The Office: Not for ladies only

Spoilers for "The Office" coming up just as soon as I prepare for the inevitable deposition...

I don't know. Maybe I was tired, but last night's episode really didn't work for me. There were some isolated funny moments, but almost all of them were in the talking heads: Daryl's "I want him to get the raise... just can't help myself," Jan being just out of frame when Michael talks about having sex with her, Jim's reaction to Dwight and Angela. In the regular action, I laughed long and hard at Ryan and Kelly's arguments (and Toby's suicidal reaction to same), and the shot of Michael bending over to show off how his butt looked in those lady pants.

But a lot of the episode was funnier on paper than it was in execution, one of those things where if I started describing the jokes to my wife (say, Angela getting overheated listening to accounts of the Dwight/Roy takedown) she'd find it more amusing than if she actually watched. And it's not because I'm such a great joke-describer; it's that the ideas were good but fell flat for some reason. Maybe this was a rare case of the super-size approach backfiring, the jokes getting too much room to breathe, I don't know. Or maybe I just should have sacked out early and watched it today. Sigh...

Some more specific thoughts:

• "User Jennifer Hudson Kapoor." "Don't you see why that's insane?" "So I'm crazy now?"
• Of course Angela was going to get excited by that story. Not only did it involve Dwight being a hero, but it involved Dwight taking out Roy, the only other man at the office she's ever been attracted to.
  
• Just when Jim and Karen seemed to be clicking better in the pre-fight conversation, she has to go and blow all goodwill by completely dismissing Jim's concern about giving Dwight a gift. That's the sort of thing that, in the old days, would have led to an hourlong Jim/Pam brainstorming session.
  
• From a personal relationship standpoint, two great scenes: Pam trying to reach out to a Jim who's still too hurt to listen, and Jan sending Toby out of the room so she can find out what's really wrong with Michael. She knows him too well ("What did I tell you about 'yeppers'?"), and that was a nice moment between them.
• Creed the klepto callback, as he returns the 40 bucks he stole (either in cash or office supplies) from Michael.
• UPDATE: Forgot to mention, what's up with this current wave of primetime gender-bending? First we had that bizarre drag king photoshoot on last week's Next Top Model, then tonight we had Michael in lady clothes and Pete and Liz on "30 Rock" dressing alike. And was I the only one who, for half a second, assumed that Michael just pulled one of Jan's suits out of the closet by mistake, and that the punchline would be her wearing one of his? (Then I realized that A)Jan's much skinnier than Michael, and B)She's actually observant enough to notice when the buttons are on the wrong side, and why.)
  

What did everybody else think? I imagine I'm in for a lot of people telling me I'm being way too harsh, and that it's just good to have a new episode for the first time in weeks.