TV review: "The Office," episode 7.09

It takes a lot for a half-hour comedy show to make it past the pilot pot, let alone stick around for more than a season or two, especially with moving targets of cast changes, funding, competition and the series’ ongoing storyline. That said, it’s impressive “The Office” has stretched a mockumentary about an unruly branch of a paper company into seven seasons. However, shaky plotlines intending to develop its characters suggest “The Office” may want to call it quits when star Steve Carell clocks out at the end of the season.

In the episode “WUPHF.com” which aired on Nov. 18, exemplifies progression in some character development, yet some lagging in others’. The shiftless dirt-bag Ryan (B.J. Novak) has an offer to sell his annoying social networking tool, WUPHF, an acquisition his investors—comprising Michael (Carell) and a handful of other employees—believe a prudent idea, yet he holds out with continued recklessness to their spending. Meanwhile, Jim (John Krasinski) looses his steam on his sales streak when he finds out he’s hit the commissions cap, and Dwight (Rainn Wilson) runs a hay fair in the building’s parking lot.

As a show that thrives on the actors’ ability to innovate their own characters’ quirks and endeavors, it’s been an uneven season as some players’ developments unfold business-as-usual while some have unnecessarily ventured new territories. A shining example is Jim, originally known for his office antics, who seeks ways to occupy himself with no incentive to make sales on no commission.

Since the beginning of last season, when Jim was made co-manager for a good three months, Krasinki’s character has been lagging. In an episode where the creators have the perfect open for Jim to pull pranks on Dwight and deliver sarcastic commentary to the saps who invested in Ryan’s website, they don’t take that risk and instead Jim cleans his desks, bothers coworkers and sends Gabe an edited version of CEO’s audio book biography, which calls his superior a gay bastard. Really, the only forgivable thing about that sub-story was the exchange Jim has with Gabe, in which Gabe tells him to think of his commissions cap as “a naked old man in a gym locker room.”

Luckily, the rest of the story saves this small conundrum. Wilson’s character continues to be an unpleasant, hayseed dork when Dwight opens a hay fair in which he charges customers almost for almost everything, and assigns pointless activities, such as the Needle In the Haystack game. When a girl finds the needle, Dwight tells her there is no prize but the life lesson that “some tasks are not worth doing.”

What’s most gratifying about this episode is Michael standing up to Ryan, whose character should have been written out of the script after he defrauded Dunder Mifflin in season four. Since then, his douchebaggery and selfish behavior has been more annoying and unnecessary and much less a contributor to the arc of the story. But in “WUPHF.com,” he gets his overdue comeuppance when Michael and the other investors pressure him to find funding in a matter of days.