“Why you always gotta be so mean to me?“ – Toby to God
We stepped out of the Dunder Mifflin offices in this edition of The Office to celebrate the christening of Jim and Pam’s baby CeCe, and the whole gang shows up for the event.
Before the ceremony, Michael sits down with Pam and Jim and expresses that he wants to be the child’s godfather. He even tries out his best Don Corleone voice to impress Pam, but is still let down. Michael always wants to be part of the family when it comes to the employee’s lives outside of work.
Right before baby CeCe is baptized, she pees on her dress, so Jim has to put a t-shirt on her. Pam isn’t thrilled, but as Jim said, “Yes, this is happening.” The pastor then accidently tells everyone in the church that they are invited to a reception after the ceremony, even though family and friends only had been invited.
At the reception, Michael sees how much fun a missionary group is having and gets mad at the Dunder Mifflin group for not having as much fun. They in turn make fun of Michael, so he decides to go outside to say goodbye to the missionaries, who are headed off to Mexico to help a village. Michael sees how they get along and are so excited to go on their mission that he decides to get on the bus too. Everybody tries to stop him, but he is stubborn and won’t leave the bus. To impress Erin, Andy joins him. About 45 minutes into the bus ride they both realize they are doing something stupid and demand for the bus to be stopped.
Back at the church, Pam has to go get more food since everyone from church came to their reception and they weren’t prepared. Jim leaves CeCe with Pam’s grandma for a second and when he comes back she is not there. Jim starts freaking out and someone tells him a blond lady took her. Jim accuses Angela of taking the baby and as she is grabbed, the food that Pam brought back is knocked on the floor. Pam’s mom then comes out of the bathroom with the baby and Jim apologizes to Angela.
Overall, this is one of the weaker Office episodes during the show’s latter days. It’s a risk heading outside of the office and trying to make real life events funny, I don’t think I even laughed at more than one scene. Even Michael’s mood swings were irritating. Michael tries so hard to be liked and yielding comedy out of that character trait can get old at times.
The only thing I found amusing was Dwight trying so hard to sell paper to people at church. Toby asking God why he is mean to him gave a laugh too, because it’s true and Toby can never catch a break. Time to go back to the office and maybe see a little more Timothy Olyphant, too.
Some stats and info about The Office, “Christening”
TV SHOW – The Office
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 7, Episode 7
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