What I’m Watching: The Office

The Office: Season 6, Episode 11 “Shareholders Meeting” (B)

There’s some funny stuff here, but ultimately it’s all just a tad too ridiculous to actually work. Michael’s excitement at taking a limo was fun, but the amount of time he put into perfecting his wave was a telltale harbinger of doom. Michael has made a mess of things before, and now he’s really done it by promising a 45-day plan with 45 solutions to help Dunder-Mifflin recover when the company’s upper management has no interest in doing so. It might have been better had Michael been giving a second act, a chance to go back out there and present a plan to appease the shareholders. It would likely have been one of his half-plans, like the lists he used to make for Ryan that were unfinished and which he planned to tell him more about later (like the top ten rules of business). Instead, he only got the staredown from the fairly useless David Wallace and Grandpa Gene from “Mad Men.” Back at the office, things made a whole lot more sense as Phyllis and Stanley snickered at Jim’s assertion that he had real power. Pam’s near-failure to support her flailing husband was fun, but the most satisfying part of the experience was the punishment Jim came up with to get the eternally distracted Ryan to focus and stop giving him a hard time. Congratulations to Jim for finally stepping up to the late and being able to get something done in Michael’s absence that the latter manager would never had been able to do.