My wife asked this question too - my only answer was that in at least one of the party shots we see Stanley seemingly asleep. I figure he saw an opportunity to get out of work while still getting paid and jumped on it. Why he stayed late, I have no idea… maybe it’s part of his new low-stress outlook.
I’m pretty sure they separated… don’t remember the circumstances right now though.
That, and a brief shot of it on the wall, where she’d positioned it as if it was falling on its face.
“I have just invited you all to suck it!”
Agreed that Michael was likable and sympathetic this episode. I’m definitely using the “human juice box” line next time I give blood.
Free cake.
Surprised nobody asked yet…what was a valentine’s day episode airing in MARCH?
…I also noticed that last Sunday’s Simpsons episode was about the FIRST DAY OF THE SCHOOL YEAR.
In the episode of 30 Rock from that same night, Tracy said the date was February 24.
I think some schedules got messed around with.
This week’s litigation value: what the heck, call it $100,000.
was it ever $0?
I was thinking this may be the episode, but some (I guess necessary) nitpicking proved me wrong.
The assessment of why it was actionable seemed weak. I don’t think Michael forced anyone to do anything. Everyone who was at the mixer seemed to be there voluntarily and they all seemed to enjoy themselves. Michael was not encouraging intraoffice romance-- he explicitly invited people from other offices in the building to come into their office for a party. Is that actionable? I can’t imagine why. Nitpicking indeed.
Yeah, after that nitpicking, I’d be interested in having that guy spend a day in my office to let me know how much in litigation money I can get.
There have been several episodes ranked as having no litigation value, quite a few this season in fact. If you look back in the blog you’ll see them.
I wouldn’t have expected the $100,000 figure for this episode, but the blog does make a good point in that Michael was demanding that his employees share their personal break-up stories at the party during business hours. Not cool. His behavior toward Pam and Jim wasn’t appropriate either, especially considering that they’ve kept their workplace behavior a lot more professional than many other Dunder-Mifflin couples. And although Pam and Jim were probably happy to miss the Valentine’s Day party, they’d have plenty of room to complain that their boss threw an office party during work hours and specifically told them that they couldn’t come.
He didn’t demand, Oscar refused, and later on was shown talking about his bad experience, which lead me to think that Oscar DID want to talk about it, but wanted to be ‘nudged’ a little.
In fact Michael moved on after Oscar insisted on not sharing.
Do you think it’s appropriate for a boss to even ASK employees to publicly share their break-up stories during office hours? It’s very very far from the worst thing Michael’s ever done at work, but the point of that blog is to look at how such behavior might be considered in the real world if the employees decided to make a complaint.
It’s supposed to be a documentary, so I just figured there was a lag between filming and airing.
that’s how I justified it, doesn’t account for how they get all the other episodes dealing with holidays on time or before, but who cares. It’s still not as bad as seeing a Simpsons THOH’s so late.
This episode was probably scheduled to air around Valentine’s Day, but then it got delayed when the whole digital broadcast thing went down, or at least was supposed to go down. Which is why we saw reruns the last 2 weeks.
Another funny part was:
Micheal: “…She left one of her gloves.”
Kelly: “That’s so romantic!”
Micheal: “And our blood bags touched”
Kelly: “That’s even more romantic!”