Dwight believes everyone is worried about the downsizing. He enlists Jim to form an alliance, to gather information. Michael tries to boost morale by throwing a party, for Meredith. Her birthday isn't until next month.
Air Date: April 12, 2005
Tropes
- Brick Joke:
- Michael shows the camera a "Happy Bird-Day" card for Meredith. It reappears much later.
- In "The Job", Pam remembers Jim telling her that if Dwight ever asks her to accept something secret, to reply, "Absolutely I do."
- Chronic Back Stabbing Disorder: Dwight. A mild example, but the first of several.
- Double Reverse Quadruple Agent: Jim pretends to be this. In reality, he's just making stuff up to make Dwight paranoid.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Michael makes a fleeting reference to The Dundies, the company awards dinner that would later become the focus of multiple episodes.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Meredith is referred to as an accountant, before it was established that Angela, Oscar and Kevin were the only accountants and Meredith worked in Supplier Relations.
- Everyone Has Standards: Even chronically insensitive Michael is able to see that making a joke about Meredith having had a hysterectomy would be kind of awful.
- Shout-Out: Jim surmises that Dwight borrowed the alliance idea from Survivor.
- Title Drop: Several times, although it's usually "An Alliance."
- Unreliable Voiceover: The off-camera part of Dwight's final Confession Cam bit for the episode makes it sound like he realized that Jim was just pranking him, but when they cut to him on camera, we see that he actually didn't since he followed Jim's instructions to dye his hair.
