“I just made Kevin cry and Gabe looks like Lady Gaga. That’s not Halloween. Halloween should be a day where we honor monsters and not be mad at each other.” –Michael
One thing that The Office is particularly good at is their cold opens, and “Costume Contest” provides us with one of its best.
When Jim sets his orange juice next to Stanley’s coffee, Stanley takes a drink of the orange juice by accident and doesn’t even notice it wasn’t hot coffee. Jim then wonders if there is no limit to what Stanley won’t notice.
The staffers decide to take the theory to the test. Kevin dresses up as Phyllis and sits across from Stanley, Andy talks to him without a shirt on but a tie on, Pam has a mustache, Michael has funny teeth, they all sit backwards in a meeting as Stanley sits forward and as he goes home, he passes Dwight with a miniature pony and he still doesn’t notice. There is definitely no limit on what Stanley wouldn’t notice. I would definitely put it up there as one of my top five Office openings.
For the rest of “Costume Contest,” it was Halloween at Dunder Mifflin, and everybody competed in a costume contest. The prize is the Scranton coupon book that is allegedly worth $15,000 worth of coupons (as Angela puts it: “This is an amazing prize. I mean I don’t even want to give Pam a compliment because she’s so blehhh, but she did a good job. I really want that coupon book”).
Oscar is the only one that understands that it isn’t really worth that much. He even changes his costume from ’70s pimp to rational consumer just to make his point. Other costumes include Michael as MacGruber, Stanley as a samurai, Kevin as Michael Moore, Darryl as Dracula (with Michael calling him Blackula), Gabe as Lady Gaga, Kelly as Snooki, Ryan as Justin Beiber, Andy and Meredith as Bill and Sookie from True Blood, Creed as a mummy, Toby as a hobo, Dwight as the “Scranton strangler” and Pam as Olive Oyl, but she can’t get Jim to put on his Popeye outfit.
The contest gets even more competitive when Kelly changes her costume to Katy Perry. Then Angela decides to step it up and changes from a penguin into a sexy nurse outfit. This is the most skin Angela has ever shown in the seven seasons of the show! Her reason was great: “I think we all live in the real world here. Let’s not pretend to be unaware of what sells in this office.” Shows what she will do in order to win a coupon book.
The day takes a bad turn when Michael finds out that Darryl went over his head to Gabe with the idea for the drivers of the trucks to sell paper on their routes. Michael originally said no to Darryl’s idea and he at first thinks that corporate came up with the thought. When he tries to give Darryl credit, he learns the truth from Gabe. Michael is mad at Darryl and decides the best way to handle it is to dress up as Darryl and mock him. He is so mad that he makes Kevin cry after he catches him talking to Gabe and thinks that Kevin is stabbing him in the back too.
Kelly said it best when asking Michael, “Could you for once just let us enjoy a party instead of making it about all your issues?” with Pam adding on, “Dressing up as somebody…. When has that every worked for you?” Darryl and Michael make up after talking to Gabe. Darryl later tells Andy that he has big plans at Dunder Mifflin.
Elsewhere, people are still gossiping about Danny and Pam after Andy and Kevin tell Danny they can’t come to his Halloween party due to the fact that Pam would be mad. Danny tells Pam and Jim there are no hard feelings and Pam still wonders why he never called her back.
He finally fesses up that he thought she was too dorky and didn’t want to call her back. I am glad that they finally resolved this and they can move on. Also glad that there is not going to be some Danny/Pam/Jim triangle because it wouldn’t work. Poor Pam though, her reaction was sad! Jim saved the day by dressing up as Popeye and putting CeCe in her costume too. In the end it is Oscar’s “rational consumer” costume that wins, even though he didn’t really want the coupon book.
This has been one of the better episodes of the season so far. Loved the opening and the costumes were great. It seemed like they were dropping some hints with Darryl’s comments at the end. I think I would be okay with him taking over for Michael.
Other moments from the episode:
- Todd Packer as a pregnant nun. Where has this guy been? The episodes are funnier when he is there.
- Erin submerged under water eating apples even though she is supposed to only be bobbing for them.
- The costumes; love Andy as Bill and Gabe as Lady Gaga was just plain creepy.
- Reasons for Oscar winning the contest; Kelly, who didn’t want to vote for someone with a better costume than hers, Ryan, because Oscar is a “Nader guy” and Creed, who thought Oscar was dressed as Edward James Olmos.
Some stats and info about The Office, “Costume Contest”
TV SHOW – The Office
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 7, Episode 6
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