The Office: "Double Date"

The double date between Michael/Helene and Jim/Pam was painfully awkward, to say the least, but cringingly funny. A highlight was seeing Michael gradually realize that he doesn't really want to be dating a woman older than he is because he still wants to, or have the option to want to, do things like a triathlon or bungee jumping. Prior to this, it was nice to see Pam coming to terms with Michael dating her mom when she saw how sweet Michael was being to Helene on her birthday by having their table at the restaurant specially decorated and especially the very thoughtful gift of the scrapbook. Things went off the wheels, however, upon the aforementioned realization by Michael, and he proceeded to dump Helene on her birthday in front of Pam. Clever touch of showing that Pam and Michael are both sides of the same coin when it came to potentially avoiding unpleasant situations, with each trying to weasel out of it by claiming the higher ground (e.g. Pam trying to avoid going to the lunch by pretending to be tied up with work; Michael pretending that his reason for breaking up with Helene was because he didn't want to make Pam awkward). Jim refusing to let Pam off the hook in terms of going to the lunch was hilarious, and harks back to Pam similarly dragging Jim back in "The Dinner Party" when he was on the verge of escaping Michael's titular dinner party. The plot then took a turn for the slapstick with Pam's punch of Michael in the parking lot, although it does set up the laugh-out-loud moment when Toby told Pam it was ok for her to do so as long as it's outside the office premises, and then Toby proceeding to teach Pam how to punch to inflict the maximum possible damage on Michael! The subplot of Dwight and Andy trying to one-up the other in terms of being polite was fun in the initial part, but ran out of steam a little towards the end. It was probably not helped by the fact that it was built on a fairly incredulous premise of Dwight wanting the entire office to ow him favors so he could cash in those favors later to oust Jim. Even by Dwight standards, it was pretty unbelievable. Still, an enjoyable episode overall.