Spoilers for last night's "The Office" coming up just as soon as I register for a toaster full of cash... I thought "The Meeting" set up a promising new dynamic between Michael and Jim, but "The Promotion" didn't really live up to it. We saw most of these story/comedy/poignancy beats in season four's "Survivor Man," which was also about Jim assuming he can do the job much better than Michael, being proved disastrously wrong, and coming to a sweet understanding with Michael at the end. Michael's presence and undermining of Jim (in "Survivor Man," he was out in the woods for the day, tenting his pants) was new, but very predictable.
So most of the comedy and/or surprise had to come in little moments from the supporting cast, whether it was Kelly's dissection of "The Hills" ("Heidi's a bad friend, and her skin is terrible"), or the six-person talking head with Dwight and the non-salesmen, or Kevin's increasingly angry and confused repetition of "What does a bean mean?" (Note that he keeps saying it in the background of the following scene.) One of the episode's funnier moments - the acknowledgment that Creed and Meredith did, in fact... you know... - was so disconnected from the rest of the episode that it had the feel of something that's been cut out of many previous episodes and got plugged in here because they finally had the 30 seconds of room for it.
Dwight's new role as the office insurrectionist has promise, and the Pam gifts vs. money subplot was another winner, so I'm not too concerned. But this wasn't the greatest of starts for the co-managers storyline.
What did everybody else think?
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