‘The Office’ season 9 review: Jim, Pam, and Brian’s not-so-happy Valentine’s Day

If you want to have a wonderful Valentine’s Day, it’s always a pretty good idea to not have someone else tag along as a third wheel. To be fair, Pam thought that the ex-crew member Brian was going to be joined by his other half when she took Jim out for lunch on “The Office” Thursday night, but what ended up happening instead was a pretty catastrophic situation for the both of them … with a nice touch of hope at the end.

Thanks to Brian’s rather enormous mouth at lunch, Jim ended up learning about Pam’s breakdown, which in turn caused him to make the massive realization that the life he has been living for much of the past several weeks hasn’t been working. However, he still tried to weasel his way out of a fight until Pam actually forced him to go through with the argument in the most contentious way possible … on the day of romance, no less. It may sound strange, but it was actually nice to see the two admit that a fight was coming for a change. They need it, and it was nice to see them realize that they need to do it off-camera.

Andy also returned this week just in time to meet David Wallace, and we cannot say how thrilled we are that his head is suddenly on the chopping block. The character has never really been that easy to love or really redeem, mostly because he seems to get by on just being a butt-kisser who relies on everyone else’s skills to get to the top. Ironically, it wasn’t any of his fellow employees that intentionally ratted him out over lying about his whereabouts; instead, Erin did it by accident when breaking up with him, as even she had grown tired of his antics after abandoning her for his boat trip for the past three months. The character definitely has some sort of calling, but it’s not in the paper business.

The only other story (the rest of the employees getting couples’ sales at the mall) was pretty inconsequential this week, though seeing Darryl pretend to be a gay couple with Oscar for the sake of looking good on camera was entertaining.

What did you think about this episode? If you want to find out some more details about the show’s upcoming series finale, you can do so over at the link here.

Photo: NBC