

Though Creed confusing her for Angela was a good moment.
#The office us season 3 episode 13 series
Her absence has not affected the series at all.

More annoying things from Andy in Jury Duty: hugging Jim when he comes back from jury duty, calling details “deets,” the fake chill pill gag, “fire you to Timbuktu,” saying that Jim’s in “deep doo-doo,” and dancing in the warehouse during the cold open.The entire cold open featuring him dancing like an ass and making a mess of the warehouse seemed more like something Michael would do. Tonight, Andy came across as particularly annoying.Could that mean success in his own show? I offer my thoughts after Additional Thoughts. When Dwight tells his possible-child that one day he’ll rule millions, either willingly or as slaves, you realize that letting Dwight loose provides an energy the show sorely lacks. His interactions with Angela have a spark that’s lacking in the show’s other relationships, his smarminess around Lipton shows his comedic strengths, and his pride is fun to watch. Eventually, Dwight eventually visits his former flame where he realizes that the larger-than-average “baby is a Schrute! And unless someone taught Mose sex, that baby is mine!” It’s the best line of the episode (maybe of the season), and the entire sequence shows that Rainn Wilson is the strongest performer on the cast. Even though he doesn’t do much tonight, he nevertheless gives off a vibe that he could fit into the show, as though he’s part of its universe rather than just an extra like Pam’s Replacement. This meant we finally saw the return of supposedly gay State Senator Rob Lipton (Jack Coleman, who still looks weird without glasses), a severely underutilized character in the show. While Pam was pregnant, Angela was too, and tonight she gave birth to a baby supposedly a month premature. Besides, the key instigator in that storyline, Dwight, had far more important things to do in the second plot. Despite the sense that the writers “bailed” on Dwight’s investigation halfway through, I have to give them credit for not playing it out to the end of the episode as they normally would. He does so by summoning his wife and two crying kids, and the office soon realizes that his five days off were no vacation. So, they have Jim confess to his wrongdoings by the end of the second break and use the third act for Jim to clean up his mistake. Dwight tests out one of Jim’s alibis and Andy is willing to lie on Jim’s behalf, but you get the sense that the writers hadn’t the faintest idea of where to take it beyond that. It’s oft-tread ground by this show, and tonight this storyline dwindles pretty quickly. Only Dwight suspects something’s up and strives to out Jim to the rest of the staff in an attempt to get him fired. Nevertheless, the hitch is that Jim was let out of jury duty at noon on the first day and took the rest of the week off to help Pam with the babies. As a matter of point, I found it difficult to believe that anyone in the office would care what happened during the trial, but people were actually asking him about it. The main plot involves Jim returning from one week of jury duty, which luckily coincided with the show’s one-week hiatus. We spend a good deal of time in the office, which is a plus, and the stories actually concern the characters rather than the characters’ zany antics.

That isn’t to say it was particularly funny, but I thought it was a more-or-less successful half hour of television. Tonight’s episode of The Office was one of the better ones this season. In case anyone is interested in my thoughts on the potential Dwight Schrute spin-off, you can read my comments here.
