Health Care (The Office episode)

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The Office episode

"Health Care"
Dwight debates the different "Health Care" plans in his workspace.
Episode No.	3
Prod. Code	105
Airdate	April 5, 2005
Writer(s)	Paul Lieberstein
Director	Ken Whittingham
Guest star(s)	Charlie Hartsock
The Office Season 1 March 2005 - April 2005
Pilot Diversity Day Health Care The Alliance Basketball Hot Girl
List of all The Office episodes...

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The Office (US)

"Health Care" is the third episode of the first season of The Office (U.S. version). It was written by Paul Lieberstein and directed by Ken Whittingham. It first aired on April 5, 2005.

1 Plot
2 Deleted scenes
3 Trivia
4 Behind the scenes
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Jan gives Michael the task of picking a new and inexpensive health care plan, but to avoid giving bad news to his employees, he asks Jim to pick a plan. He, in turn, suggests that Dwight be put in charge and Dwight accepts wholeheartedly, setting up a temporary workspace in the meeting room.

Michael hides out in his office as Dwight picks a plan that cuts practically all benefits, but Jim and Pam confront him to change it. Michael gets caught by the employees after he goes to the bathroom and he tells Dwight to alter his plan. He also guarantees the office a surprise at the end of the day, even though he doesn't know what it may be. Dwight hands out anonymous illness forms as Michael leaves the office to find a surprise, but fails on possible trips to Atlantic City and a coal mine. When Jim and Pam write false and imaginary diseases on their forms, Dwight demands to interview every employee to find out who is responsible.

Dwight tries to interview Jim on the false diseases, but Jim ends up locking Dwight in the meeting room. Dwight calls Jan to try to get permission to fire Jim and Jan finds out that Michael passed along his health care plan duties. Michael returns with ice cream sandwiches as his surprise, but when Stanley claims it to be a lame reward, Michael promises that the surprise is still coming. Dwight reads the diseases aloud to find out which are real, with embarrassing results. He finally picks a plan that eliminates benefits to the point where Oscar likens it to a pay decrease. The employees wait for Michael's surprise, which he awkwardly never delivers.

[edit] Deleted scenes

The Season One DVD contains a number of deleted scenes from this episode. Notable cut scenes include:

A scene where Oscar has an issue with Dwight's handling of things and goes to Michael, who leaves the office.
Jim and Pam read Dwight's thrown out workspace signs.
Jim and Dwight discuss famous illnesses in films.
Dwight collects the anonymous illness forms, but tries to remember the order of whom he got them from.
Extended scene of Michael calling the Lackawanna County Coal Mine Tour.
Dwight interrogates Pam about her need for health care from Dunder-Mifflin.
Dwight demands that Jim write a confession stating that he falsified medical information; Jim's confession instead states that Dwight is a jackass.
Michael describes his idols of improvisation and his comedic intuition.
Michael finally reveals his surprise after all the employees have gone.

When the episode was rebroadcast on March 29, 2007 as part of an "HR Nightmares" marathon, a brief interview with Toby was added as an epilogue. In it, Toby explains that he changed the health care plan to an HMO, but Michael thought he picked a "homo".

[edit] Trivia

Two elements of this episode borrow from the original British series:

- Dwight and Michael's dialogue about whether he can refer to the conference room as his office recalls a similar scene between David and Gareth in Episode Two, Series One.
- The scene in which Jim locks Dwight in his "workspace" is taken almost directly from a scene in the U.K. Office Christmas special in which Tim locks Gareth in his office.
The bogus diseases that the employees give on their forms to frustrate Dwight include Leprosy, Ebola, Hot Dog Fingers, Count Choculitus, Government Created Killer Nanobot Infection, and Spontaneous Dental Hydroplosion.

[edit] Behind the scenes

The final scene was scripted as "The longest pause in television history." It ultimately went two and a half minutes, so long that Steve Carell broke into a sweat from the awkwardness of the situation.^[1]