Recap / The Office USS 3 E 10 A Benihana Christmas

Christmas Episode. On the day of the office Christmas party, Dwight brings in a goose he ran over in the parking lot. Michael books tickets to Sandals Jamaica as a gift for Carol, but when she stops by, she announces that she's breaking up with him. Andy tries to get him over it with a lunch outing to Benihana, joined by Jim and Dwight. Angela's autocratic leadership of the Party Planning Committee compels Pam and Karen to break away and form the Committee to Plan Parties, which sponsors a rival office party.

Air date: December 14, 2006

Tropes

• Betty and Veronica: Downplayed. Pam decides to be nice to Karen. Carol and Jan are introduced as Book Ends versions of this, at the beginning and end of the episode, as well.
• Break-Up Song: Michael listens to James Blunt's "Goodbye My Lover." Subverted when he doesn't want to pay for the whole song, and just listens to the chorus on repeat.
• The Bus Came Back: Briefly. Oscar and Gil pop into the office at the end of the episode, before deciding it's "too soon" upon seeing Angela singing karaoke and leave without anyone noticing.
• Call-Back:
  • When Angela tells Phyllis to pick up green streamers, Phyllis reminds her that she had declared green to be "whore-ish" in the party planning meeting in Season 1's "The Alliance", when Angela had her get orange streamers instead. Now she tells Phyllis that orange is whore-ish. In both cases, the whore-ish color just happens to be the one Phyllis is wearing.
  • Angela is shown performing "The Little Drummer Boy," which she previously stated was her favourite song.
• Chick Magnet: One of the waitresses refers to Jim as "the hot one", as opposed to Dwight being "the giant baby".
• Control Freak: Angela refuses Karen's suggestion to incorporate the Stamford office's old traditions into the party, leading to Karen and Pam splitting off to form their own party.
• Crappy Holidays: Carol breaking up with him right before Christmas puts Michael in a dark mood.
  Michael: I’d like everybody’s attention. Christmas is canceled.
  (after he explains)
  Jim: Will they still air Rudolph?
  Kevin: That’s not fair!
  Dwight: Are we gonna cancel Hanukkah as well?
• Crazy-Prepared: Ryan has a list of excuses not to go out with the others, which he keeps on his Blackberry.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Angela is a wet blanket, and she tries everything to get people to come to her party and not Pam and Karen's. She tries to make people believe there's a problem with their paycheques, but can't bring herself to do it.
• Extra-Long Episode: The first double length episode of the series ("Casino Night" had been "supersized", but that amounted to just six extra minutes), and it's split into two parts in syndication.
• In the Style of: The party subplot plays out like a Teen Drama with grown women. Angela is the Alpha Bitch (with Phyllis as the reluctant Beta Bitch), who picks on New Transfer Student Karen, who then joins Pam to pull a Party Scheduling Gambit. Except in this case, the Alpha Bitch is the unpopular one whose party is shunned from the get-go.
• Incredibly Lame Fun: Angela's idea of a fun Christmas party is to stand around listening to The Nutcracker. In the end, the only attendees are Hannah, Phyllis (who Angela basically strong-armed into it) and Kevin (only there for the brownies), with Dwight joining after he gets back from Benihana.
• Kick the Dog: With nearly everyone in the office already having ditched Angela's party for theirs, Pam and Karen rig the raffle drawing for Dwight and give him the prize as one more act of spite towards Angela.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Pam sees the look on Angela's face after she and Karen rig the raffle drawing to lure Dwight into their party and realises that, having by now well and truly made their point about which party will be more fun, their efforts to one-up Angela have gone too far and are just becoming unnecessarily cruel and spiteful.
• On the Rebound: When Carol breaks up with Michael, he picks up a waitress at Benihana.
• Party Scheduling Gambit: Pam and Karen schedule "A Margarita-Karaoke-Christmas" to start 15 minutes before Angela's "A Nutcracker Christmas", and almost everyone chooses the former.
• Racial Face Blindness: Played for Laughs, when Michael can't figure out which Asian waitress is his date. He then marks her arm. Also subtly invoked with the casting, since the waitresses who accompany Michael and Andy to the party are different actresses than the ones at the restaurant, implying that Michael and Andy didn't end up with the waitresses they originally claimed were checking them out.^note It was supposed to be much more obvious, with the second set of waitresses being more plain-looking, but Greg Daniels felt it ultimately didn't work because the second set of actresses were too attractive and too easy to confuse with the restaurant actresses.
• Removed from the Picture: Michael took a picture of Carol's family and photoshopped himself over her ex-husband. And then sent it as a Christmas card.
  Jim: It's a bold move to photoshop yourself into a picture with your girlfriend and her kids on a ski trip with their real father. But then again, Michael is a bold guy. Is bold the right word?
• The Reveal: Angela admits she's the one who stole and hid the power cord for the karaoke machine at the other party.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: With Michael still wallowing in his self-pity, Jim pulls rank as second in-command and allows Pam and Karen to continue with their alternate party over Dwight and Angela's objections.
• Shout-Out: When talking about buying tickets for him and Carol to go to Sandals Jamaica, Michael references the chorus of the Eddie Money hit "Two Tickets to Paradise". It was later revealed that the show had to pay $60,000 to obtain the song's rights for that one joke.
• Smug Snake: Angela points out that she hasn't spoken to her sister in fifteen years over a disagreement she doesn't even remember, and is proud of that because she doesn't back down.
• Technician Versus Performer: Angela is the technician, with her "A Nutcracker Christmas" party featuring a strictly enforced theme that includes the decoration and snack choices. Pam and Karen are the Performer, with their "Margarita-Karaoke-Christmas" party being a more casual affair with just snacks, margaritas, and a karaoke machine.
• Threat Backfire: When Carol walks out on Michael
  Michael: No, Carol! You walk out that door and it is over!
  Carol: I know. (she closes the door)
• The Unreveal: Dwight proceeds to get rid of everything with Carol's name, before coming to the closing papers for Michael's condo. He sees that Carol saved him $2,000 by failing to report a mold problem, and wonders how it didn't affect the deal. He's impressed when he sees how she managed it.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Hannah, who made her first full appearance two episodes earlier in "The Merger",^note She's very briefly seen in "Grief Counseling" makes her last appearance here, before getting formally Put on a Bus in "Back from Vacation".