The Office: Frame Toby

Filed under: Recaps & Reviews

I know the episode title kind of gives this away, but guess what. Toby's back! Michael is, as I'm sure you can imagine, not thrilled.

The best part is how by the time Michael realizes Toby's back, he's been there for a week already. Michael is the champion of denial.

And how he finds out is that at some random, unexplained office party consisting only of brownies on green paper plates and Dwight gnawing angrily on beef jerky in a corner, Kelly takes two brownies and says one's for Toby. Michael thinks she is totally crazy until he goes to the annex and sees for himself. He screams, "NO GOD NO" a lot. Aaaaaaand, credits.

Michael texts David Wallace with a 9-1-1 CALL ME, but when David finds out the true reason for the text, he is vastly unimpressed. Michael explains in an interview that if he doesn't put 9-1-1 in his texts, no one ever calls him back. Michael wants David to fire Toby, and David says they can't do that without cause and that Michael has to get along with Toby.

Well, way to invite Michael to make up a cause, David. Nice going.

In other office drama, someone has made a horrid mess in the lunchroom microwave with their spaghetti and meatballs or something, and Pam is so mad she writes a truly epic passive-aggressive note (signed "Sincerely, Disappointed") and sticks it above the microwave. The general consensus is that the note is more obnoxious than the mess.

Which brings us to Pam and her betrothed: as you may recall, Jim bought his parents' house for him and Pam. He hasn't told her yet, but he takes us on a tour, highlighting the bright red shag carpet and horrifying, nailed-down clown painting.

Michael conspires with Dwight to get Toby fired. First up: sexual harassment. Dwight insists on being the bait, but Michael's not having it, and he tries to get Pam to take a note to Toby without reading what it says. She opens it up, as any sane person would, and it reads, "Please hug and kiss me no matter how hard I struggle. I'm too shy to tell you that I love you." She will not be passing it along.

On to Plan B: violence in the workplace. Michael and Dwight head back to the annex to egg Toby on in an attempt to get him to punch Michael. Toby, eternal pacifist that he is, doesn't bite.

Dwight tries to avoid the cameras--but forgets about the whole microphone thing--as he closes the door to Michael's office and tells him about the one thing they haven't tried yet: framing Toby for drug use. Michael says it seems awfully mean, but that sometimes, "the end justifies the mean."

He heads out to the Vance Refrigeration loading dock to score some weed off the warehouse guys. After a brief quiz, one grabs a bag from the cab of their truck and tells Michael it's five hundred dollars and that he's getting two pounds.

Michael plants the bag in Toby's desk drawer as Dwight calls the cops with the tip, saying that Toby just got back from an extended trip to Central America. The cops show up to investigate a "possible narcotics situation," and Dwight takes them back to Toby's desk while Creed silently flips out in the background. The next shot is of Creed in the conference room saying to the camera, "Just pretend like we're talking until the cops leave."

Michael comes out of his office and says to the camera, "Those are real cops; real guns." The policemen shift Toby away from his desk as he futilely protests their search, and then they start quizzing him about his trip. The one cop produces a plastic baggie of green stuff from Toby's drawer as Michael's loudly protesting that they don't need to do this. He's so flustered and guilty that he identifies the bag as his own just as Dwight says he shouldn't do that, and just as the cop opens the bag, takes a whiff, and proclaims it to be a basil-heavy caprizzi salad.

Well played, Vance Refrigeration boys.

The cops head out, and instead of being angry, Toby resignedly expresses his concern to Michael that the police could have been doing something actually useful instead of conducting fake searches on fake tips for fake drugs. Michael's totally irritated by Toby's forgiveness, and is like, "Welcome back, jerky jerkface."

They co-interview, bizarrely but awesomely, basically about how much Michael doesn't like Toby. You know, in case you forgot.

In the meantime, Ryan, who's been spending most of the episode making out with Kelly in her cubicle, is in the annex breaking up with her so he can backpack around Thailand for a few months. She's incredulous that she broke up with Darryl for this, and Ryan tells her not to put that on him and that they can be adults about this: have sex one more time, oh and also if you have any extra cash? That would be amazing. Oh, BJ Novak. Don't go!

Jim and Pam head out for the day, but Jim wants to make a stop on the way home. He takes her to his parents' house (now their house) and she's very quiet as it dawns on her what he did, and as they wander the house on a bit of a tour. Jim starts to worry that she totally hates it and it was the worst idea ever, but as he finishes the tour in the garage (which he's already converted into an art studio with an easel and supplies and her work hung on the walls) and explains that he knows it might not be the best idea and he'd totally understand if she hates it, she freaks out that she loves it. She's completely overwhelmed that he bought her a house.

She just doesn't want to sleep in his parents' bedroom or keep the scary clown painting up.

In the tag, we get Dwight's description of his perfect crime. It's long and involved and may or may not be the plots of three or four Audrey Hepburn movies.

Tags: the office, the office u.s., michael scott, jim/pam, toby

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Original Comments Posted (2)

metal2000 says...

I didn't really enjoy this episode. I mean, it was The Office, so it wasn't bad television. But everything was so sitcom-y with the framing of Toby, and even the Jam stuff was kind of annoying.

The only thing I kind of found laugh-out-loud worthy, even though it seemed out of place, was Ryan dumping Kelly and her still agreeing to sleep with him and give him money. It was pretty funny.

Nov 23, 2008 5:12pm

Sarahm says...

Ok the passive aggressive note thing? Hilarious. My new favorite website.

Dec 3, 2008 4:19pm

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