(Season 5, Episode 12 – “Prince Family Paper”)

What a fantastic blend of the emotional heart of this show with the unique humor that makes it so special. There’s nothing like The Office for taking something completely mundane and making it entertaining. Tonight, while the major story featured Michael and Dwight’s infiltration of a rival smaller paper company, the rest of the cast participated in that age-old debate. Is a chick hot … or not? Tonight’s candidate: Hilary Swank. I actually remember getting into this exact same debate about her shortly after her gender-bending performance in Boys Don’t Cry back in 1999.

And here we are ten years later still having the debate? And yet, Hilary Swank is one of those actresses where you can see why there would be some uncertainty. But the show did a great job of breaking it all down. Isn’t it interesting how it was Jim who tried to curb the entire debate early into it to get everybody to go back to work. Not that it worked, but Jim is certainly stepping up in the world of office responsibility. No longer the prankster playboy. Maybe he’s finally taking his potential career seriously.

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(Season 5, Episode 11 – “The Duel”)

Well, that was a departure from the norm. The Office has successfully straddled comedy and drama in a way that half-hour shows have never truly mastered. This week things were far more serious, dealing with the fallout of the office finding out about Dwight and Angela’s affair. Ultimately, I was very satisfied with the way things turned out. Unlike most episodes, the B-story was almost inconsequential, taking up virtually no time during the show. And yet the time seemed to just fly by and suddenly it was time for 30 Rock.

Ever since we found out about Angela cheating on Andy with Dwight, I’ve wanted this to come into the light, and for Andy’s sake I was hopeful that it would do so before their wedding day. That it became known by the entire office before Andy, I didn’t anticipate. Going into tonight’s episode, that burden has apparently been weighing on everyone for seventeen days, and especially Dwight who leapt to his feet constantly expecting the inevitable confrontation.

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