I could have rushed this blog out, but I figured, why not take a day? After all, there won’t be a new episode of The Office any time soon—not this winter, if you can believe it. In a case of art imitating, well, art, the writers have decided last summer’s cliffhanger worked so well — and by worked I mean totally didn’t work at all — that they’d recreate it.

So we’re left with the indelible image of the erstwhile reformed Roy Anderson (David Denman) smashing beer bottles into barroom mirrors, an anguished but liberated Pam Beesley (Jenna Fischer) making for the door and Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) blissly unaware that there’s a fist out there with his name on it. (photos NBC Universal)

How better to follow that up than with six weeks of reruns, right? You have to be kidding me. Well, rather than focus on the drought ahead, it’s time to assess the deluge just past.

Pam 2.0 is asserting herself. She insists Roy join her and the gang for drinks after work, even though he had completely incompatible plans to go drinking with his brother Kenny.

“I’ve decided that I’m going to be more honest. I’m going to start telling people what I want more directly. So look out world because old Pammy is getting what she wants. And don’t call me Pammy.�

The bad news then is she’s still with Roy. The good news is Roy continues to revert to his true self.

Dunder-Mifflin’s CFO (not his real initials, mind you) is hosting a cocktail party, and Michael (Steve Carell) sees this as his and Jan’s “coming out� party. You can bet Jan (Melora Hardin) doesn’t see it that way. Karen and Jim are going, too, though Jim makes it clear this is not his scene. And just for kicks, Dwight (Rainn Wilson) is tagging along. Naturally, Michael shows up at the boss’s house hours early, rancid potato salad in hand.

This was one of those great ensemble episodes, a la The Dundies, where the whole gang gets in on the fun. It’s how you get hilarious scenes like the one where Kevin (Brian Baumgartner) asks for some space when asked about his engagement or where Creed (Creed Bratton) talks about how he is the local source for fake IDs.

Meanwhile, Jan tries to make her intentions clear to Michael by having him sign a waiver protecting the company from a lawsuit if their relationship goes bad. He plans to frame his copy. Jan’s talking head interview might have been her best on-screen moment yet.

“I am taking a calculated risk. What’s the upside? I overcome my nausea, fall in love, babies, normalcy, no more self-loathing. The downside? I date Michael Scott publicly and collapse in on myself like a dying star….Why is this so hard? That’s what she said. Oh my God. What am I saying?�

Michael sets about embarrassing Jan — and you’d think himself — at every turn, introducing them as lovers, requesting Bagel Bites, asking the boss how much his house cost (after chiding Dwight for asking about the square-footage) and asking for Splenda to put in his single-malt scotch.

When Michael invites the boss to Sandals Jamaica next Christmas, Jan drags him off to the restroom for a little inappropriate behavior, as Michael puts it.

“Rachel thinks that I brought homemade potato salad, and I just picked it up at the supermarket. It’s funny. I wish that I could make potato salad that good. It’s just potatoes and mayonnaise. There’s something’s wrong with Jan.�

By the way, the minor Jim-Karen (Rashida Jones) storyline weirded me out, I have to admit. The episode summary told us Jim would meet her ex. Well that’s not quite how things played out. (Misleading episode summary? That’s never happened before.)

Instead, Karen points out one-by-one her ex-boyfriends and old flames around the room, and Jim and the entire viewing audience start squirming in their seats. In the end it was all a joke, but I didn’t get that until a second viewing. Karen was actually pretty charming, so chalk one up to the bozos at NBC’s marketing department for ruining a good bit.

Speaking of squirming, by the way, Toby (episode writer Paul Lieberstein) spent the better part of the night pathetically retrieving a stuffed duck from a vending machine for Pam.

Carell and Wilson both have a tendency to play their characters way over the top. We saw it in The Coup, when Dwight tried to take over the branch, and we saw it when Michael tried to take over Phyllis’s wedding. It doesn’t always work perfectly, as these two cases showed.

But when Dwight tours the CFO’s house, knocks on beams, tests the structural integrity of the banisters and kicks the chimney, it works. And when he shows up in the boss’s sleeping kid’s bedroom critiquing the furniture, it’s as close to creepy as you can get without pushing past the funny line.

Back at Poor Richard’s Pub, meanwhile, things are winding down rather precipitously on the RAM front. Fancy New Assertive Beesley decides to end eight-plus months of silence and tell Roy about the moment that in all likelihood (we don’t know for sure) led her to break off their engagement. Roy does not take the news well.

It’s funny that when she says they can’t have any secrets between them if they’re going to make it, he gets defensive, saying he didn’t do anything even though he had the chance.

“Just listen. Remember that Casino Night, about a month before we were supposed to get married? I kissed Jim.”

Stop the presses. What? She may have kissed Jim back, but Jim did the initiating. So why the revisionist history when you’re supposedly being open and honest? Are you couching the blow, or do you really see it that way?

 

Roy: What?
Pam: He told me how he felt, and I guess I had feelings too and we kissed.
Roy: Jim came on to you?
Pam: Just listen.
Roy: No, I am listening, and that’s the problem. I’m listening.
Pam: Don’t yell.
Roy: Don’t yell? (cue the beer bottle hurling into the mirror)
Pam: This is over.
Roy: Yeah, you’re right. This is so over. Are you kidding me Pam? Come on!

Roy trashes the place, and his brother joins in for reasons we can only surmise relate to the bad deal on the jet-skis. I was torn between cheering for Pam for finally standing up for herself and being struck by the visual of the angry, abusive moron she was just lucky enough to have survived.

Leave it to this show to break the tension, though. Cut to Michael’s car, Jan riding shotgun (though she did not arrive with him, you’ll note) and they’re pondering the disastrous evening. They had it good when their affair was illicit, she says. That hurts. He wants the house, the picket fence, the ketchup fights and the tickling and giggling. And you know what? That’s what Jan wants too, even if she doesn’t say so in as many words.

It’s a sweet and revelatory moment for their relationship, one that is broken completely when Dwight pops up from the backseat and says, “Don’t break up you guys. You’re great together.� That’s where I lost it.

Back outside the bar, Roy is sitting on the ground as Kenny walks out.

Roy: They gonna call the cops?
Kenny: No, I paid them off.
Roy: The jet-ski money?
Kenny: All of it.
Roy: I am going to kill Jim Halpert.

We may never see him act on the threat if the show stays true to its real-time format. The next new episode doesn’t air until April.

I’m glad to see Pam put an end to Roy for good, but I would have liked to see similar progress on the Jim-Karen front. Rashida Jones is starring in a new Fox pilot this fall, so we know her days are numbered. But how will the writers break up Jim and Karen, resolve Roy’s vendetta against Jim, bring Jim and Pam together and keep Kevin from getting carried away at drinking games he’s clearly not very good at, all in six episodes?

We shall see..

Best lines from Cocktails…

“A lot of people think Magic Camp is just for kids, and that’s why a lot of the people in my class were kids. Self-fulfilling prophecy.�

“Actually, it’s polite to show up early, and really smart. Only really good friends show up early. Ergo de facto, go to a party early, become a really good friend.�

“Oh, you know that line on the top of the shrimp? That’s feces.�

“Do you ever watch Battlestar Galactica? No? Then you are an idiot.�

“What, what, why are we going into the bathroom? I thought this was where you liked your privacy.�

“The chimney’s in decent shape, not great. I found some termite damage in a crawl space and some structural flaws in the foundation. So all in all, it was a pretty fun cocktail party.�