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The Office: The Promotion
by Jason Hughes, posted Oct 2nd 2009 1:40AM
(S06E03) Your regular host, the esteemed Joel Keller, is off hiking the Appalachian Trail this week, so he asked me to cover for him. He should be back in time for the nuptials of Pam and Jim next week. But before we could get to that, David Wallace decided to throw new co-manager Jim a major curveball fresh into his new job.I'm with Joel on the David Wallace situation. Is he really as clueless about how things are at the Scranton branch? My experience with executives is that ... well, he probably is. In fact, on the one hand, I'll say it's a smart move to make Jim and Michael co-managers. Wallace knows the branch brings in solid sales figures, but he also knows what a loose cannon Michael is.
Maybe the thought was that Jim could reign him in and bring a semblance of sanity to the office. If tonight's challenge is any indication, it's not gonna happen.
It looks like the economic woes of Dunder-Mifflin continue, as the co-managers got word that raises weren't even going to match the prior year's increases. I expected that Michael and Jim would butt heads over every little thing that came up, but the level to which they were sparring over who was supposed to be responsible for the raises showed that Jim is perfectly willing to stoop to Michael's level.
The scene in the conference room where Michael was making fun of Jim for wanting to use his brain and think about the pros and cons of the raise option was really well done. You can see that Jim feels a little overwhelmed by the whole thing, and he's nervous about what the right move is. Meanwhile, Michael is just putting it off. I found myself wondering what Michael would have done if Jim hadn't been there? Low raises for everyone, or give the raise to himself and tell everyone there was no money for raises this year.
Jim's solution to give the money to the sales staff was never going to fly, and even worse than that was his idea to tell everybody his plan. Of course they were going to see it as him siding with Pam and his former colleagues. This is the second or third time we've seen Jim not handle real responsibility as well as he thinks he can. I guess we're going to get to see him grow as a leader, if the plan is to keep him on as co-manager.
I spent much of the episode worrying that Michael was never going to accept the new status quo in the office and that we'd just have him and Jim battling out every decision throughout the season. But it looks like "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." The attempt to give out the raises merit-based backfired on both of them, so now the entire office is angry with both managers.
All to the delight of Dwight, though they weren't angry enough to drag Jim out of his office and take it all out on him. I kind of agree with Oscar, though. Co-leaders as a concept isn't designed to work, and I don't see this one working either.
I actually appreciated that we didn't get a final solution as to what they're going to do about the raises. Instead, they commiserated their situation over two "World's Best Boss" mugs, a genuinely nice gesture from Michael. Maybe they'll work together after all.
Post-It Notes:
- Creed asked Meredith why they've never -- and she says they did.
- Even better, when Dwight blamed Jim under his breath and said it was Creed who spoke, Creed agreed that he'd said it. And believed it.
- Ryan actually duped Pam into giving him fifty bucks on a gambling scheme. Oh Pam, I thought you were smarter than that.
- The response from Oscar and Angela when Jim told them they were smart, as consolation for not getting a raise under his proposed plan was so perfectly sarcastic.
- I laughed when Kelly was supposed to be discussing the dynamic of both Michael and Jim as managers, and it devolved into choosing which was better between Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag. For the record Heidi lost because she had bad skin, among other reasons.
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