Season 4, Episode 7 – Survivor Man

There seems to be a growing trend this year on The Office to get out of the the actual office. I’m not sure I like that trend, because the show seems less “realistic” since they have spent almost no time in the actual office doing actual work. Either Dwight, Jim and Pam are at the farm, Michael and Dwight are on basket runs, pulling pranks, or now – out in the woods.

The show opens with us learning that Ryan, in yet another attempt to deliberately hurt Michael’s feelings, has had a nature retreat for all the managers (and Toby) except Michael. So, Michael decides to have his own retreat – and when Jim won’t go with him – he decided to do is “Survivorman” style.

This leads us down two separate paths. One story is Michael Dwight in the woods, the other is Jim dealing with the perils of being a manager.

Jim, in an attempt to get the many birthday’s that occur during the month out of the way, decides to consolidate them into one party…which, as you can probably imagine, is NOT popular among his co-workers…and ultimately leads to Phyllis accidentally calling him Michael.

The Jim story of this episode is great. It’s actually in the office, it deals with office issues, and it is well done. The Michael story, on the other hand, is not as great. It’s funny – but I’m afraid Michael is slowly becoming a cartoon character, and in that respect he’s losing some of his charm.

All in all, another good episode, but I would really like to see them get back in the office and stay there for a while…but, of course, that’s not going to happen…because they’re all outside of the office picketing right now.

Grade: A-