"The Office", 3/24 OPEN SPOILERS

Guess I’m the only one thought it felt like they crammed two episodes in one. The episode hopped back and forth between the garage sale and the office–often including the same, if not most of the employees–in subsequent scenes, which was jarring, unbelievable, and stupid (how are you going to run a garage sale if most of the people are upstairs in the office?).

Proposal was well done though, even if they’re rushing the hell out of this relationship and introducing drama simply for the sake of it.

No one showed up anyway.

The telescope was Stanley’s. In a deleted scene, Dwight traded

a pecan pie for it.

Yeah, but they kept bouncing back and forth disjointedly…eh, I don’t know why I expect this show to make sense anymore. It’s not like they’d even be having a garage sale in the first place.

It was in the “scenes from the next episode” commercial at the end.

Eh, after watching how sad and pathetic his life can be for 8 years I want to see Michael have a happy ending.

I think we’ve treated those as spoilers in the past. I avoid watching them for that reason.

Will Farrell as a temporary replacement has been common news for several weeks. It’s been in the papers, on blogs and on this board.

I was going to start a separate thread on this, but I’ll just ask here and see what kind of response I get. Often on TV we see something like this. Too many candles or cigarettes in a room, maybe someone is burning an old picture or diary etc… and suddenly all the sprinklers are going off. Is this really the case? Are some sprinklers set up this way?

The ones I’ve seen have a small glass vial holding back the water (you can see it if you look). The liquid inside heats due to a fire and causes the vial to burst and let the water out. First off, the candles wouldn’t be anywhere near enough heat to do that, secondly, only the effected sprinkler sprays, they don’t all start spraying.

Are there (and I assume there are) some that are set up so that the entire floor/room/wing start spraying when a smoke (or some other) detector senses something? Would (a lot of) candles trigger it?

Yeah me too. I think it’s a better send off for Michael that he leaves to be with and marry his love than to screw up big time, get embarrassed and shamed and then transferred or fired.

Sprinkler systems are zoned. Only the affected area will get sprayed. There typically isn’t enough water pressure to run sprinklers in the entire building. It’s usually heat that sets off the sensors so a bunch of candles shouldn’t do it.

You’re exactly right. They’re all independant of one another, are set off when they get too hot, and are not remotely controlled in any way (i.e. there is no “sprinklers on” override switch anywhere.)

After Jim made the bean packet magically reappear I was expecting a quick cut scene of him showing us that he had a box full a couple dozen packets.

I don’t read those papers, or those blogs, and it hasn’t been in the threads I’ve read.

I think the last consensus was that in episode threads, any plot development, casting info, etc., that hasn’t actually appeared in this episode or in a previous episode, including anything in an upcoming episode promo, and future episode titles (if they reveal any future plot points), should be spoiler-boxed.

I thought “hundreds of lit candles in a paper company? how can this NOT end badly?”

Then after the sprinklers all went off I thought of how pissed Sabre’s going to be at all the water damage, ruined computers, etc., and how Michael may very well not have a job anymore regardless of whether he moves to Colorado or not. But I’ll admit, I’m clearly overthinking here.

Ah, I didn’t see it either, I was watching via OnDemand, and they never show those previews unfortunately. Not that sitcoms usually have them to begin with.

Holly

I was expecting Holly to say YES to Angela. It would have been in her character (and would have been HOT).

Glad I wasn’t the only one who noticed that characters kept jumping back and forth between the garage sale and the office.

Well, the good news is we’re finally getting rid of Michael Scott. The bad news is they picked the ONE “comedic” actor out there even more annoying than Steve Carell to replace him with!!!

So because you live in an isolation bubble from all news sources, we should spoiler what is already common knowledge to almost everyone else? Interesting notion. Additionally, if you had read the thread title, OPEN SPOILERS is clearly noted.

Only briefly, though. Will Farell is not joining the show permanently.

I was displeased with the spoiler-happy nature of all of NBC’s ads last night. I would have been surprised by the proposal, if they hadn’t shown Michael showing the ring in a commercial during Community. And there were spoilers for other shows in their other commercials, fairly big ones. Usually I can avoid them, but NBC seemed to want to ruin everything last night.

So I wasn’t going in to the episode on a good foot and I was expecting something horrible and uncomfortable (in the bad way) to watch, but I really liked the episode and I thought it was a super sweet proposal and just perfect for the both of them. I’m pleased that the writers exhibited restraint and the episode felt more grounded (like the first few seasons) rather than the cartoony way it’s been lately. I could suspend my disbelief easily and I was amused and got a warm fuzzy feeling. That hasn’t happened in a while, so it was nice.

Yes, but NBC commercials for its series have been spoilering upcoming episodes for years. I was actually pleased when they didn’t spoil the amputation by helicopter of one of the characters on ER.