The Office: Doomsday

When I first heard about the basic plot of Doomsday way back before the season started, I was a little worried. Dwight building a machine that would shut down the company if it made too many mistakes seemed a little too absurd and cartoonish for The Office to base a whole episode around it. But I decided that I would wait before judging it, and I'm glad I did, because the actual execution of this episode was plenty in tone with what The Office has already established, and it also provided a rare glimpse at Dwight's softer side.

Doomsday was Dwight-centric (obviously) and had him getting dissatisfied with his number 2 position. This has been something that's been there since he lost the job of manager and it was good to see it present there. Anyways, when Robert tells Andy that he's surprised at the amount of errors committed on a daily basis, Dwight offers to help by installing an "accountability error", which adds a strike everytime someone screws up. 5 strikes in a day equals a home run. Which means the machine will send out an e-mail to Robert that contains many of the e-mails the office has been sending making fun of Robert, and probably lead to the closure of the branch. Despite the staff pointing out that this is basically a doomsday device, Andy installs it. Unfortunately, The Office is under so much pressure not to screw up, they wind up making 5 mistakes (Technically 4. Oscar made a mistake on purpose to test if the machine actually worked.) and learn that they have until 5:00 to try to stop the e-mail, because Dwight won't stop it.

The story does succeed in making Dwight's intentions clear. It's not that he wants everyone to get fired. He just feels that there should be a certain standard of competence to be held up in the office and genuinely thought they could do it. So Dwight goes back to the farm, and Pam, Andy, Kevin, and Erin follow him to try and get him to change his mind, while Jim heads to try and stop Robert from getting the e-mail. Pam and Dwight actually have a bit of a friendship going on, that we see from time to time and it was nice to see it get called back here. Pam and company first give Dwight a new hat (which he throws in the dirt), then help him dig a horse grave and engage in small talk over pie. Pam doesn't make any overt attempt to get Dwight to change his mind, but simply reaches out to him as a human being and it works. Dwight insists to the camera that he doesn't like his co-workers in the end and will probably have to work with them forever, but as we see him carefully dig up and wear the hat he had rejected, we're reminded that deep down he cares. It's a bit like the end of Dwight's plot in last seasons China (where we see he helped Pam beat him, as we hear him insist he didn't do it out of mercy), but it's still effective.

Also effective is Jim playing Squash with Robert, despite having no clue what he's doing in an effort to intersect the e-mail, which provides John Krasinski a great chance to play physical comedy. He ultimately fails to intersect an e-mail, but it had nothing to do with the doomsday e-mail, so it's all good. The one weak plot of the episode was Gabe's attempt to court a new warehouse worker that Daryll may also been interested in. It was awkward, but not in a good way. Hopefully if it gets revisited in the future, this thread'll be handled better. The one good thing was we got to revisit the new warehouse workers, which is a sign that we'll se more of that world again, after it pretty much disappeared following Daryll's big move upstairs. All in all, this episode turned out a lot more nicely than I initially suspected, which just goes to show the strength of this show's writers. They may not have had an all out classic installment yet, but I'm sure it's coming.

Grade: Awesome! (Good)

Memorable Moments

-The "Closing Time" cold open started out good, and actually got better once we find out that Stanley loves the song, purely because it means he can go home.
-Dwight had a dream in which number 2 was the most powerful number in the world. He figures it was about his fear of immigrants.
-Dwight: "They’re trying to make me out to be a Bond villain. I like to think of myself as a brilliant scientist, who’ll stop at nothing to remake the world.… Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll, not them…Dr….”
-The best exchange from Gabe's plot. Gabe:  "I’ll tell you her last name tomorrow, because she’ll be screaming it tonight." Toby: "She’ll be screaming her own last name?"
-Jim's suprisingly in-depth knowledge about Dwight continues tonight as he knows that Dwight's mothers name is Hedda.
-Dwight instructs how to dig a horse grave. "If you've hit another horse, you've gone too far."