The Office – I’m surprised Packer even knew about the Sabre takeover

Another solid — albeit slightly alarming — cold open from The Office last night. Dwight’s ritual clearing out of expiring stock from his fallout shelter was shocking for the sheer volume of food that he shoveled into his mouth (did he even bother offering to share?). Jim’s participation could have been better, though; pondering months until the apocalypse was weak coming from the guy who once made an office desk out of wrapping paper.

If there’s one character in The Office ensemble that bothers me more than Holly, it’s Todd Packer. I’m a fan of David Koechner from things like Anchorman, but I just don’t like him as Packer. And I don’t like what he turns Michael into. You could say that Packer is to Michael what Michael used to be to Dwight, but then I enjoyed Dwight when he was a blind lapdog. Michael as a sycophantic fan of Packer’s stinks.

I wonder if Packer wanting to come home to the Scranton branch is a sign that we won’t be seeing Koechner again once Steve Carell leaves, i.e. that last night’s episode was his swan song. It wouldn’t surprise me, because Michael has always been the only person who could stand Packer. And the worst thing about Packer, meanwhile, might possibly be how mean he is to Kevin, and how sad it is that Kevin just nods along because he wants Packer to like him. You can imagine what high school must have been like for Kevin.

Anyway, it figures that Holly would take Michael’s recommendation without a second thought, but I liked her in that one brief moment when she was telling Michael that Packer sucked. And I guess only Holly could have gotten through to Michael about that … so maybe now she’s done what she came for and she can leave?

Dwight getting moved to the annex led to a great joining of forces between Dwight and Jim. While I imagined things would go in a different direction — once Dwight told Jim to send him forty ideas to get Packer I figured Jim would turn the tables and spend the entire remainder of the episode trying out his forty ideas on Dwight — I still enjoyed where their collaboration led. And seeing Dwight fall prey to Jim’s idea about jamming Packer’s desk drawers, which Dwight had dismissed as stupid, was awesome. But I think the job thing in Tallahassee was a bit of a cop-out; it might have been a productive idea, but how creative was it?

There was also another weird Andy and Erin story that took a twist and ended with an Andy and Pam story, something we haven’t seen for a while. It felt like Pam was trying to please Erin, separate from the receptionist desk’s need for a new computer, so that was strange, but I loved the many ways in which Andy went about breaking his computer to substantiate getting a new one. The deli meat and mustard in the CD drive took the prize.

What would have been funnier in the end would have been to have the new computer not work after Andy and Pam finished making it look used. I thought Darryl catching onto their lie about finding the computer in the warehouse was somewhat out-of-character for both Pam and Darryl.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Feb 25, 2011 @ 12:30 EST5EDT