Agreed! I had a good laugh over that. And seeing Ken Howard in there was a plus too. I hadn't seen him since the Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes 2 seasons ago.

Which I thought tied in nicely to Michael's work at his improv class a while back.....

Well, hit comedy movies for Steve Carrell = better awareness and presumably better ratings for The Office, so I'm okay with it.

Steve Carrell has become a pretty big deal now and has several movie projects in the works including an awful idea to do a sequel to Bruce Almighty.

I am fine with them giving him time to make movies as long as he will come back to do this show next season. By far my favorite show on TV and very close in my heart to the original BBC series.

I don't think I have made my point clear enough.

According to tv.com, there will be 21 episodes this season. That's a pretty darn normal number of episodes.

NBC has *chosen* to air them in a compressed fashion, running them straight through January and all through March. They're blaming a movie production for their programming choice when there is absolutely no relationship between the two things. They obviously felt it best to take this course with The Office so they could debut Teachers in April and have time in May for things like an hour-long Will & Grace retrospective.

I'm actually glad that we can watch an entire season of a show w/out all of the normal breaks.

I'm not sure whether you thought I was saying otherwise with what I wrote, so I will clarify that I was not. I prefer straight through scheduling as well. I just think it's cheap and dishonest for NBC to blame a movie production. It's not like this is the first time it has happened, either. They used the same BS line when they chose to delay Scrubs.

I thought it was funny when Michael walked up to Pam and said in the retarded voice "I Am Pam"... and then he said something about "that Spicolli guy"

It didn't look like a turd. It looked more like a pile.

I love Michael's line at the end after he found out it was Packer:
"I'm just so sorry I threw the thing out."

Somebody making soup?

Oh my WORD that part was funny.
Some of the funniest parts of the show are those slight passing moments...

That part was the high(low)light. It was so subtle. Perfectly executed.