Fancy New Beesly picking her tired head up off her keyboard and looking around bewildered was just about the cutest thing since puppies. The second cutest was her talking head right after that, with her hair still askew as she explained why she never made it home the night before.

Such an odd couple of a highlights for an episode of The Office that was packed with moments but still felt like it was over before it got going. At least that was my take on first viewing. I rewatched it almost immediately (the only benefit of the abbreviated format) to see if my impression changed. What I concluded was that three things conspired to mess with my enjoyment of “Local Ad”:

1. I accidentally viewed the mock ad Michael created in this episode after it was posted at NBC.com, totally spoiling the ending;


2. this was the first half-hour episode after being spoiled (in the good sense) by four weeks of hour-long episodes;


3. and I was kind of tired at the time.

Taking all that into account, this was a solid episode with a good balance of funny, touching and awkward moments. It wasn’t a home run, but you could call it a double with a man on base—something, coincidentally, the Colorado Rockies could have used last night.

We’re still stuck in the parallel universes of Dunder Mifflin Infinity—the fictional Web site within the show, and the real, but wonky, Web site created as an interactive online game for fans. While the folks in Scranton are charged with filming a local TV ad, participants in DMI the game have to do the same.

Jim Halpert likes the idea…

I think it’s great that the company’s making a commercial because not very many people have heard of us. I mean, when I tell people that I work at Dunder Mifflin, they think that we sell mufflers, or muffins or mittens. And frankly all of those sound better than paper so I let it slide.

That made me laugh out loud at the time, more for the delivery than the lines. After that, though, Jim seemed off for the rest of the episode. Rallying the troops for the task, Michael underestimated Pam’s willingness to contribute, just like he did at the beach last season. Much to Michael’s chagrin, the ad guys corporate sent up tell him he’s only got the last five seconds of a pre-made commercial to work with. So much for M-TV on crack.

So much as well for Michael’s “ambitious” plans to depict a little girl in a field holding a flower, but the field is really a desert oasis, the desert is really a sandbox at the worlds’ largest resort hotel and the sandbox is really in the worlds largest prison

The office must have been crowded what with two film crews at work, the ad guys and the documentary crew. The best early bits were Andy’s flatulent Nard Dog and Michael calling Phyllis a less urban Aunt Jemima.

Ryan, whose receptionist looks a lot like Pam, was back in form as the arrogant corporate stooge instead of the buzzword-dropping cartoon he was becoming. His and Michael’s exchange gave us Michael’s uncanny Eddie Murphy-from- Shrek impression and reveals his long-term plan to open a Cereal Shack. Oh and he didn’t speak until after he turned 5.

Michael’s appeal to the CFO to can the ad crew gave us a jaw-dropping exchange with Ryan that I can’t repeat here, but it ends with Michael saying “What’s up my brother?” and Wallace endorsing his ad idea with an enthusiastic, “This is weird.”

Set loose to get his creativity on, Michael pumps up the staff:

Michael: “You are so much more creative than all the other dry boring morons that you work with.”
Jim: Who are you talking to, specifically?

That spurs a series of talking heads in which Kevin does a spot-on Kool-Aid Man impression, Oscar reveals that he decided early on he was too smart to be in commercials and Meredith suggesting she’s got some on-camera experience of the bedroom variety.

Everyone’s got a job, including Phyllis, who sets out to convince author Sue Grafton to be in the ad. That would be quite a coop, Michael notes. Andy seeks to flatter Angela by suggesting she sub for Grafton, but she balks.

Angela: I find the mystery genre disgusting. I hate being titillated.

Was there any better scene than Craig on keyboards with Kelly, Andy, Kevin and Creed backing him up on vocals? Naturally, Michael hates their jingle ideas. He was expecting a rap.

OK, there was a better scene: Andy forgetting the words to the Kit-Kat jingle, a gag they did a great job of keeping going all the way through the episode.

I didn’t know what Second Life was when I read the episode description the other day. Turns out it’s a virtual reality-type role-playing game with no winners but apparently plenty of losers. Dwight has used it to completely replicate his real life, which had been going so well when he started playing. The only difference: virtual Dwight can fly. I don’t know why, but that joke worked really well.

Andy is still hot after Angela, and things are getting steamy. I’m creeped out that they spent the evening necking, literally. Still, Dwight’s perturbed by this.

Seeing his weird friend’s breakdown, Jim wants to show Pam how he’s been intervening. Seems he’s been tracking Dwight in Second Life with a Jim avatar of his own. Turns out Dwight’s so miserable he’s created a game within Second Life called Second Second Life.

Of course, Jim seems to be having more fun than he lets on. His avatar is a beefy, guitar-slinging Philly sportswriter. (Isn’t it surprising Pam didn’t know he played guitar after seeing he owned one in Season 2’s”E-mail Surveillance”?)

I felt Jim was uncharacteristically insensitive when he pushed aside Pam’s graphics project. It’s not like she was doing receptionist work. I wouldn’t make too much of it but that could be an area to explore, the way Jim has dreams he doesn’t really share with Pam and how seeing her pursue her dreams brings out his insecurities.

He can’t see why she’s working so hard on an ad no one will see, but it’s still not good enough for her. So Jim catches a ride with Meredith, the office drunk who’s been hot for him lately. Now that’s a sacrifice. He further redeemed himself in the morning by buying her breakfast, of which Creed stole some.

Outside, filming is in full swing when a teary-eyed Phyllis approaches. She didn’t take Grafton’s no for an answer and got tossed out of the Mall at Steamtown. Kevin’s there to console her with masking tape, though. The interactions of the supporting cast really makes this show great.

I thought Dwight was going to have a breakdown when Andy revealed he and Angela had a breakthrough, moving past necking to unreciprocated kissing. The only think keeping Dwight from going over the edge was hearing that Angela called Andy “D”, which most certainly is not short for Andy. The dawesomeness of this scene cannot be described.

In the end, after Pam “clears the lines” for Michael, he submits the video, which corporate promptly ignores in favor of the generic cut. At Poor Richard’s Pub for the screening, Jim redeems himself once again by bringing Michael’s “directors cut” along.

If I hadn’t seen it already, I imagine this would have been a very satisfying conclusion. (Watch it again here.) It was pretty good, actually, though the part about Dwight being Phyllis’s son was creepy, and I can’t believe Stanley agreed to the orange jumpsuit.

I loved the waiter hitting on Pam—”You ever been on a motorcycle?”—after Jim praised her graphics work at the end. See, he is supportive of her dreams. But it’s nice to see they’ll face a bump or two along the road to PB&J.

Check out the first deleted scene already posted here.