Holly and Michael fighting. No Pam to be found. A soda bottle of Dwight’s urine.

There was lots not to like about “Business Ethics,” last night’s episode of The Office, but after a day of contemplation I’ve decided I liked it anyway. That doesn’t change the fact that when it was over I felt like a 9-year-old kid who just witnessed his parents have a really big fight.

But I laughed. And it was real. I don’t ask for much more from my Office.

Give it another watch, then see me struggle to figure out just how I felt about this mixed bag of an episode.

I really missed Pam, though. She brings an air of sanity to the show, and she’s like the face of the audience. Everything that’s wacky and unbelievable to us is reflected in her reactions. Things felt a little off-kilter without that.

She proved this during her only speaking part last night with with two one-word reactions on the business end of Jim’s speaker phone in the opening scene. When Jim announces their engagement to the office at her urging, their underwhelmed co-workers prove him right for waiting so long to tell them.

When Dwight responds by pointing out she’s a virgin, Pam lets out a deadpan “Wow.” And when Michael tackles Jim, she says simply, “Sorry.” And that was it for old Pammy. Word is actress Jenna Fischer was under the weather the week this was shot, so the script may have been tailored to reflect that.

I absolutely loved Angela pointing out Pam was engaged before to Roy, by the way. Perfect delivery.

Deleted scene #1

But the night was all about the tension between Michael and Holly, and that only served to underscore the fact that Holly’s days at Dunder-Mifflin—just like Amy Ryan’s days on The Office — are numbered. She probably has more episodes ahead of her than she has under her belt, but I still feel like a piece of the core is being removed.

Anyway, Meredith, getting a welcomed extra dose of screen time, reveals she trades sexual favors for discounts from one of the company’s vendors. That’s ethically questionable, it turns out, even though she said it during the immunity portion of the meeting (which doesn’t really exist).

And here for the first time we have Michael confronted with Holly’s essence (the non-Michael-like essence): she’s HR, and HR is evil. More specifically, she wants to fire someone, and as Michael has taught us, a great manager doesn’t fire people. He hires them and inspires them.

How did these two, the most flawed perfect couple ever, end up so far apart?

As they settled down to a lunch of Michael’s two lobsters and whatever Holly was having, they alternated between glimpses of companionship—“Terminatuh.” “I’m from da fyoochah.”—and moments of cold division. They weren’t hearing each other. Well, to be clear, he wasn’t hearing her. I laughed the hardest when he said, “Bleah, busted,” when she asked him what she’d been saying.

In the end, though, it was HR that saved the day in the form of Kendall (Ugh, Kendall), the HR chief in New York. Turns out what’s most ethical is guarding the bottom line. Nice bit of easy to overlook irony there. And he really comes down hard on Holly for not just giving her spiel, collecting her signatures and moving on. That was hard to watch.

Even for Michael, struggled with how to respond…

Michael: How do you tell somebody that you care about deeply I told you so? Gently, with a rose in a funny way like it’s a hilarious joke? Or do you just let it go because saying it would just make things worse? Probably the funny way.

He saves the day anyway when everyone blows her off, nearly flipping his lid to get them back in the conference room to hear her out. Her uneasy, sidelong glance at the camera, one of so many of those delightful half-gazes, told the story that things might not ever be right again for these two. And that he told her so. How do you come back from that?

The initial conference room scene reminded me of Ryan’s first presentation as Michael’s boss. That one quickly disintegrated into a grammar discussion. This one, steered by Oscar, took a turn toward semantics-ville. No corporate ethics aren’t always a study in competing concptions of the good. Sometimes they’re just about stealing pencils.

Deleted scene #2

That’s important too, though. Pretty soon you’ve got yourself a profit margin.

Anyway, Holly’s explanation beforehand was great. “It’s going to be insane…No it’ not. I have to read from the binder.”Her intro dance with Michael to “Let’s Get Ethical” went on a bit long.

I love that Michael’s helping her as a “strategy” to merge into a relationship without her even knowing.

Even before Oscar’s erudite criticism, Stanley is calling the meeting a waste of time, Kelly is threatening to start smoke and Michael is telling her she needs to be Robin Shyamalan.Luckily Andy’s there to drop some knowledge from his two stints in Intro to Philosophy. Dwight missed that class, apparently, because no, the bread is not poisoned and no one’s been cuckolded by a stronger, smarter male.

Before Meredith can lay bare her laying bare, Michael reveals he spent five straight days watching Cookie Monster sing Chocolate Rain and other YouTube hits after discovering the video site. It was catharctic fessing up.

But while Oscar may be a time thief, it didn’t warrant Angela calling INS.

On other fronts, Ryan is still a loser. He’s such a loser he doesn’t even know it. But he does.

He’s the elephant in the ethics seminar, no matter how many Survivor-like babes he bagged. At least he’s bringing Kevin and Jim closer together. That fist bump was suh-weet. ‘Hired’ guy. Nice one, Kev.

Amazingly enough, the entire B story to this episode was Jim pranking Dwight, using a stopwatch to intimidate him all the while convincing him he’s tracking his time spent lollygagging.

I loved the Battlestar Galactica taunting.

Andy: Is that anything like the original Battlestar Galactica.

Jim: You know what, it’s practially a shot-for-shot remake.

It’s classic how Dwight takes the bait but never questions how little work Jim is doing.  However, I did not enjoy seeing him pee in a bottle under his desk and then place it on top of the desk. Yech. Possibly it was a callback to “Branch Wars.”

Eventually, after a rather brief, 19 minute and 48 second absence, Dwight concedes he isn’t entirely ethical. Is it possible Jim didn’t realize he’d just missed Dwight’s romantic warehouse rendezvous with Angela?

This was a good episode for getting the show back to its workplace roots. It was almost entirely office-set, with the exception of Michael and Holly’s lunch at Scranton landmark Cooper’s.

The tone was very British office and certainly left me with the same feeling of despair the original often did. But the show’s luster was noticeably dulled. Maybe that was its Pam-lessness or maybe it was something else. The return to half-hour episodes usually bums me out too.

A few random observations…

It was kind of silly that Meredith doesn’t realize she was being interrogated by Holly. I don’t mind that Meredith is almost exclusively a background character but good for her for stealing some limelight for once. “Not a lot of fruit in those looms.” Awesome line. Almost made you miss Michael’s “You stupid bag.”

Michael was really harsh on Holly when she returned his “Holly-lujah” with a “Mike-raculous” and he says she’s reaching. That hurt. Then he redeems himself by seemingly  coming on to her. But then, like with the concert tickets he tore up, he throws out her lunch and offers to go Dutch with her.

Michael doesn’t want employees thinking their jobs depend on performance. Of course not. You could feel their bond being torn asunder as soon as she said, “It’s not a family. It’s a workplace.” Might as well mock his magic tricks and insult Bob Hope. I have to admit, I didn’t really get where that chastity belt conversation was going.

What happened on the ride back. He wouldn’t ride the elevator with her, and he threw her leftovers out? Later he steals the coffee pot from her and photocopies a wall plaque rather than get out of her way. Ugh. I hated how this all unfolded, and so early in the season too.

Still, Michael’s her best friend in the office, according to her. Also, in middle school, she was a hall monitor. I wonder if she was best friends with her fourth-grade teacher.

Ryan gets Michael.

And then this exchange…

Meredith: Am I getting fired?

Michael: Now is really not the time, Meredith.