Friday, May 16, 2008

The Office: Goodbye, Toby

Season 4, Episodes 18-19 (hulu updated)
And they stick the landing . . .

Michael’s hatred of Toby is my favorite of his idiosyncrasies. He’s delighted early on in this hour-long season finale because it’s Toby last day. He gets even giddier when he makes a connection with Toby’s replacement Holly (Amy Ryan). After Phyllis takes over the planning of Toby’s going away party, Michael and Jim give money to make it more elaborate, setting the stage for several abrupt turns, disappointments, and cliffhangers. The best running joke of the season has Holly believing that Kevin is mentally slow and she treats him as a special case. There were several other great moments: Mose looking through the bars, Phyllis agreeing to some antidepressants, and Michael bringing a security guard to escort Toby out. Even Michael singing Supertramp worked. Andy was scarcely used and I’m sure many fans wished he hadn’t shown up in this episode at all. I, for one, liked all the disastrous turns in the final 5 minutes. Anything less would cut the longevity and viability of the show.

Favorite lines:
Oscar: “The real crime, I think, was the beard.”
Michael: “You cheated on me? When I specifically asked you not to?”

2 comments:

cmh said...

That episode goes down as one of the greats of the series for me. The Kevin gag was great, the build up of Pam and Jim and the eventual let down was great, and watching Mike grow up a little stopping just short of a 'That's what she sa...' line only to revert back...frustrating, but great.

Over all maybe the most complete episode in a long long time.

Dentist said...

Loved Jim's second voicemail for Ryan and the aforementioned Oscar comment re: the beard.