Grief Counseling

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The Office episode

"Grief Counseling"
Michael leads the office through "Grief Counseling".
Episode No.	33
Prod. Code	305
Airdate	October 12, 2006
Writer(s)	Jennifer Celotta
Director	Roger Nygard
The Office Season 3 September 2006 - May 2007
Gay Witch Hunt The Convention The Coup Grief Counseling Initiation Diwali Branch Closing The Merger The Convict A Benihana Christmas Back from Vacation Traveling Salesmen The Return Ben Franklin Phyllis' Wedding Business School Cocktails The Negotiation Safety Training Product Recall
List of all The Office episodes...

"Grief Counseling" is the fourth episode of the third season of The Office (U.S. version). It aired on October 12, 2006.^[1]

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Deleted scenes 3 Goofs 4 Trivia 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Michael feigns walking descending a staircase behind a stack of paper boxes under the guise of retrieving a pencil "from the warehouse" for a reluctant Ryan. An overzealous Dwight prompts a second go-around of the joke, and Pam keeps the joke alive, pleading for a cup of coffee, which Michael crawls to the breakroom to retrieve. In an interview, he likens himself to Bette Midler in For the Boys: "Gotta keep the troops entertained." Upon his return crawl, Pam requests cream and sugar in her coffee.

Michael flips through his Rolodex and starts to flirt with Jan on the phone after she tells him "We've lost Ed Truck." He is shaken to learn Jan hasn't lost a contact number, but that the former Scranton branch manager has died. Kelly and Phyllis console Michael after he breaks the news to a mostly unmoved staff. He announces he'll be in his office for consolation pop-ins, but with no takers he wanders to the reception desk and engulfs Pam in an awkward too-long hug, telling her Truck was "almost 70, so ... circle of life."

Meanwhile at a staff meeting in Stamford, Karen irritates Josh when she neglects to compile a supply list for Fairfield County Schools. She is angered when Josh asks Jim to ensure she completes the task. Jim agrees and Andy calls him a suck-up in a barely disguised cough. In the Stamford breakroom, Karen is dismayed to learn the vending machine is out of salt and vinegar Herr's potato chips, and turns her meeting room ire on a friendly Jim, telling him her snack food needs do not fall under his authority. He counters that he does have that power, and no work shall be completed until the chips she requires are procured.

Michael makes a comment on Creed's age, but the mood changes when Creed mentions Truck was decapitated after flying down Route 6, drunk as a skunk and sliding his vehicle beneath an 18-wheeler. Dwight steals Michael's thunder with a blunt announcement of the latest news. Dwight receives only disgust from his "Monkey" when he asks her to pack his decapitated head on ice should that fate ever befall him. In an interview, Dwight explains he would like to be frozen, even in pieces, so that he may one day be reanimated with the knowledge to avoid the same death in the future.

On speakerphone with Jan, Michael laments the fact that the staff receives a whole day off in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., "and he didn't even work here." On his desk is a decade-old Dunder-Mifflin newsletter with a full-color photo of Truck and a mulleted Michael above a headline reading "Michael Scott achieves top sales honors for Third straight quarter." In lieu of a day off, Michael suggests a full-size statue of Truck with illuminated eyes and mobile arms. Jan finds the idea unrealistic and hangs up, but an ever-resourceful Dwight prepares a schematic of a 2/3 size Truck robot with a six-foot extension cord in case it were to turn against the staff.

Back in Stamford, Jim phones potential chip sources as Karen prepares to give up the search. Gentle taunting lures her back in as she assures him "I am not a quitter." The pair mock Andy when he tries to horn in on their activity via inane suggestion.

Michael disgusts some employees by imagining the bloodbath Truck endured when his "cappa was de-tated ... from his head." He summons the staff to a primitive grief counseling session involving a collapsible Hoberman Sphere ball. Expounding on his feeling at the loss of his beloved ex-boss, he says it "feels like my heart has been dropped into a bucket of boiling tears and someone else is hitting my soul in the crotch with a frozen sledgehammer and a third guy is punching me in the griefbone, but no one hears me because I'm terribly, terribly alone."

Roy pulls Pam from the session under the guise of a radiator issue in her new Toyota Yaris hatchback. In the parking lot, Pam and Roy have a banal chat about her car's airbags and he asks if she's "still driving too fast." Upon her return to the grief session, she finds Michael had put the whole thing on hold because "we wait for a family member." Stanley refuses to play Michael's grief game but Dwight gladly tells the group he resorbed another fetus while still in the womb, making him as strong as a man combined with a baby. Pam expounds on the death of her aunt that mirrors the plot of Million Dollar Baby and Ryan tells the tale of his cousin Mufasa who was trampled by wildebeests, horrifying those "in the audience ... of what happened." His story echoes The Lion King, and he says it would take over an hour and a half to tell the whole story(the actual film is eighty-eight minutes in length). Eager to play along, Kevin poorly disguises Weekend at Bernie's as his tale of grief, angering Michael as he catches on to what is going on.

Toby tells Michael death is a part of life, and uses an example of a bird that flew into a Dunder-Mifflin first-floor window that morning. Mortified that Toby did not investigate the bird's health, Michael charges outside, picks up the deceased animal and attempts to resuscitate it via mouth-to-mouth, rebuking Dwight's pleas to drop the germ-ridden being.

When attempts to revive the bird fail, Michael schedules a 4 p.m. parking lot funeral for the bird and putting the kibosh on office productivity for the day, despite staff telling him that they all still have a lot of work to complete. Dwight breaks off the bird's beak in an attempt to stuff it through the pop-tab of an empty soda can. In an interview he comments on the resourcefulness of farm-dwellers such as himself and reveals his grandfather was reburied in an oil drum.

Pam fashions a makeshift coffin and reads a prepared speech that comforts Michael. She mentions that although the bird was an unknown among the staff, it surely did not die alone as it had the company of other birds, and likely wanted to get into Dunder-Mifflin Scranton in order to serenade the staff with a song. Michael is noticeably moved from the speech as his eyes well with tears. Dwight interrupts her to state that the deceased was "not a songbird." Pam accompanies Dwight who plays "On the Wings of Love" on his recorder. The coffin is placed in a box of shredded paper and set afire.

Karen finds a bag of Herr's on her desk and, in a voiceover, Jim says he traced the chips from the manufacturer to the distributor to the vending machine company to an adjacent office building.

Dwight extinguishes and stomps out the funeral pyre and coffin before ordering warehouse employees to "get a broom, mush."

[edit] Deleted scenes

• Extension of the scene in which Michael learns of Ed Truck's death. Michael is more preoccupied with the fact that he is the first person in the office to learn about Ed's death than with the death itself.
• Extension of Pam and Roy's small talk in the parking lot.
• Toby leads a grief counseling session, but since nobody appears to be affected by Ed's passing, Toby wraps it up. Michael is furious that Toby is giving up so easily. In a talking head interview, Michael calls Toby "a plague on this company."
• In a talking head interview, Ryan explains that since he didn't know Ed Truck, he will spend the counseling session mentally planning his weekend. "I think Ed would have wanted it that way."

[edit] Goofs

• When Karen is at the vending machine, a bag of the chips she desired — Herr's Salt and Vinegar — can be seen along the left hand side of the vending machine.
• Although Dwight claims that the bird given the funeral is "not a songbird", it appears to be a sparrow, which actually is a songbird.

[edit] Trivia

• This episode was originally scheduled to air after "Initiation".^[2] Jenna Fischer's blog refutes this claim, however, claiming that the episodes were filmed out of order due to the need for location shooting in "Initiation".^[3]
• It is revealed that Michael, Phyllis, and Creed have worked in the office the longest.
• Jokingly in his family member death story, Kevin says the plot of Weekend at Bernie's. In a deleted scene for The Fire, he states that it is one of his top five favorite movies (along with Weekend at Bernie's II).
• The coffin made by Pam resembles the Judeo-Christian Ark of the Covenant.
• Dwight's extinguishing of the fire was improvised.^[4]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Grief Counseling at NBC.com
• Memorable Quotes From "Grief Counseling" at QuotesFromTheOffice.com