NBC's "The Office" Fumbles Rather than Scores in Post-Super Bowl Slot

I'm very curious to know what people thought of last night's post-Super Bowl episode of NBC's The Office ("Stress Relief").

On the one hand, I thought that the cold open was perhaps one of the most hysterical (if far-out there zany) sequences in the series' history. The look of terror on Angela's face as she removes her cat--hidden in a nearby file drawer (a la Carol's kids on The Brittas Empire)--and then proceeds to throw him to Oscar in the ceiling crawl space... only to have him crash through another ceiling panel was genius.

While it certainly wasn't exactly super-realistic, the entire sequence could happen with these characters in this highly charged situation and it was filmed magnificently by the episode's director, Jeffrey Blitz.

Sadly, the rest of the episode was pretty much downhill from there.

I thought that the subplot that had Andy watching an illegally downloaded Hollywood flick--starring Jack Black, Jessica Alba, and Cloris Leachman--was ludicrously awful and possibly one of the very worst B-stories on the series to date. (Yes, even worse than the recent Is Hilary Swank Hot? storyline.) The amount of time and effort the production crew must have spent in securing the talent, arranging the schedule, and shooting the scenes for the movie-within-the-episode is depressing, given the end result.

The storyline went nowhere, was absolutely unfunny (and quite honestly pretty gross at times), and made the pacing drag along around it. Other than to give Jim and Pam something to do while "fighting" about Pam's parents' separation (yet another inane contrivance to inject some drama into their relationship), it served no purpose and seemed completely disconnected from the rest of the episode's OTT hijinks involving Dwight (the Silence of the Lambs bit was particularly unnecessary and unbelievable) and Michael's roast.

Speaking of which, those two storylines seemed jammed together with little connective tissue. The episodes starts out with a focus on Dwight and corporate's censuring of his insane behavior in the opening sequence (and then his bizarro behavior with the CPR practice doll) and then somehow segues into a stress-reduction exercise after Stanley's heart attack (more on that in a bit) and then an insult-laden roast of Michael Scott. It was almost as though two separate stories had been broken by the writing team and then tied together into a one-hour installment. Odd.

I did think the first half had more energy than the second and offered a few chuckles whereas I found the second half-hour to be painfully unfunny and stilted. I do not find the latest "issue" in Jim and Pam's relationship to be interesting, amusing, or thought-provoking and I found their rapprochement at the episode's end to be more than a little sappy.

Back to Stanley: it's now clear that NBC aired these episodes out of order as I now understand why in the January 22nd episode ("Prince Family Paper"), Stanley spoke about how the "new Stanley" would react to a situation versus the "old Stanley." I was utterly confused at the time but it now makes perfect sense as it's in reaction to his heart attack. Wish I had known that at the time.

All in all, a fantastic cold open to a mediocre episode of The Office that once again forgot to bring the funny. I'm not sure that the series won any new fans over with this post-Super Bowl episode and I think that NBC would likely have been better served by airing the 3D episode of Chuck in the same slot. But that's just me. I'm curious to see what you thought: Did you enjoy "Stress Relief"? Or was it a fumble on NBC's part? Discuss.

Later this week on The Office ("Lecture Circuit"), Pam is forced to drive Michael on a speaking tour of other Dunder-Mifflin branches in order to share his insights about the Scranton's branch's relative success; Dwight and Jim--sharing responsibility over the party planning committee--forget someone's birthday; Andy falls for someone new.