Every couple of years, we have a Comic Relief telethon night, where people are encouraged to donate their money for good causes, and in return, they get some comedy. It's a pretty sweet deal. More often than not, you see characters from established television shows mixing with each other. It's pretty fun, but you don't really accept that Richard Hammond from 'Top Gear' is really interacting with Alex Drake and Gene Hunt - you appreciate that it's all for fun.
And that's kind of how I feel about 'Threat Level Midnight', an episode that, while a huge amount of fun, doesn't fit anywhere into the reality of 'The Office'. It's not the fact that Michael made a movie - I reckon that's the sort of job Michael could produce in 11 years. Rather, it's the idea that Jim/Pam/Roy/Angela/Phyllis/Kelly etc spent what would have been several hours of their weekends shooting some shoestring budget movie for their boss, whom most of the time they can't even tolerate. Take it as a sort of 'Comic Relief breaking the rules special' though, and what you have is a brilliantly funny and charming episode that reminds us what a great ensemble cast this is.
Having said that, just like Michael reminded Holly that she needed to keep him grounded, Holly and Michael's conversations about this silly film were what kept the episode rooted too, even if only slightly. I think if we'd just seen it in it's entirety, the movie wouldn't have been able to hold the episode on it's own. So it was definitely a good idea for Michael to see for once how he really is perceived by the rest of the office, and more importantly, to be okay with it.
We're starting to approach the end of the Michael Scott Farewell Tour, including even brief appearances from David Denman as Roy and Rashida Jones as Karen(*), and I for one am really glad that The Office has bounced back from such a lousy start to the season to some really on form episodes that have reminded me how much I'm going to miss Steve Carell when he's gone. But at the same time, I'm now completely on board for a Carell-less 'The Office'. It was what happened with Scrubs - as Zach Braff did his umpteenth 'No this time, it's really my last season!' run, and the show moved to ABC, the quality of the show improved so much that I felt comfortable trusting Bill Lawrence with 'Scrubs - Med School', an experiment that was (mostly) a success.
(*)Now, I don't know about you, but I was completely fixated on Rashida Jones during 'The Scarn Dance'. Go back and watch it again. Look how absolutely committed Karen is to doing that dance. It'd be great to see her come back for a bit - Ann Perkins is great, but I still loved Jones as Karen Filipelli (I wanted her to get Jan's Job).
Normally, I'd do a list of all the things I really enjoyed about the episode - but I think that's pretty pointless here, as just about every gag within the film (both intentional and unintentional) was so funny that the page would go on forever.
So, I'll leave it to you - what did everyone else think?
