There’s a right way and a wrong way to do something, and sometimes the wrong way is right.

That bit of wisdom comes courtesy of our little Pamela Beesley, small-town artist in the big bad city, where they keep you from your boyfriend for weeks at a time, they don’t dress up for Halloween and they switch up software applications on you right in the middle of the course.

In the end, right or wrong, old Pammy came home for good. Michael did too, and a sadder man at that. Winnipeg wasn’t to blame, surprisingly, but rather a hotel geisha who reminded him it’s the cuddling he craves.

Andy and Oscar left town disparate figures with little in common. They returned BFFs. Or is it WMFLs? You thought Dwight and Phyllis made an intriguing match-up? Well two bad decisions in a glass later, you’ve got a bromance for the ages. Just be careful who you drunk dial.

The Office is on a roll. I don’t know where it’s rolling, and that’s a problem from a season-long perspective. But it’s rolling, and every episode is seemingly better than the last. Even when the action takes us to Canada.

Re-watch the episode after the jump before I break it down in detail.

Michael and Canada

So Michael’s going on a business trip to Canada at the behest of CFO David Wallace. He thinks it’s a perk, but Wallace is just glad to find someone willing to travel to Winnipeg in November. And he figured it would cheer Michael up.

What a stud the world’s best boss proves to be, romancing the concierge/geisha (those are not the same thing). But even before she takes him back to her place, we see inside his sad little deluded soul.

“Everybody’d going to die someday,” Michael reflects at the bar, in as fine a bit of writing as we’ve seen from the show in some time. “And I think that it is better to die with some people that you like, like Oscar and Andy and concierge Marie, than to know that there’s somebody out there that you love that you’re not with.”

Of course he means Holly Flax, the departed HR rep who stole his heart—and ours—after Wallace banished her to the Nashua branch. After hardly acknowledging her absence last week, that was a nice touch.

From the start we know Michael has the wrong idea about international travel. Suicide does not trump embarrassment in Japan, and washing your hands after using the bathroom isn’t just an Italian tradition. (Nice “Dinner Party” call-back, though.)

Michael’s always been intrigued by all things international: women, pancakes, men of mystery. Poor Meredith bears the brunt of his object lesson, as he shrouds her shameful face with his coat.

He looks forward to blowing his $50 per diem on a sweater and ordering whatever his imagination summons from the in-flight menu.

On the plane, it’s Cribs: Business Class Edition! Was that a hot towel or a Kleenex? Michael G. Scott is rolling like a pimp and passing the mimosas. The stewardess is his personal valet, it seems, and coach is the slums. He brought along 20 movies for the two-hour flight. Andy only brought Harry and the Hendersons. A fine choice.

Oscar, meanwhile, brought along the stinkiest lunch option possible, next to a bag of baby poop. Of course, when the flight’s less than two hours, you’re glad even just to have baby poop.

Visual joke of the night: Michael dons a blindfold and gets his knee bashed by the drink cart, a la Drew Barrymore’s elbow in The Wedding Singer. It’s still funny.

At the hotel, Michael is enthralled with the concierge’s expertise and how she’s so skilled in the fine art of fanciness and pleasure. What a coincidence it is then when she turns up later at the very bar she recommended to them. She came off as kind of uptight, like, how you say, the Canadian Angela.

In then end though, he’s left to walk a lonely hallway, shoeless and broken-hearted. And as so often happens, we find him a day later in a client meeting, uttering words that have deeper meaning than a mere sales pitch to a price-conscious buyer.

“Look, people continue to come back to us time and time again because they feel cared for here. They feel respected, and they feel that their needs are met. They are treated like human beings”

And that’s exactly how he isn’t feeling after his friend and boss took the love of his life away.

Wallace is excited about the sale, but Michael tells him the trip blew chunks. I doubt there’ll be fall-out from this, but he laid into the CFO in a way few could and retain employment.

“No David, you listen to me. Why did you send her away? That—God, you knew I liked her and you just sent her away. And that was a sucky thing to do. That was a really sucky thing to do.”

Indeed, it was as sucky as it gets for a guy who stays at Dunder Mifflin not just for the paycheck—he could surely make more as a doctor or as a pro athlete—but for the respect. And he stayed for the boss who won’t fire you even if you tell him off over the phone. That’s respect.

Of course respect is not giving your viewers the most talented actress and most intriguing character in three seasons and then taking her away, hoping a fancy trip to cosmopolitan Winnipeg will make everything alright. We’re still hurting, Greg Daniels. We miss us our Holly Flax something fierce.

Andy and Oscar

Alongside Michael’s journey of heartbreak was Andy and Oscar’s journey of mutual discovery. Andy leaves town sporting the best beret since the Griswolds hit Paris. (Rrrrrusty.) He’s there to try to get other dudes laid. That could have been Jim’s job if he hadn’t forgotten French. (Wait, what?)

Oscar, meanwhile, doesn’t look so excited to be coming along. But something happened on the way to the Great White North, and it started at the bar, with some faulty gaydar and two bad decisions in a glass. (“Mademoiselle, beer me dos Long Island iced teas, si vous plait.” So many jokes in one odd sentence!)

“I don’t care if you’re gay, straight, engaged, whatever,” the Nard Dog tells the camera. “A guy needs intercourse.” To Oscar, he adds, “You will thank me when they spank thee.”

Those two guys across the way weren’t quite as good as naked. Nor were they the Dainty Dale and Foppy McGee they may have appeared to be.

After Oscar strikes out by proxy, the most unlikely male bonding ensues. Of course, alcohol helps. It loosens lips, too. Oscar, a little tipsy, has to ask how anyone can stand to be with Angela. And you know you’ve long wondered the same. What does Andy see in her, he asks as Michael sneaks out with Marie. (Does Andy get credit for that?)

Well, Andy sees through Angela’s hard exterior to a little jelly in the middle. And after all, she is teaching him to be a better person. She’s working very hard on that.

That settles it, Andrew Bernard, even more than Michael Scott, is the least self-aware character on television. I mean, he can’t wait to have sex with her.

Time for a drunk dial! It might not have been so bad if we didn’t hear Dwight on the other end. And yet, Angela still had the nerve to be angry with him for calling. Fact is, “Why won’t you do Andy?” is a valid question.

Appropriately, the bonding continues in the lobby the next day, and it’s the whole nine nards. Until Oscar reminds Andy of the phone call, that is. He’d forgotten that, and that Long Island iced teas are stronger in Canada.

So he calls, and Angela of course is furious. She puts him back to first base: kissing her forehead. Seriously, she’s getting busy with Dwight in every crevice of the office and Schrute Farms, and yet that’s all the action her fiance gets?

Let me just say I hate this love triangle. In fact, it’s a hate triangle. Angela is just plain mean, and Dwight is an unredeemable jerk. Poor stupid Andy had better come out on top in the end or I will punch a hole in, well, you know.

Anyway, Andy is Oscar’s wing man for life. No chest bumps, just a handshake to seal the weekend. Maybe these two will end up together. I mean, consider Andy’s final talking head.

“I had to go all the way to Canada to get to know a guy who sits 20 feet away from me. And he’s delightful!”

Ryan and Kelly

In a minor storyline you could almost miss, Ryan’s finally making his move on Kelly, whipping out the one-handed push-ups even. It’s not going to happen, though. Until it does.

Who was rooting for these two to reunite? Most people, maybe, but not me. But whatever.

So they get busy on her desk and behind the vending machines and wherever else Dwight and Angela don’t already happen to be, I suppose. And just like that Ryan issues an ultimatum. He has her break-up text all ready for Darryl. It is well written, too.

He’s a real tough guy about it, ready to take on Darryl, who surprises them both—and probably saves the temp’s life—by being quite cool with it. Maybe too cool. Relieved? Liberated? That’s unsettling to Ryan, who suddenly finds himself right back where he was with Kelly 18 months ago.

I doubt that’ll last long, though, since BJ Novak is not long for Scranton.

Darryl’s stroll to his truck was a nice bit of understatement, by the way.

In the closing tag, Ryan tells the camera he finally realized, for whatever reason, that he just couldn’t do better than Kelly. No Kelly, that’s not a compliment.

Jim and Pam

With all that going on, let’s face it, the longest three months ever recorded is what’s on many’s the Office fan’s mind.

Everybody’s feeling it, from Kevin who has a sympathetic butt slap for Jim, to Creed, who rubs Halpert’s neck compassionately. (Is that the right word?) Phyllis’s commiserating stare and Stanley’s creepy chuckle are just over the top. But Pam’s back next week! Everyone’s excited. And involved. And intrusive and weird.

But there’s trouble in Gotham as Pam is failing at Pratt. It seems they switched from Quark Flash (which I did not know existed) to Adobe, and I guess that threw her for some kind of a loop. But Jim is cool about it, at least until she says she has to stay another 12 weeks and retake the course. But even then he’s cool, if less convincing.

“It’s not about me. I mean, this is your dream. And you went to New York to do this. So when you come back you come back the right way.”

It was tough to watch sad Pam rushing off the phone before she broke down all alone on a park bench in New York.

And sure enough, back in Scranton, all eyes of sympathy are on Jim again. Well except for Dwight, who isn’t surprised and who delivers the most scathing critique of Pam’s talents since Gil tore her heart out at the art show. Two sets of shadows, indeed.

And just when you thought things couldn’t get much bleaker, the writers do what they should have done in Season 3 and resolved the season’s bitterest plot conflict in time for November sweeps. Suddenly, the Parking Lot of Doom looks a whole lot brighter as Jim walks out to find Pam waiting for him.

The doom may be gone, but that parking lot sure can inspire a soliloquy.

“I’m coming back the wrong way. It’s not because of you. I don’t like graphic design. That’s it. Stop smiling. I really didn’t like it. It’s just designing logos and stuff, and I missed Scranton. But it is not because I missed you . I just really wanted to come home and I knew you said to come home the right way, but you can’t tell me what to do. Got it?

They trade “I missed you”’s and the kind of kiss that makes fangirls squee (or so I’ve heard), until Dwight interrupts the passion withsome routine clerical work.

Pam: I’m not going back inside.

Dwight: OK, first thing in the morning, then.

Now that’s how you end an episode on the right note.

For a little background info, check out this article about how The Office went to Winnipeg.

And here’s  your first deleted scene…