[SPOILERS] Let me be honest: I've fallen so far behind in my recapping of this season's The Office that I might as well have given it up altogether, except that there is a part of me determined to finish off this season (including all missed episodes). Why? you ask. Who reads recaps after the season is over?
I don't know, but I expect I'll find out. I haven't had a lot of time these last six months to recap, but it is sort of a labor of love for me, even though no one may ever read them. If you're a recap-reader-for-fun, check back by in due course and you'll see.
Like the previous two episodes, the finale was a sort of sweet 'n sour experience, that left me feeling a bit baffled but also a bit painfully puckered around the mouth. I knew, being a fan of the original show, that the likely scenario was someone being put over Michael whose authority would cause him to chafe, but I didn't picture Ryan as a contender. Well, for one thing, we weren't told he was interviewing for the job at "Corporate" (we knew only about Michael, Karen, and Jim). I thought it was sort of a stroke of genius to have it be Ryan and to capture his look of triumph in the final moment as well as his first order of business (breaking up with Kelly).
So was he? Reading comments of other viewers, they don't seem to have interpreted this scene the same way I did. Was Ryan offered some other job? A commenter at the NBC website speculated that Karen got the corporate job and that David Wallace was offering him a job as Karen's assistant. Really? An MBA?
Weirdly, I was under the impression that Jan had quit or been let go and that the job the kids were all applying for was hers. I was surprised when it turned out that she didn't know that the job was even available. I was also unpleasantly surprised at her total meltdown (the least troubling aspect of which was having her get enormous artificial boobs installed as a lure for Michael). I've been having trouble with the Jan/Michael hook-up since The Cocktail Party and I haven't actually enjoyed any of the episodes that featured this as a major element.
What happened to clear-headed Jan, the ultimate professional? Okay, I was willing to see her lower her standards a little for Michael, but only a little. Jennifer Taylor-Clarke of the original series would never have involved herself with David Brent, but David Brent was physically (though not morally) less "attractive" by some standards than Michael, with his reptilian teeth-bearing grimaces at the camera, his slick appearance, and his shiny, shiny teeth. If you reminded yourself that in real life Michael Scott is handsome Steve Carrell, you could almost get your head around it. Except that the message of the finale was that you shouldn't be able to get your head around it, because a Michael-loving Jan is a melting down Jan. It's a sign of what the boss at corporate calls her "erratic behavior."
So this episode concludes with a freshly be-boobed Jan babbling in the car to a grim, unhappy-looking Michael planning their picket-fence life in which her job consists in staying home to wait for him and with Michael breaking the news to a crush Dwight that he's not going anywhere after all. Michael ruins his own chances for taking her job by breaking the news to her before Corporate is ready for her to know and then trailing lamely along behind her as she storms into the big boss's office while he's interviewing Karen. She has to be escorted out by security and Michael learns on the way out that he's no longer under consideration.
As for Jim and Karen, there are some weird, brittle scenes of the two of them in New York City, not really connecting at all. Which prepares us for Jim's realization that he wants to be with Pam---duh!----and the conclusion of the "cliffhanger" from last week where she tells him that she called off her wedding because of him. We learn via flashback during Jim's interview that the two had an awkward little talk afterward. And while we don't learn where Jim and Karen are---she doesn't get the job either, since it goes to Ryan; and has told him she can't stay in Scranton as the third wheel---we do see Jim ask Pam out for a dinner date at the end. It's not clear whether the purpose of said meeting is to set out the parameters for a renewed friendship or whether he and Karen (who clearly have no chemistry) are over.
I love Karen so I'm hoping they are over but she sticks around. A recent episode gave us a hint that Ryan is interested in her, so I wouldn't mind if Ryan---having dumped poor dumb Kelly and being newly crowned as the Boss of Michael---hooks up with Karen. I could deal with either one of them becoming boss (but I assumed that we were intended to infer that it was Ryan who got the job).
As for Ryan-as-boss, it's clearly going to be a different story arc from the one involving Neil in the second series of the original show, but one that will be fraught with human interest. He's been low man on the totem pole for so long that it will be a treat to see how Michael----who still loooooooves Ryan, but has never forgiven him for the revelations learned during the "business school" episode----will adapt to not being in a position anymore to call him "Bimbo" as he did in this episode or demand that he bring him cups of coffee. And since his sales "skills set" has never been on a par with anyone else's, he's apt to get some resistance from the sales staff.
I was sure it was going to be Jim. But I'm glad it isn't, as they needed to give Ryan something else to do.
Dwight has had a bruising disappointment (not getting to be manager after all), but he's Dwight, so who knows where that's going. Andy's keeping it together (making himself Dwight's second), so ditto. Hope he sticks around.
I was fully expecting some sort of eventual reference back to "Product Recall", but no such continuity. I thought perhaps that Michael would be demoted or somehow smacked down. No one can claim that "The Office" is ever predictable. And I thought that Jammers would be treated to a kiss between Jim and Pam because: damn. The writers have really dragged that storyline out... which is, of course, more like real life than fairy tale closure. As it is, all we got was Pam's lovely, lovely sparkling-eyed final smile at the camera as Jim interrupts her interview to ask her out to dinner that night. "Then it's a date," he says, when she accepts. "Oh, that's lovely," said Nick, of her radiant smile at the camera. But what does it mean? What about Karen? We'll have to wait till next season to find out.
Anyway, those are my main impressions from this oddly unsatisfying finale. Check by next month for missing recaps (if you just like reading recaps)!
DELETED SCENES. Check this out: Michael's ten-year plan.
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