life support. Both Michael and Jan seemed committed to each other more out of desperation and loneliness than any sort of genuine affection. This might be the rare case where a break-up would be a happy ending, because maybe that's what these two people need in order to move on with their lives. Right now they're only enablers for the other person's worst behavior: Michael allows Jan to lounge around all day without a job and spend his money, while Jan thinks nothing of letting Michael treat her as a sex object.
Although I'm starting to wonder if Michael can honestly listen to
anyone and care about their problems. I realize that Toby is usually depicted as one of the most pathetic employees on
The Office, but even still, would it have killed Michael to display a little bit of sympathy when he was telling the story of his parents' divorce? Instead Michael turns on Toby and ends the conversation in the cruelest possible way. Maybe he deserves to be miserable after all.
Thankfully we had the ping-pong battle royale back at Scranton to keep the mood light. It's no surprise to me that Kelly loves to trash talk (or more accurately, smack talk) even when the stakes are so unbelievably low. But it was unusual to see Kelly actually getting under Pam's skin, which in turns drives her to force Jim to train harder. I didn't think the ping-pong yielded that many good jokes after all, who didn't see it coming that Dwight has a detailed knowledge of the sport and is a master at it along with his cousin? but I did like it because of the subtle truth that in the insular world of an office, people start to get obsessed with seemingly trivial things that don't really matter. Also, it was revealing that while Pam and Kelly were way more competitive than their boyfriends, they were both mind-blowingly awful at the game itself.
On to tonight's Dundies:
Best Jim Facial Expression: Nothing in particular really jumped out at me, but maybe his sheepish look of humiliation after Dwight schools him on the impromptu ping-pong table in the conference room.
Best Jan Knows Michael is a Moron Moment: Admitting that she made Michael memorize his deposition so as "not to leave anything to chance or (his) judgment."
Best Insensitive Michael Moment: Oh, I don't know, how about
knocking Toby's food to the ground while he was talking about parents' bitter divorce.
Best PB&J Moment: Pam talking about how she watches Jim play ping-pong and brings him juice, before adding "my boyfriend is twelve." (That was the age she said, right? I don't have TiVo and so I'm reduced to quickly writing notes down during these episodes.)
Best Overall Moment: The quick recap of Michael's deposition by the stenographer, in which he tried several times to leave the room by going to the bathroom in order to avoid questioning.
Unfortunately this could be the last episode of
The Office we get in quite a while if the strike isn't resolved soon (and to make the wait even more agonizing, the cast was just bragging that they were in the process of filming their funniest episode ever). In the mean time, let me know your thoughts on this episode and let's hope for a speedy return of the Dunder-Mifflin crew.
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