“Is that the show where all the puppets live in the barrio?” – Dwight
It’s Secretary’s Day for our gang of office heroes, which plays into the featured relationship of the season: Andy (Ed Helms) and Erin (Ellie Kemper). Andy goes over the top in setting up a Secretary’s Day extravaganza for receptionist Erin, which leads to boss man Michael Scott (Steve Carell) taking Erin out to an offsite boss-and-secretary lunch.
Watching Michael and Erin together, a few things occurred to me. First, the understated, uncomfortable, foot-in-mouth Michael Scott is far, far more preferable to the absurd caricature we’ve seen recently in episodes such as “Happy Hour.” Secondly, I get that Erin is quirky (“weird,” Michael would say) but her leap into caricature territory negatively counterbalanced the good that came of Michael acting more, well, normal-ish.
Juxtapose that scene, if you will, against a shorter scene – and a far funnier one – involving Kevin (Brian Baumgartner) and Darryl (Craig Robinson). The gang has kind of been ganging up on Kevin, albeit in a light-hearted way, watching online video footage of Cookie Monster from Sesame Street with Kevin’s voice dubbed in.
When Kevin enters the kitchen and Darryl offers him a cookie, Kevin is wise enough not to play along. Except he’s not: Darryl – in the deadpanned and bone dry delivery that could only make Ricky Gervais himself smile – states that it’s his birthday and he was actually simply offering him a cookie. Good natured, cookie-loving Kevin relents and, as soon as he grabs that cookie, Darryl arches an eyebrow and does a quick Cookie Monster gobbling-those-cookies-down sound effect.
I lay that out to reflect that the latter incident felt real, felt like it could have come out of an ordinary office moment (someone gets offered something with the intent of a semi-joke or gag or mild insult), and because we know the characters of Kevin and Darryl so well, it’s funny and it’s real. Whereas, aren’t all of us true Office die hards trying to work up a laugh during the not-that-funny Michael / Erin scenes and just not getting there?
The later scene in which Pam (Jenna Fischer) gently explains to Erin that she had been engaged before she met Jim, to a man who also worked at the office, showcases The Office at its very best. It’s sweet and relatable and gets completely flipped on its head with a funny twist when Pam wraps up her “the heart knows what it wants when it finds it speech” with Erin responding with, “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
So, a below average outing overall I’d say, but with enough nice moments and funny moments to not tip it into bad territories.
More thoughts on “Secretary’s Day”:
- Dwight (Rainn Wilson) on The Muppet Show: “Is that the show where all the puppets live in the barrio? I love that show.”
- What’s up with Ryan’s (B.J. Novak) rat pack after a performance in Vegas fashion look these days?
- Funny moment: the camera pan to the Secretary’s Day cake, featuring an image of Erin on the phone, after Erin stormed out of the room (she found out that Andy had been engaged to Angela, played by Angela Kinsey, you see).
- “C is for Suspension.” – Kevin
- This has nothing at all to do with The Office, but the incessant ads for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter are beginning to grate on me, not so much because they are incessant, but because they do almost nothing in explaining what the hell The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is.
From Around the Web: The Office, “Secretary’s Day”
- A.V. Club: Erin has really come into her own this season and tonight’s episode was her finest half-hour. For such a simple, child-like character, she showed surprising complexity, cycling through some very dark emotions as she struggles to come to terms with the disquieting fact that the people we fall in love with had lives before us and sometimes they involved getting engaged to people you hate and, alas, have to work with.
- TV Squad: Michael doesn’t like the way Andy dresses because it “reminds me of Easter.” I’m with him on that.
Some stats and info about The Office, “Secretary’s Day”
TV SHOW – The Office
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 6, Episode 22
AIRED ON – March 25th, 2010
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – NBC
GENRE – Comedy, Office Culture
CREATED BY – Greg Daniels, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant
CAST – Steve Carell, John Krasinski, Jenn Fischer, Rainn Wilson, Leslie David Baker, Brian Baumgartner, Angela Kinsey, Kate Flannery, Phyllis Smith, Creed Bratton, Oscar Nunez, B.J. Novak, Mindy Kaling, Ed Helms, Paul Lieberstein, Craig Robinson, Ellie Kemper