Mon, 14 April 2008
Episode # 40 of THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID finds Matt and Kevin arguing about who's going to be sleeping on the bench. Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? Why, Michael Scott of course. Michael finally tricks Jim and Pam into attending a dinner party, and surely nothing awkward could happen, right? Add a healthy dose of wine, the heady stench of homemade candles, a dash of Andy-gela, Dwight (plus guest), one amazing power ballad, shake, and watch relationships explode like Diet Coke and Mentos. Here's hoping Michael enjoys the irrigation room. SERENITY NOW! Incidental music provided by the Podshow Podsafe Music Network. Email us at TWSSpodcast @ gmail.com, or leave a comment on our blog page at TWSSpodcast. com. Check out Kevin's blog and podcast at the-frat-pack. com. iTunes reviews are always appreciated! Help spread the word!
Comments[24]
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I was surprised when I heard you say that Jim\'s dickish behavior was not commented on much, because I feel like that\'s been one of the hot topics since the episode aired, with people on both sides of the camp. My take is: if he was *my* boyfriend, he\'d be in the doghouse, but I think it\'s different for Pam. Their whole relationship centers around games and teasing and they\'re not exactly strangers to throwing each other to the wolves. (examples from Pam, though not as bad: putting him on the spot of telling a story about a drug addict relative knowing he couldn\'t talk because of her in \"Drug Testing\"; clearly enjoying the show of him crashing and burning over the birthday party thing in \"Survivor Man\", when she could have warned him early on since she obviously seemed to know how things would turn out). I think Jim was in a tough position: his first instinct was to get both him and Pam out of there, but when that failed, it would be silly to say \"Oh, well, then, I guess I don\'t care about my ruined stuff,\" plus he really, really wanted to get out of there and probably thought Pam could deal and he could get the dirt/mock her over it later - her little threat was her way of winning their little game. I honestly do think he would have left if she hadn\'t said that, and she would have been missed but more mock-pissed than anything... or maybe he would have felt guilty later and faked an emergency call to her cell phone or something. And that list of most popular Office characters *had* to have been rigged! The hell?
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As to the comment (and audio) about ranking fan favorites, Pam is one of my favorite characters ever. I love her facial expressions as she \"suffered\" from an unappreciative fiance. Her looks to Jim in those \"moments\" were done so well. And the payoff was when Jim comes back from the corporate interview and asks her out. But I also understand why some would pick Karen. I think in any other sitcom, Karen would be a very likeable and popular character. I, probably like many, disliked her only because we had Pam\'s character and wanted her with Jim.
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Matt- Can a man ever get tired of hearing, \"Excellent podcast\"? Well, let us know, because I have a feeling you\'ll be hearing that a lot. In my opinion, everything about TWSS is rock-solid, from the title track, to the format, to your selection of clips, and even (especially) the album art. I think I heard somewhere that you were involved with a previous podcast; is that true? Anyways, about The Dinner Party. I\'m hearing a lot of mixed reactions to this episode, which is probably inevitable due to the 5 months we had to wait for a new one. Either people hyped it up too much in their minds and expected too much from it, or they\'re cutting it too much slack. I think it was faithful to what the conceit of The Office is, a documentary about the lives and times of people who work at Dunder-Mifflin, and I like seeing them outside of work. Just my thought about how \"good\" it was. Re: will Jan and Michael still be together after this huge gap in time? I\'d always kind of thought that Jan would become a kind of Svengali, a puppetmaster exacting her revenge on traitorous Dunder-Mifflin through her, uh, puppet Michael Scott. You know, giving him directions for a meteoric rise up the company food chain, giving advice on how to run the branch, that sort of thing, only to have him unwittingly sabotage the company. So I\'m rooting for them to be in some sort of twisted relationship. Re: Karen\'s ranking. I was in love with Rashida Jones as an actress and with Karen\'s character. Karen lets us see just how crazy, and wrapped up in their own forms of craziness, everyone else at the office is. And don\'t say Jim and Pam are the only normal ones there; *nobody* is crazier than somebody with a crush on their coworker. While the camera crew of the \"documentary\" are ostensibly unbiased, Karen added a strong sense of realism by putting the other people at Dunder-Mifflin Scranton into context (yikes, I hope that makes sense). Re: the spinoff. I\'m all for it. Can\'t wait for it. I\'ll watch it religiously.
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Hi guys - enjoyed the podcast as usual! This seems like a silly piece of feedback, but I love love the little clips you play at the end after the theme song. The angry \"that\'s what she said\" this week was perfect! I don\'t really miss the \"outros\" and I know they were time-consuming. But, I hope you\'ll keep doing that last little tag at the end of each podcast.
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Hey guys! Awesome, as usual. (Though I\'ve still got 8 minutes left to listen to. That\'s for tomorrow\'s drive, ha ha. Anything to motivate me to actually get up and go, right?) I actually really loved this episode. Maybe I\'ve been watching too many British shows of late where awkwardness rules, but I thought it was hilariously awkward and funny. Honestly, who hasn\'t been in that sort of situation? (Maybe not to that degree, but we\'ve all been at a dinner party where the hosts argue, right? Or am I the only one with weird family/friends?) I love Jan\'s I-don\'t-want-him-but-nobody-else-can-have-him-either attitude toward Michael! Ha ha. I was thinking about why Angela might have been so cranky and thought to myself, \"maybe she\'s just hormonal, being pregnant and all\" and then I realized that character Angela is not preggers, so that blew that theory out of the water. Ha ha. Ummm, it\'s really late, and (if I haven\'t already) will probably make a stupid comment if I don\'t end now. Can\'t wait for Chair Model!! Woot!
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Hey Matt, I just recently found your podcast and I have to say I LOVE it. You make every episode entertaining and at the same time you give us good insight into the show. Thanks for doing this for us!! Anyways I thought ‘Dinner Party’ was very funny overall, but was really different for what we are us to in \'The Office.’ It was a good episode to bring the show back with a bang. I just hope they go back to being more low key and understated jokes. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it’s what I always loved about the show. As for Jim being a dick…he tried to get Pam out too but Michael was able to ‘trick’ him again. I like to think he would came back for her later. I guess we’ll never know though. This did kind of contradict his comment in Booze Cruise, where he said he would “save the receptionist? first. : ) Last comment, I bought ‘The Philosophy and The Office’ book and think it’s great. The writers really put a lot of thought and time into it. I was also surprised to see it cover things all the way up to The Deposition. Thanks again for making this podcast. I get excited for these as much as the show. : )
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Great podcast gents. My favorite reveal of the night was thinking about the fact that Michael must award himself Dundies every year to obtain that collection. I loved that. And Andy\\\'s actually my favorite character. So funny whenever he\\\'s on. Could definitely hold up his own show.
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Soooo happy to have the podcast back, thanks Matt! Product placement in this episode: in the kitchen scene the bright orange cookware Jan is using is Cruset brand. The orange boxes can be seen later behind the hand chairs. These are very expensive. The little ramekins on the counter are about $30 each; the casserole dish is at least $375 (Canadian)which is almost twice what Michael paid for his TV. Doesn\'t seem fair, does it?
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I do. As much as I wanted to see Jim and Pam together, I do think Karen got a bit of a raw deal. She\'s was in the unenviable and thankless position as \"the other woman\", which wouldn\'t have bothered me if Karen was one dimensional, which she wasn\'t. So far this season, the only ep I was let down with was \"Branch Wars\" because I felt they didn\'t really give Karen a worthy send-off. Hopefully UNHITCHED will be canned and Rashida can come back for one last episode to tie up loose ends. With my original posts, I didn\'t mean to come off as overly critical. I just wanted to give the answers I got from the ep to your questions. I love the fact that with this podcast it really does go in depth into the subtleties and nuances of the story and characters. I guess it just a little disheartening to hear more faults than praises, especially after such a long hiatus. Hopefully these next few episodes will get the ball rolling in the right direction.
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I\'ve never commented here before, but I have to tell you how much I enjoy your podcasts. I really enjoyed this episode, but I tend to like the real cringe-fests more than most. One thing you mentioned in the podcast regarding Michael\'s Mac (for editing the sex tapes). You can see it in the garage on a tiny desk next to the \"hand chair\" that Jim\'s sitting on. It\'s so nice to have The Office back.
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Hm. I can see how the Jim dickery could be read either way. Definitely, it was oddly crappy thinking on his feet- how do you get outmaneuvered by Michael twice in one day! The obvious thing to say would be that Pam has stuff in his apartment, right? Maybe he got caught flat-footed because he didn\'t want to overshare about their intimacy status. Honestly, who likes Karen? Can anyone explain that? I\'d rank Creed lower, too. And Kelly higher, but she\'s just my personal favorite.
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I have to agree with Kevin in that I don\'t think Jim would have actually left Pam. They have a long history of teasing each other like this. But I agree with Matt that it was a less-than-stellar episode - especially on first viewing. I realize we all have different senses of humor but I don\'t like uncomfortable scenes/episodes. Watching Jan and Michael fight viciously is not funny to me. But this wasn\'t as painful as Michaels\' behavior at Phyllis\'s wedding. I\'m very grateful to have the show back. But except for scenes like Jim\'s looks to the camera and Jim and Pam at the end, I didn\'t enjoy it. I did, however, love the \"$200 plasma\" line. Trying to figure out what size screen you could get in plasma for $200 - maybe about 4\"?
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As per Jan and Michael, I do think that it\'s over. Or at the very least winding down. Even though there was that tiny bit of redemption at the end with Jan trying to glue Michael\'s Dundee together, I think that after the four month jump, that they\'re mercifully out of each other\'s lives. Jeez, does Jim have to win a Nobel Peace Prize by uniting the Suuni\'s, Shi\'ites and Kurds in Iraq and bringing all the troops home to get you to stop thinking of him as a dick? I know his actions in this ep might make him look like a dick, but if you read Gene and Lee\'s comments about that over at OfficeTally, you know that it was just him trying to continue with the lie he had trapped himself in. So I\'m with the \"Jim isn\'t a dick\" camp with this. In regards to the CD, he\'s probably return it the next day after putting it on his iPod. And maybe Jan has more than one CD. With Angela, I think she was just as bitchy as she normally is on the show, and that it only got worse once Dwight showed up. And I don\'t feel that we need to see them as a couple to buy them as one. They\'re an established couple, and that\'s all you need to know. Move on. As per why Michael being OK with Dwight being there with the cooler, glasses and Beth Grant as his date, Dwight took the thing at the beginning as a quest, and Michael being angry and fed up at Jan wants Dwight there just to piss her off. With the 12 inch plasma, it WAS referenced before. In the \"NBC Fall Line-Up\" special of 06 that had THE OFFICE segways in there, Michael mentions it to Pam. So the TV is a reference to ultra-fans I feel. So in a condo filled with numerous references, the TV is kind of the most obscure one. And per the ending, they DID once do an ending like that. At the end of \"The Dundies\", \"Tiny Dancer\" does come over the soundtrack as Jim watches Pam being driven home by Angela. So there is precedence for an ending like that. Otherwise, a good episode, both for the series and the podcast.
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Hey Matt Finally, after almost five months of retro episodes, we finally get a new current podcast. Great to be back. That being said, I\'m surprised to hear how critical you are of this episode. I\'m starting to think that there\'s no pleasing you. Yes, I will admit that maybe the cast overhyped this episode by a tad, but it was still incredibly funny. That \"awkward\" kind of humor you\'re not a fan of is pretty much the point of the series. If you want non-awkward humor, go watch FRIENDS. And coming back after a long hiatus with a more experimental episode than a regular one might not have been the best way to go, but if you do watch THE DEPOSITION beforehand, it does work. But everything else you disagreed with, I think was perfect and funny/sad as Hell, like with Michael and the bench. You laugh to keep yourself from crying, I feel. I\'m breaking this in half since I got a lot to say.
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