Spoilers for The Office coming up after the jump:
Last night was all about walks of shame: Michael slinking off from his tryst with the hotel concierge (“the Winnipeg version of a geisha,” played by Reno 911!’s Wendi McLendon-Covey), Ryan slinking back to Kelly (to the apparent happiness of Darryl), Andy realizing his horrible mistake in drunk-dialing Angela and Pam returning from New York after washing out of art school.
This last was tough to figure out, as Pam showed up, beaming, saying that she came back not because of Jim but because she decided that she hated graphic design and missed Scranton. Should we believe her? It would contradict much of what The Office has set up regarding Pam and her interests outside the reception desk. Part of me worries, as Alan Sepinwall writes, that the writers are just conveniently changing her character to suit the story. Another part of me worries that they haven’t, and that someday we’ll see the repercussions of this, as she realizes she gave up on her dream to come back to Jim. (Or, alternatively, that she used Jim as a convenient excuse to ignore the fact that she wasn’t good enough to achieve her dream.)
Michael, meanwhile, continues looking for love in all the wrong provinces. As has happened before, the saddest part of his story was not getting his heart broken by the lovely Manitoban, or his owning up to his anger at David Wallace’s transferring Holly; it was his ability, again and again, to rationalize others’ treatment of him (as he did over and over with Jan) and go back to his status quo. Michael’s final, self-deceptive monologue, about “respect” being the reason he stayed at the company—that being probably the one thing he hasn’t got from Dunder-Mifflin, and didn’t get from Jan—was quintessential Michael.
As for Andy and Angela, let’s follow up on Oscar’s question: what does Andy see in Angela? And more important, what does she see in him? Their relationship has always been a kind of puzzle to me, since it seems to be mainly about each of them willing themselves to want to be with the other one. What’s waiting for Andy at the end of that long plane ride? And with B. J. Novak possibly leaving The Office, will Kelly be happy for long?