“The Job,� the season finale of The Office, opens at Dunder-Mifflin’s corporate offices in in New York City. Michael is a day early for his interview, which is typical for him, but how’d the documentary crew know to meet him there?

David Wallace, the CFO, is hilarious with his understated skepticism at Michael’s explanations for the gaffe. He knows to expect things like this from Michael, who actually makes a pretty good case, to Wallace and to viewers, that he’s a pretty good manager in spite of his buffoonery. But geez, a day early?

In Scranton, Jim walks in sporting a haircut in place of his mop-top. Kevin doesn’t like it, but Meredith does – too much. Andy, too. He renames Jim “Big Haircut.� In a TH, Jim reveals it was Karen’s idea. She thought he looked homeless.

When Pam says she thinks it looks great,� it highlights the tension of wondering what the fallout is going to be from her beach tirade. In a talking head interview with the documentary crew, Pam says Jim told her he missed her friendship also. And she’s not embarrassed at all by what she said.

Meanwhile, Michael awards Dwight his old job, which is surprising since he hasn’t gotten a new job yet. He hasn’t even gone on the interview. Still, his Todd Packer-esque congratulatory note brings Dwight to tears.

The tension hits when Pam approaches Karen in the breakroom.

Pam: Hey.

Karen: Hey.

Pam: About the beach…

Karen: It’s OK. We all say things without thinking.

Pam: Oh no, it’s not that. I’ve actually been thinking that for a long time, and I’m glad I said it. I’m just sorry if it made you feel weird.

Karen (in a talking head): Pam is…kind of a bitch.

So Karen talks Jim into heading up to New York a day early for their interviews. Michael was hoping for a mooning, bird-flipping convoy, but he lets them leave early anyway.

Brian Baumgartner may have overstated his case when he hinted that Kevin played a role in deciding Jim’s Karen-Pam dilemma. He breaks down the two choices pretty accurately, if completely superficially, so Jim puts him to work tackling the problem.

The office reactions to Pam’s speech at the beach are pretty telling. Oscar teases that he missed her friendship, and she laughs it off. Stanley, man of few words himself, says he never heard Pam talk that much. Kelly just thought it was pathetic, and Meredith said everyone was probably too drunk to remember any of it. (No, that was just you Meredith.)

Creed, meanwhile, blogged every word of it. Ryan, we learn, set up his blog in the form of a Word document on Creed’s desktop. (You can read it at NBC.com.)

Michael’s so confident he got the job, he tells the accounting staff he already sold his condo, on eBay of course, at 80 percent of what he paid.

Dwight, meanwhile, informs Angela of his promotion.

Dwight: How would you like to spend the night with the regional manager of Dunder-Mifflin Scranton.

Angela: No Dwight. I don’t care if that’s how they consolidated power in ancient Rome.

Dwight: No, no. Not Michael. Me. I’m taking his job.

Angela: Not now. (long pause) Goodbye Kelly Kapoor.

Dwight loves that he’ll soon be Jim’s boss. Welcome to the Motel Hell. There’s no cable TV, and the sheets are made of fire. Seems that in Dwight’s wildest fantasy, he co-owns a bed and breakfast with the devil. It pays pretty good, though.

Dwight would like to hire Jack Bauer as his number two, but alas, Jack’s unavailable. And overqualified. Andy’d like the job, though.

Things turn edgy when Jan – nee Janet – enters. Michael hasn’t seen her since he dumped her. She says she just wants to talk, prompting Michael to ask Pam to quietly gather the ladies in the conference room. It’s DefCon 10.

Pam tells Karen about Michaels’ request. Karen, in turn, asks Pam to make six copies of her and Jim’s sales reports, a menial administrative task she could have and should have done herself. But Pam’s a good sport and agrees. And she tells Karen she hopes she gets the job. Karen just sneers.

Jan, meanwhile, tells Michael she wants to get back together, which puts him at DefCon 20. He runs to the ladies for help. He doesn’t want to get back with her, but he’s afraid she’ll make him like she made him “do a lot of things I didn’t want to do.� Pam, the voice of reason, reminds him he’s happier without Jan.

Back in his office, though, Jan has two big reasons they should try again. No one in the office can believe Jan had breast enhancement surgery. But when Karen spots Pam and Jim having a quiet laugh about it, she rushes to insert herself into the banter. Pam can understand that, she says in a talking head. It had to be awkward for Jim to see her and Roy joking around…that one time.

In three straight talking heads, Meredith says men like what’s in back more than what’s in front, Kevin says he loves what Jan’s done and Creed says he’s offended. He likes his women au naturel.

Michael isn’t taking Jan back for shallow reasons. This is the opposite of shallow, he says. This is emotionally magnificent.

Pam isn’t much clearer when she says in a talking head she just wants Jim to be happy.

“And I know that sounds cliché, and I know saying it sounds cliché, sounds cliché. Maybe I’m being cliché. I don’t care because I am what I am…That’s Popeye.

Andy’s interview to be Dwight’s number two reveals a few interesting facts. White is the best color because it contains all other colors (though black is most dominant). You make a table by making a chair but not sitting on it. And the capital of Maine is Montpelier, Vermont. Andy’s off to a very good start, in a way.

On the ride to New York, Jim and Karen engage in the kind of unwitty, forced, faux sarcastic banter common between people who don’t really belong together. The hyper-competitive undertones are tangible. Michael leaves for New York the next day, but not before a long, drawn-out, inappropriate and melodramatic goodbye.

Seems like Jim and Karen had a fun night in New York, though not necessarily doing what Michael earlier suggested. No, they grabbed dinner, snuck in on the second act of Spamalot and hit a bar. He even gave her a piggyback ride. They might even have seen Lorne Michaels.

But she always has to ruin things by talking. She asks what becomes of them if she gets the job. If he gets it, she’d move to New York with him, she says. There’s one too many people in Scranton for her to stay there. He tells her he gets that, but we never hear him say he’ll move with her.

At corporate, Michael offers to introduce Jim and Karen to Beardy and the rest of the gang. He equates them to kids tagging along with their dad on an audition. But daddy is the best actor around. He’s Meryl Streep.

Andy lands the job of Dwight’s number two, but Dwight has other plans for Pam. He wants her to be his Secret Assistant to the Regional Manager. Forget for a minute that he didn’t ask Angela. I love these two together. Jim taught Pam that whenever Dwight wants you to do something secret, you always say “Absolutely I do.�

Back in the breakroom, Oscar dismisses the idea that Michael’s going anywhere. Kevin says Karen will get the job – she looks corporate with all those pant suits. (And he’s still making Pam-Karen comparison notes.) Phyllis thinks Michael will get it. After all, he wasn’t qualified for the job he had either.

Dwight is establishing his command via Schrutebucks, with Pam as his secret cohort. Schrutebucks are motivational tools with minimal cash or motivational value. What’s more, Michael wasted an enormous amount of time on non-work-related ethnic celebrations and parades of soft-minded do-gooderness. Instead, Dwight will hold educational seminars on the origins of paper.

Dwight’s first paper class is a hoot. He’s so condescending and pedantic about northeast Pennsylvania top soil. Stanley earns a Schruteback for knowing that rain is wet, but loses fifty for turning it down.

Dwight: Don’t you want to earn Schrutebucks?

Stanley: No. In fact I’ll give you a billion Stanley nickels if you never talk to me again.

Dwight: What’s the ratio of Stanley nickels to Schrutebucks.

Stanley: The same as the ratio of unicorns to leprechauns.

Only the thunder of Pam’s voice can settle things down after that. Really.

At his interview, Michael suggests changing the name of Dunder-Mifflin to Paper Great or Super Duper Paper. On his way out he says he’s looking forward to working with Jan. But Wallace informs him its Jan’s job that’s open. They’re letting her go.

We only get a glimpse of Karen’s interview. Wallace asks what she thinks of Michael. Off the record, she says he’d be a disaster. Say what you will about Pam Beesly. She would never do that.

Michael, on learning Jan’s getting the axe, doesn’t seem to have the heart not to tell her. And Jan goes nuts, barging into Karen’s interview. So Wallace lays it out for her, telling her she’s been erratic and unfocused on her work. This sends her into a frenzy, and Wallace calls her unstable. Michael even sticks up for her, sort of.

Cut to Scranton where Dwight and Andy are painting Michael’s old office black. “It’s like staring into your soul,� Andy says.

Back at corporate, Jan is being escorted from the building in an awkwardly protracted scene in which she hugs her assistant and drops a bunch of her personal belongings before swearing her way out the door. Wallace lets Michael know he’s out of the running for the job. He doesn’t say why, but it’s pretty clear. Michael still has his job in Scranton, though, and he gives Jim and Karen his endorsement.

They sit there jaw-dropped at the scene that just played out. The difference, though, is that Karen is laughing at Jan’s meltdown while Jim feels badly for her. When he tells Karen she doesn’t have to wait during his interview, she jumps at the chance to meet friends downtown for lunch.

After she tells him to call her later and gives him a “Good luck, Halpert�, the phone at reception rings, prompting a strangely familiar “Dunder-Mifflin. This is Grace.� Where’s Jim heard something like that before?

In the car, Jan’s still fired up. But the bright side is she can focus on her relationship with Michael. She could wear stretch pants and wait for him to come home. He’s quietly more out of sorts than she is, unsure what to do with her. Still, he invites her to move in with him (though he’s got some bad eBay feedback coming).

He returns to the office and reasserts himself with bad jokes. He’s never going to leave. He’s going nowhere. And he’s very happy that the office is his graveyard. Dwight’s devastated, but he’s grateful to Pam for her support. (More “Dwam� in Season 4!)

In a talking head, Pam says she doesn’t know what the future holds and that she and Jim are just too alike. Maybe she’ll find her own Karen someday. A man Karen, that is. She’s not gay, just out of sorts.

Jim’s interview is going the best of the three so far. But his quarterly reports folder contains a surprise: a gold yogurt lid with a chain of paper clips. Pam made a bunch of them for Office Olympics, which they organized two years earlier on a day Michael was out of the office. She included a note saying “Don’t forget us when you’re famous.�

Jim doesn’t even hear Wallace go on about corporate’s own evil HR coordinator. Wallace’s questions about New York yield mindless answers. Asked what he liked most about Scranton, Jim says the friendships. Where does he see himself in 10 years?

The question hangs on the air as we cut to a week earlier, a flashback to the beach and Pam cooling her heels in the lake as Jim walks up behind.

Jim: The real reason I went to Stamford was because I wanted to be not here.

Pam: I know.

Jim: And even though I came back, I just feel like I’ve never really come back.

Pam: Well I wish you would.

At this point I’m feeling nervous. I didn’t expect them to top “Casino Night,� last season’s finale, but where was this going? The signs, as I was reading them, pointed to Jim staying in New York with Karen. Pam’s talking head that followed seemed to confirm it at first.

“I bet Jim got the job. I mean, why wouldn’t he? He’s totally qualified and smart. Everyone loves him. And if he never comes back again, that’s OK. We’re friends, and I’m sure we’ll stay friends. We just never got the timing right, you know? I shot him down, and then he did the same to me. But you know what? It’s OK. I am totally fine. Everything is going to be totally—

Enter Jim.

“Pam,� he says as the camera cuts to the conference room door, where he apologizes for interrupting. “Are you free for dinner tonight?� She says yes, stunned at the sight of him. “Alright,� he says. “Then it’s a date.�

Jenna Fischer won her Emmy with the expression on her face alone as she turns to the camera, eyes welling slightly, a grin bursting into a smile she can’t contain.

“I’m sorry,� she says. “What was the question?�

A lot of people like the capper, in which Wallace apparently gives Jan’s job to Ryan, the former temp-turned-Business School grad. They like the way he dumps Kelly so abruptly. I liked it too.

But I would have preferred they left it at Pam’s smile.

(photos: NBC.com)