Even though he doesn’t do much tonight, he nevertheless gives off a vibe that he could fit into the show, as though he’s part of its universe rather than just an extra like Pam’s Replacement. This meant we finally saw the return of supposedly gay State Senator Rob Lipton (Jack Coleman, who still looks weird without glasses), a severely underutilized character in the show. While Pam was pregnant, Angela was too, and tonight she gave birth to a baby supposedly a month premature. Besides, the key instigator in that storyline, Dwight, had far more important things to do in the second plot. Despite the sense that the writers “bailed” on Dwight’s investigation halfway through, I have to give them credit for not playing it out to the end of the episode as they normally would. He does so by summoning his wife and two crying kids, and the office soon realizes that his five days off were no vacation.
So, they have Jim confess to his wrongdoings by the end of the second break and use the third act for Jim to clean up his mistake. Dwight tests out one of Jim’s alibis and Andy is willing to lie on Jim’s behalf, but you get the sense that the writers hadn’t the faintest idea of where to take it beyond that. It’s oft-tread ground by this show, and tonight this storyline dwindles pretty quickly. Only Dwight suspects something’s up and strives to out Jim to the rest of the staff in an attempt to get him fired. Nevertheless, the hitch is that Jim was let out of jury duty at noon on the first day and took the rest of the week off to help Pam with the babies. As a matter of point, I found it difficult to believe that anyone in the office would care what happened during the trial, but people were actually asking him about it. The main plot involves Jim returning from one week of jury duty, which luckily coincided with the show’s one-week hiatus. We spend a good deal of time in the office, which is a plus, and the stories actually concern the characters rather than the characters’ zany antics. That isn’t to say it was particularly funny, but I thought it was a more-or-less successful half hour of television. Tonight’s episode of The Office was one of the better ones this season. In case anyone is interested in my thoughts on the potential Dwight Schrute spin-off, you can read my comments here.
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