By Kevin McCarthy

At the start of Thursday’s episode, we learn that Tobey has just gotten back from a camping trip with Ryan and the managers from the other Dunder Mifflin branches.  Michael was conspicuously excluded from the retreat. Hiding his disappointment, Michael makes fun of a bunch of guys eating s’mores together and plans a “Survivor Man”-like adventure in the Pennsylvanian wilderness.  After trying to get Jim to join him, he enlists Dwight to blindfold him and find a remote area off the beaten path. 

This leaves Jim in charge, who’s immediately approached by Angela (head of the party-planning committee) about a party for Creed, whose birthday it is. As it turns out, there are 5 office birthdays this month and Jim proposes to roll all the stupid celebrations into one big party.  He figured if they go all out on one party they can do something fun while also getting all the lameness out of the way. No one likes the idea, but they don’t immediate confront Jim.

Meanwhile, Dwight has led Michael to the middle of nowhere and left him with a knife and duct tape to fend for himself.  Michael thinks he’s alone, but Dwight actually stick around with the cameraman out of sight to keep an eye on his boss. It’s obvious Michael has no idea what he’s doing but he had some fun cutting up his suit for different purposes.

After addressing a series of individual gripes, Jim talks to the staff and deep-sixes the community birthday idea. Phyllis accidentally calls him “Michael,” which seems to be the climax of Jim’s terrible day. It was like he spent the whole day trying to be the opposite of his boss, but they saw him the same way.

After Michael “pitches a pants tent” (builds a lean-to with the fabric from his suit trousers), he goes foraging for food and finds some mushrooms.  He starts to eat them when Dwight swoops in to save him.  The two make it back to THE OFFICE just in time to sing “Happy Birthday” for Creed, who insisted on a peach cobbler instead of a cake. Michael and Jim commiserate over the birthday compounding, which Michael calls a rookie mistake he once made. The revelation seems to shake Jim further, building on what Phyllis said.  And he almost goes green when he hears that Michael used to say he wouldn’t be around in ten years either.

With Jim starting to feel the pressure of being the number two, he’s panicking a little that he might be on track to succeed Michael down the line.  He likes being everybody’s friend and it’s obvious that assuming a role of authority makes him uncomfortable.  He fights against things like calling a meeting in the conference room and organizing cheesy office rituals, but these aren’t the things that make for a bad boss.  In fact, his avoidance of them seems to be more exasperating to his coworkers than anything else. Usually he’s successful with getting the other people in the office to go along with him, but it seems that his position is beginning to get in the way of that.

Michael’s mission is strange because it’s not apparent what he’s trying to prove, and to whom.  He goes out into the woods and makes a show for the camera that he brings along, but he doesn’t ever make an attempt to find civilization. The trip doesn’t seem to affect anyone other than himself and no one really objects to him going.  To be honest, I think it was kind of a weak ploy to create a plotline that would coincide with the network’s GREEN IS UNIVERSAL week of programming. 

The episode was fine, and I like what it showed about Jim’s standing amongst his peers, but overall, it was one of the more forgettable installments as of late.  The half-hour format didn’t give Michael a lot of time to tool around in the forest, and what we did get seemed like luke-warm improve courtesy of Steve Carell.  There was a lot of potential, and pitching a pants tent was the best we got.  Next week’s episode is entitled “Booze Cruise” so let’s hope throwing a little alcohol in mixes things up.  The current lull is fine as long as we see some action in the near future.