She’s still crazy (and crazy about candles) after all these years, and not at all happy that she doesn’t get to confront David Wallace, the man that fired her back in the day. We discover that the White Pages’s new boss is Jan Levenson, Michael Scott’s former lover/boss and “the most erratic and terrifying” person Pam has ever met. Instead, the show zags where we expect a zig. It looks like we’re heading for a story where Dwight tries too hard to be a good, supportive listener and ends up blowing the sale. There’s an interesting subtext here of Dwight being confronted with subconscious prejudices and getting forced to deal with his unexamined privileges (“I will tell her what her needs are and then fill them”), but the script is wisely not heavy handed about this. (He kind of looks like the Dwight Bobblehead that’s sometimes in the credits.) This is one of the creepiest things the incomparable Rainn Wilson has ever done on this show, and that’s saying something. Unfortunately, he has a hard time doing these at the same time, and all of the couching and hands on help can’t get him to do much better than just sort of move his head back and forth with a rigor mortis grin. The women of The Office do their best to soften Dwight up in a plot line pleasingly reminiscent of classic episodes like “Boys And Girls” and “Women’s Appreciation.” An Alpha Dog Warlord Conquer in his own mind, Dwight needs help with some basics, like learning to smile and nod when women are talking.
That Dwight creepily talks about the White Pages’ “Sexy Blubber” doesn’t help the situation. But Phyllis is worried that a man who ordered Erin to run into the bathroom to tell Stanley to “eat it” (hearing Erin do this in the background was the best part of this episode) might not have the delicate sensibility necessary to schmooze the White Pages’ new female boss. If Dwight could land this whale, it could bring back Pizza Fridays or, dare to dream, the halcyon bagel weeks from the nineties. With Andy out sailing away, David Wallace asks Dwight to try to land a potentially huge new client for Dunder Mifflin, The Scranton White Pages. It’s this tightness of structure and deft use of editing to maintain a snappy momentum that are signatures of a superior Office episode, and it’s impressive to watch Erin’s sister sharply juggle so many plots.
With the boss gone, everybody gets to step into the spotlight for a few minutes at a time and then cut out while their bit is still funny. He’s not seen for the rest of the episode, probably because Ed Helms is busy filming the highly anticipated sequel to Cedar Rapids. Two days in and he’s already gone mad from dehydration. We start with a cold open that sees Andy Skyping, somehow, from his boat trip. Instead of trying to pack in every idea possible, “The Whale” had a sense of when to say “it’s about time we end this silly mustache thing here before it drags on too long.” So what a pleasant surprise that the script Carrie Kemper (sister to Ellie) wrote managed to smartly sidestep this problem by doing just enough. Important character beats will get rushed and solid jokes that could have used time to simmer will land with half the force.
Often, when the writers pack in too many subplots and shenanigans they end up with everything feeling too thin. This was a particularly busy episode of The Office, which can often be troublesome for the show.