Kevin’s Halloween costume is rather lackluster.
The first thing on the screen is Dwight’s head stuck in a carved pumpkin.
And he can’t get it out.
He contemplates having Jim hit it with a bat to break the pumpkin, but is too afraid Jim will actually hit his head. Then Dwight is somewhat comforted, realizing that the pumpkin will eventually rot off his head – it is a pumpkin, after all.
It’s that wonderful silliness that’s the theme of the entire episode, taking viewers back to the original days of The Office, filled with unthinkably stupid and yet remarkably hilarious pranks. In this episode, it was just fresh – Dwight smeared peanut butter on his face, Nellie dressed up as a sexy Toby and Andy got worked up about his college a cappella group.
The theme of the holiday wasn’t emphasized as heavily as it has been in Halloween episodes of previous season – a move that was for the best in a show whose plotlines are becoming borderline overkill. The episode also guest starred Stephen Colbert, and you can’t really go wrong there.
Jim has a meeting with his sports marketing businesspeople and tells Pam he’s going to invest in it. His business partners say they don’t need any more investors, but Jim insists on putting in $10,000. Pam freaks out when she hears how much he volunteered, causing another rift in a shaky season for the couple.
Dwight finds a pill for anxiety on the floor of the office and goes on a hunt to find out whose pill it is. Nellie finally confesses and tells him that it’s hers and that it helps her; he should consider taking the anxiety medicine, too, she says.
Andy brings his college a cappella group “Here Comes Treble” to Dunder-Mifflin to sing for the day. He’s shocked when he realizes that the members of the group don’t know the legend he left behind at Cornell, such as his nickname (“Boner Champ”) and famed solo. After a fight via Skype with a cappella rival Broccoli Rob (Colbert), Andy comes up with the perfect idea to get his name back: He’ll start a scholarship for his former group’s members with all the money his family has. He calls his mother to ask her to wire him some money, only to find out that his family is now broke.
We also see Oscar (in a dinosaur costume) and Angela’s husband the senator (in a Ronald Reagan costume) making out outside the office.
Though Halloween wasn’t central to the plot of the story, it was nice to see creative new humor and references back to old episodes for all us Office junkies out there. Jim doesn’t dress up again for Halloween (he never does), saying this year that he’s a character from Men in Black without sunglasses.
Dwight stakes out to catch the owner of the anxiety pill and when Meredith comes up to take it, he catches her in a long net, prompting her to say, “Stop bagging my head!” It’s a reference to the famous scene in “Business School” in season 3, when Dwight catches a bat in a garbage bag and mistakenly catches Meredith’s head inside the bag, too.
It’s sad to think that it’s the last Halloween episode of The Office, but it ended with new humor and hints of how the series will wrap up in the next few months.
Tidbits:
Best Jim face: Huh. There wasn’t a very memorable one, probably because he was so worried about his $10,000 investment the whole episode that there was no time for him to be sarcastic or witty. The best face of the episode, then, has to go to Oscar. The look of shock/fear/horror when he looks right into the camera at the end of the episode, realizing the crew just caught him and Angela’s husband making out – priceless.
Best Dwight line: “These are Nerds! I’m eating Jim!” (A rather atypical Dwight line when he’s eating a box of Nerds. By the associative property, since Jim is a nerd and Dwight is eating Nerds, Dwight is eating Jim.)
Throwback: Remember season 2’s “Halloween?” Michael comes to work with a paper-mache head of himself on his shoulder and then spends Halloween deciding which employee to fire from the office. Good times.
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