Season 4 Episode 12 “Did I Stutter?”

I’m not quite sure how I feel about this episode. The main plot point of this one is that Stanley crosses the line and yells at Michael in a meeting, shouting “Did I Stutter?”. While several other subplots start coming together. Ryan and Toby team up to give Jim a “formal discipline warning”, Angela is impressed with Dwight when he forces Andy to sell him his car, then turns around and re-sells it for a profit, and Kevin’s “librarian fetish” is revealed when Pam is forced to wear glasses after forgetting her contact solution after spending the night at Jim’s place.

There is a lot happening here, but most of it are little moments. It almost feels like everything that happened in this episode, other than the main plot line with Stanley and Mihcael, is set up for the next few episodes. I have to say I am intrigued by where this is going, but all of this set up left much less time for the usual laugh factor.

The main storyline, however, was very well done this episode - with Stanley having just plain lost it on Michael. After the “Did I stutter?” line, Toby confronts Michael, telling him he needs to address the insubordination issue. Michael doesn’t want to, and tries to dodge it through most of the episode, but when he finally does confront Stanley it gets interesting. Stanley goes off the handle after being “fake fired”, and Michael finally has all he can take and screams for everyone in the office except Stanley to leave.

They try to convince you that Michael is about to man up, but instead, he’s almost in tears and he wants to know why Stanley doesn’t like him. After Stanley tells him that he doesn’t respect Michael, Michael finally does man up a bit, and he tells Stanley that he accepts that he doesn’t respect him, but he can’t talk to him like that in his office. He just can’t allow it. Stanley gives him a “fair enough” and the issue is settled.

Sadly, we only have 2 episode left for this season…but I can’t wait to see them.