“I don’t sit on your lap because it’s comfortable, it’s because I like the way your thighs feel on my butt.”
I continue to be more and more impressed with the strength of The Office cast this year, and Valentine’s Day at Dunder Mifflin was a complete team success. From Michael and Holly’s annoying PDA to Jim and Pam being wasted to Gabe cluelessly setting Andy and Erin up romantically for the day, everyone got a little time to shine. It’s getting hard for me to pick one person to love, so this time I’ll pick the one I’m having trouble loving.
In “PDA,” Gabe sets up a “romantic treasure hunt” for Erin, and Erin ends up asking Andy (who has a new girlfriend now?) to help her. Gee, who would’ve known? Apparently Erin wouldn’t have known, because she doesn’t seem to be aware of the cruel game she has started. Is she really going to insist that Andy spend Valentine’s Day helping her hunt her boyfriend’s romantic treasure? What fascinates me so much about Erin is the impossibility of knowing whether or not she’s as stupid as she’s made out to be, and I found myself spending much of this episode trying to figure her out. But stupid or not, she keeps herself happy and entertained by toying with two guys on Valentine’s Day, and for that she gets props from me.
Meanwhile, a lot of people (Oscar and Angela) grow irritated with all of Michael and Holly’s kissy-kissy-tickle-tickles, and eventually Gabe sets up a meeting to address PDA and romance in the workplace. By the time the meeting ends, everyone who has had sex in the office is outed by Dwight, and Pam and Jim decide they want to have sex in the office too. By the way, Sabre is office romance-friendly! This coming from Gabe, who thinks turning romance into a science is a good thing.
Jim and Pam go out for a bottomless champagne lunch and spend the entire episode drunkenly sputtering out smartass comments. The two have so completely entered their own separate world by now that it’s almost like there’s The Office, and then there’s The Jim & Pam Show, where the two try to keep their relevance while staying out of everyone else’s way, raising their baby daughter, and working together at the same company. I mean what’s funny about that amount of work? God, they needed this drink for too long.
After being confronted again by Gabe about PDA, Michael realizes how much the arc of his newfound relationship with Holly was rushed — it was only last week that they kissed! He starts to tell Holly that he thinks they should break up, but Holly refuses and reminds him that work shouldn’t decide their future. Despite the possibility of Toby’s return to the office and Holly’s return to Nashua, they decide to move in together. And much like Jim and Pam in the past few weeks, Michael and Holly seem to be setting sail in this episode, venturing off into a new direction together. They’re both so happy together, and I can only hope that it lasts beyond the moment Michael disappears from Dunder Mifflin forever. Valentine’s Day was awkward and revealing and icky this year on The Office, and I loved it very much.
Megh Wright is a writer, TV addict, and Harrisburg native. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York and is a Gawker TV contributor.
