Recap of The Office: "Ben Franklin"

After a repeat last week, we return new for sweeps month, and The Office kills right out of the box. Hilarious episode here -- I probably laughed out loud five or six times. Phyllis is getting married, so Michael organizes office bachelor and bachelorette parties during the workday. With strippers. Jim is in charge of booking the male stripper for the ladies, but instead books a Benjamin Franklin impersonator, who ends up being fairly skeevy in his own right. As for the mens' entertainment, none of the guys has ever actually, you know, gotten a stripper before. So the awkwardness abounds. It's fun stuff.

There were a couple of highlights. The top one was probably Michael grilling steaks on his George Foreman grill, as Ryan recoils in disgust and says "is that the same grill you grilled your foot on?" to which Michael replies "Nooooo! Yes. But I got all the foot off of it."

But amid the hilarity, there were some things that irritated me. First, where was Andy? His day of reckoning is at hand for pushing Dwight out the door. Did the writers just not feel like dealing with that this week, so they just didn't include him in the episode? This is especially interesting as news comes that Andy actor Ed Helms is becoming a regular. Huh.

But plotwise, this Jim and Karen thing has gone too far. Jim clearly feels nothing - nothing - for Karen, but for whatever reason (revenge toward Pam that is dragging on waaaay too long, general lack of balls, etc.) he just won't end it. It has long outlasted its shelf life as a device, and is becoming an albatross to the show's overall plot. I'm sure they're just keeping it (and her) around until the end of the season, but it's been on life support for weeks now. They need to spice it up, take the viewer inside the dynamic. Something. It just isn't believable at this point.

So that's it. Great episode, but they can't get complacent. See you next week.

Hyperlinks:
- The Office [NBC]
- Ed Helms gets promotion at "The Office" [Yahoo! News]

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