Recap / The Office USS 2 E 2 Sexual Harassment

aka: The Office USS 2 E 1 Sexual Harassment

Traveling salesman Todd Packer arrives and makes the whole office uncomfortable. Jan forces Michael to take sexual harassment training. Pam's mom visits Dunder Mifflin.

Air date: September 27, 2005

Tropes

• Bad "Bad Acting": Crossing the Line, especially the expression of the "natural redhead" in her reaction shot.
• Catholic School Girls Rule: Subverted. Michael makes a joke about the picture above Stanley's desk. It's Stanley's middle-school aged daughter.
• Characterization Marches On: Dwight's questions to Toby about female anatomy heavily imply that he's a virgin, in contrast to his Kavorka Man portrayal in later seasons.
• Content Warnings: The original NBC airing was preceded by a warning about sexual content. Specifically, they objected to the word "boner", though they ultimately allowed it (though Edited for Syndication versions either replace it with "schwing" or just bleep it out). One affiliate even refused to air the episode.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Dwight asking Toby about "the female vagina".
• Expy: Michael actually cites this trope In-Universe:
  Michael: We’re like Friends. I am Chandler, and Joey and, uh, Pam is Rachel. And Dwight is Kramer.
• Gilligan Cut: Played with. During sexual harassment training, Michael's comments get more and more inappropriate. Cut to an Instructional Film called Crossing the Line.
• Has Two Thumbs and...: Todd Packer makes this joke frequently, and mixed with Your Mom in his first appearance. An Ironic Echo of this comes up during Jim's talking head.
  Jim: Who has two thumbs and hates Todd Packer? This guy!
• Instructional Film: The office is supposed to watch a video about sexual harassment, but only Michael, Kevin and the warehouse workers bother with it. In Real Life, clips from this episode were later used by NBC in its own corporate videos about harassment.
• The Internet Is for Porn: Subtly averted in Dwight's conversation with Toby. Dwight mentions looking up information about anatomy on websites, making you wonder why, if he's unaware of what female genitalia looks like, he didn't just look up some porn to get a better idea.
• Popcultural Osmosis Failure: Ryan sees Todd's "WLHUNG" license plate and asks if he's a big William Hung fan. Todd blows up on him saying everyone keeps asking him that, but he doesn't know who that is.
• Retraux: The Crossing the Line training video convincingly looks like a real cheesy production from The '90s, but it was a Show Within a Show created for the episode (and it was shot in the show's writers' offices).
• Teeny Weenie: The warehouse crew teases Michael about his package (so, they're sexually harassing him).
• That's What She Said: This was the episode in which Michael first spoke this phrase. It gets taken up to eleven during the sexual harassment training.
• Vanity License Plate: Todd has "WLHUNG" on his Corvette which presumably is supposed to say "Well Hung" but based on Ryan's question and Todd's annoyed response, a lot of people think it means he's a fan of the singer William Hung.