The Office: The Lover

As if to prove my point from last week, this week's episode of The Office was really good, thanks in large part to the parceling out of the absurd material and relying more heavily on the collision of Michael Scott's disastrous take on reality and the more down-to-earth perspective of folks like Jim and Pam. "The Lover" was definitely one of the more pathos-filled moments of the series, but it also brought the laughs like the best episodes.

At the end of "Niagara" we caught glimpses of what promised to be a very entertaining explosion down the line. Michael hooked up with Pam's recently divorced mother Jim and Pam's wedding, so it was only a matter of time before Pam found out and predictably took the news with a lack of grace. For the most part, that's what this episode is about, but there were a lot of nice touches along the way.

Jim hears about Michael's new flame before Pam does and he urges Michael not to tell anyone about it. The real gem of that scene is how Jim snaps at Toby. I love how Jim has a lot more in common with Michael than he would ever admit, even when the glimmers of Michael-ness are inadvertent.

Naturally, it takes Michael all of five minutes to accidentally spill the beans to Pam. Her reaction shot was priceless. I'll never get tired of watching a horrible realization slowly dawn on a character's face. Kudos to Jenna Fischer for a Grade-A freakout.

The B-plot tonight was also pretty solid. Dwight attempts to eavesdrop on Jim by implanting a listening device in a wooden duck (sorry, mallard) he gives to Jim as a congratulatory promotion gift. Jim discovers it early and uses it to mess with Dwight throughout the episode. That's okay, because the closing segment revealed that the mallard was just a distraction for the actual listening device implanted in one of Jim's pens. Now he can listen to his new co-manager talk about card stock all day.

Really, the little touches were what made "The Lover" such a good episode. Everything from Ryan's ridiculous fedora to Erin's subtly bitchy response to Pam's Puerta Rican candy were just nice flares that didn't relate to the main plot but made the episode seem so much more lively and well-crafted.

And poor Toby. For a brief moment he really thought he had finally gotten through to Michael and made a new friend out of it.

Best Moment: Michael kinda, sorta, maybe making a case for his continued romance with Pam's mom. Even socially myopic, pop-culture obsessed man-children need love.

Biggest Laugh: Pam's freakout. The combination of sheer, queasy horror and shouting was everything it should have been.

Episode Rating: 4.5/5- "The Lover" was an excellent, funny, detailed episode that managed to squeeze yet more plot out of Jim and Pam's relationship long after the couple themselves have ceased to be all that central to the story. Also, the "frank and beans" inside joke really is as stupid as it sounds, which was a wonderful way to undercut the two characters whose side we viewers are expected to be on. I look forward to seeing this thread develop in future episodes.