I'm still working to get out from under a massive load of projects, but it's going to be all over pretty soon, and then I'm determined to go back through and pick up all this season's missed recapping opportunities....because I still love this show, damn it.
This episode made me happy because it was hardly at all about anyone's romance and almost completely about, you know, the office? It wasn't as dense and nuanced as some of the more recent ones, but it was more of an ensemble effort (even Creed got a look-in, though not poor Meredith).
I was happy to see Andy again, even though he has decided that he is now to be called "Drew." His anger management training has taught him a whole new set of behaviors; meantime, the rage bubbling just beneath the surface is so plainly evident. Check out this photograph from the NBC site. Ed Helms is really damn good; that thinning and sucking-inward of the lips is just one breath away from lip-biting tooth-grinding full-on fury. Dwight has decided, in the manner of the Amish, to shun Andy for the next three years. Furthermore, Jim refuses point-blank to call Andy "Drew." Poor thing: you get your twitchiness under control and nobody will let you turn over a fresh leaf. They're still all on the same page as before he left.
Can Andy cope? I'm thinking not but hoping so. I love Andy. Or, rather, "Drew."
The real theme of "Safety Training" was----as is so often the case----Michael's shaky sense of self. Michael decides it would be a "treat" for the office workers to sit in on Darryl's safety training presentation in the warehouse. Yeah. Things get well and truly out of hand because Darryl decides to take that opportunity to hammer home the point that the upstairs workers cannot drive the forklift. Michael: "I can and I have." Darryl intereviews that he is legitimately scared for his workers since Michael recently kicked a ladder out from under him and yelled, "Hey, Darryl, how's it hanging?" Darryl is now on crutches due to a busted leg.
Anyway, Michael will not, cannot, does not concede that Darryl has any right to stop him from messing with the equipment. One of Darryl's workers---a very, shall we say, burly guy called, in this episode, "The Sea Monster"---gets righteously furious at the way Michael keeps arguing with Darryl (the baler, which can "crush a car engine" is a "big red trashcan.")
Upstairs in the office, with the warehouse gang in attendance, poor Toby looking hangdog, doggedly attempts to do his presentation after the obligatory insult from Michael. The risks which Toby addresses are: backache, carpal tunnel syndrome (hey, it SUCKS), and computer screen-induced eyestrain. Hilariously, Toby's recommendation for each risk is a 10-minute break every hour, which Michael worries will be a half-hour break every hour. "Take. Them. At. The. Same TIME," Darryl mutters.
Michael decides that the risks Toby is addressing are "lame," so he talks about the horrors of seasonal affective disorder, which is when the taunting begins. "The dim light is a BITCH," says the burly warehouse guy. Michael, reading from the book, points out that heart disease, due to a "sedimentary" lifestyle kills more people than balers. And it is on.
The best bit was Ryan failing to come to Kelly's defense against the burly guy after she takes exception to something he says. "Kelly, you insulted the gentleman. Apologize." I love Ryan.
It ends with Darryl getting up in Michael's grill to say that Michael leads a sweet little nerf-ball life, never having a risk. Watch Michael's face crumple at this as his overblown confidence and (figurative!) manhood deflates and shrivels up like the fragile balloon it is. Check out the wounded expression in his eyes. He isn't one of the "men" after all. "Darryl thinks he's such a MAN because he works in the WAREHOUSE." He says "man" in that Noo Yawk way, like "MYIN," which makes it sound way more petulant for some reason.
In the meantime, Kevin and Jim have initiated one of their games---this time a betting game. They are betting on everything, such as how many jellybeans are in Pam's jellybean jar. Jim wins, which causes Kevin to go off on the "hours and hours and hours" that Jim used to spend at reception with Pam...causing Karen's brow to cloud.
Michael decides to demonstrate depression leading to suicide as a "visual aid" to the warehouse workers....which goes very much as you might guess.
That is to say, first he and Dwight go up to the office roof to plan how he will demonstrate "the dangers of depression" for the office workers. Yes, his plan really IS to simulate suicidal depression for the edification of the warehouse gang. They conclude after testing it out with a watermelon (more on that in the full recap) that a trampoline wouldn't guarantee him a safe landing.
Their thought is that a bouncy castle will provide a safe landing from the top of a ten story building. They have the castle towed round to the side of the building so---at the critical moment---Michael can run round and jump off, thereby demonstrating to the warehouse workers that the padded life of an office worker ain't all nerf and biscuits after all (see the show). I found it strange that Dwight,who usually knows things like this, would have thought a bouncy castle would provide a safe landing from that height. They're like Calvin and Hobbes.
Naturally the office workers, who have seen Michael's performances before, don't take this too seriously at first. But then they see the bouncy castle and realize that he is going to jump for real. Though the initial exchange sounds as staged as it is, at some point in enacting his planned "suicide," Michael's real feelings of inadequacy and shame rise to the surface and the fake "suicide" starts looking as if it might morph, inadvertently or otherwise, into the real thing. This is one of the interesting aspects of the Michael character as the show presents him: when he feigns emotions of grief, anger, or despair (Ed Truck's death and Prison Mike) he always ends up tapping into his real feelings of grief, anger, and despair.
The less clueless and more humane of his staff really are badly scared on his behalf by the recognition that he seriously does intend to jump. Their fear for him sparks his real despair. "He's going to kill himself pretending to kill himself," says Jim. In thhe end, Darryl has to talk him down, though both he and Michael have trouble thinking what Michael has to live for. "Lovely lovely lovely Jan?" "It's complicated with Jan...I don't know where I stand or what I want... The sex isn't good."
But then Darryl tells him that he is a brave man..."It takes courage just to be you...I couldn't do it." His assurance that Michael is "way braver" than he is finally brings Michael down from the roof.
Michael, at the end: "I saved a life. My own. Am I a hero? I really can't say. But yes."
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