Agreed. I notice Ed Helms (or his agent) got smart and got him out of there before his career is completely ruined by that (now) TERRIBLE mess of a “show”.
Sitcom.
Did you miss Kevin humping the air 
!!!
Are you still confused about what the term “sitcom” means? It’s short for “situation comedy”. The mayo treatment wasn’t funny – it didn’t even seem like it was meant to be funny – so the show being a sitcom doesn’t justify the use of mayonnaise instead of lice shampoo. The Rule of Funny doesn’t cover things that aren’t funny. I’m not complaining about Dwight saying he uses lice shampoo every day (something that would also be at best a waste of time and money) or repeatedly bug bombing himself (which would actually be dangerous IRL) because those were jokes.
He’ll be back. He needed to take some time off to make a movie which is why they came up with the whole sail the boat to the Caribbean story line.
If he (or his agent) was smart, he would refuse to return and NOT come back to this amateurish mess even if he was sued for breach of contract.
Even Dwight is not funny anymore, his career is also over.
I’ve really enjoyed the show this season. Some episodes, I thought, could stand up against any other season. But, yeah, this episode was horrible. What was the point of the opening? Jim hurt his mouth, and it hurt so much he had to go home? What makes that funny? I’m not sure.
koufax:
No offense. But, aren’t you the guy who said he was going to stop watching the show like 2 years ago? Are you a part of some project that forces you to watch each week? Don’t worry your long nightmare will soon be over.
I know. I usually love the opening but this one was horrible. I thought that maybe it was referencing something that I missed.
That’s probably how they spread the lice to start with.
I mean, the mayo thing wasn’t hilarious or anything, but it was written to have several comedic payoffs. Basically, it was used in various ways to make characters look silly, and to move a plot point forward.
Characters looking silly:
–The mustache on black-guy-who-is-not-Darryl
–Crazy-Old-Guy being all weird about how “messy” it looked
–Others I don’t remember right now (I was only half watching…)
Plot point moving forward was redhead secretary and new guy flirting and her showing blatantly that she finds him attractive in his “elvis” hair and undershirt.
I’m terrible with names btw.
And then get the reputation for quitting projects and breaching contracts? That’s way more of a career killer if you ask me.
According to imdb, he has two movies coming out this year.
I concur that it was pretty bad. Despite the ostensible premise, I don’t expect documentary realism but they completely abandoned any semblance of plausibility. The Dwight bug-bomb thing was so sitcom-cartoon-hacky it deserved a round of canned laughter.
Still confident they can and will do better.
Most of which would have played out exactly the same way if the characters had paired off to lice shampoo/nit comb each other’s hair instead of using mayonnaise. Characters who don’t normally spend much time together could have been forced to interact, everyone could have sat around looking silly for a little while, Angela could have “waterboarded” Oscar, and Erin could have both stepped up to tackle a problem and had an opportunity to admire New Jim in his undershirt and slicked-back hair. Or they could have used the mayo and then realized after rinsing off that they were all still infested, which I think would actually have been funnier. (Still not that funny, but funnier than the mayo working.)
I don’t believe they ever said the mayo worked. Did Erin ever do a post-procedural check up?
She said the lice in New Jim’s hair were dead before she rinsed him off. But what do you care, it’s a sitcom, so it doesn’t have to make sense OR be funny.
It doesn’t really bother me if the mayonnaise plan is correct or not, but it does seem to have been a common treatment when Erin was (presumably) in foster care, and it was plausible enough that others in the office would go along with it, so I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt in favor of the (expected ensuing hilarity.
The problem was, the hilarity never ensued. I guess they thought seeing a bunch of people with mayonnaise on their head would be funny in and of itself, but it wasn’t. Of the top of my head (ha!), I could come up with 4-5 sight gags or one-liners based on this premise, and I’m not a professional sitcom writer:
- Someone in the cast could insist on light mayo or Miracle Whip because they’re on a diet.
- New Jim puts his hair into a faux-hawk, Creed comments “I once spent a weekend with Sid Vicious–total buzzkill.”
- Shot of Oscar carefully styling his mayo in the bathroom mirror.
- (If Kevin had lice) When Pam offers to buy the mayo, Kevin comments “That’s OK, I brought my own” and pulls a jar out of his desk drawer (“For sandwich emergencies”).
- During cleanup: “The office has the smell of death and egg salad. I’m not sure which is worse.”
Bravo! You should be on staff there.
Let’s talk about pubes.
Yes, that is me and I did quit watching but something compelled to check it out again and my god, it is even worse than before!!!
And I actually like the characters, a very talented cast. But who is writing this crap?
I’m surprised Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant haven’t sued NBC to stop this atrocity, even though they are still raking in millions, just to save their good names.
I think any of your suggestions would have been funnier than anything they actually did with the mayonnaise concept.
The even bigger problem with this episode was that this wasn’t even the only storyline in the episode that introduced a specific, unusual situation that seemed like it was supposed to be building towards hilarity that ultimately did not ensue. I find the mayo storyline more annoying than the Jim & Dr. J one because it’s inaccurate AND unfunny, but really they were both pointless and boring. I guess for some people it was exciting just to see a famous basketball player on the show, but I kept expecting something funny to happen instead of Jim just having a cool day at his other job.
I thought the third storyline, about Darryl’s breakup, was fine, but it didn’t get much screentime and was largely unrelated to anything else that was going on.