Kelly invites everyone to a Diwali party. Michael tries to educate the gang about Indian culture. Jim, Karen, and Andy have to stay late at the Stamford branch.
Air date: November 2, 2006
Tropes
- All Guys Want Cheerleaders: Reflected in Carol's costume.
- Arranged Marriage: Michael's curiosity about this practice in Indian culture helps spur his Didn't Think This Through proposal to Carol.
- Call-Back:
- Michael wears the papier-mâché second head from "Halloween," thinking that Diwali is basically a costume party.
- Michael's proposal to Carol is similar to Roy taking the mic to announce that he and Pam are finally setting a wedding date in "Booze Cruise".
- Characterization Marches On: While in "Diversity Day," Michael's racist jokes got him slapped, he's making a genuine effort to understand the festival and have a good time at the festival, including asking about arranged marriage and dancing in a group. It's still awkward, but he's trying.
- Deconstructed Trope: So it turns out that a marriage proposal in front of a large group of strangers to someone you've only recently begun dating maybe won't work out very well.
- Discreet Drink Disposal: While Andy isn't looking as he leads the Stamford group in taking shots of Jägermeister, Karen tosses her shots in the waste basket.
- Drinking Game: An in-universe example of Andy trying to make their reports more fun.
- Embarrassing Slide: Michael tosses a picture of him and Carol kissing into his slide show, and tries to invoke this trope in a very forced and unconvincing manner.
- Foreshadowing: Kelly's parents try to get her interested in marrying an Indian doctor. In Season 9, she does.
- Fourth-Date Marriage: Michael proposes to Carol on what is only their ninth date. She naturally turns him down.
- Hidden Depths: Dwight knows quite a bit about Diwali, along with the historical and mythological significance. It's also a Call-Back to an early episode, where Dwight expressed an attraction to Indian women.
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It also suggests that Angela's hostility for Indian culture is not merely xenophobia, but because of jealousy over Dwight's interest in Kelly's ethnic background.
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- It's a Costume Party, I Swear!: Downplayed. It's a genuine misunderstanding, in that Michael thinks Diwali is like Halloween (though one of the deleted scenes shows that it was Kelly who misled him by describing Diwali that way). He invites Carol, who dresses up as a cheerleader, and no one at the festival can understand why.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Angela is always a stuck-up, wet blanket who complains about things being "inappropriate." In this case, she's right, when Michael brings in a copy of the Kama Sutra, which is completely inappropriate for a workplace. Even Toby admits it and confiscates the copies.
- Shout-Out:
- Angela doesn't want to go to the Diwali party because "they eat monkey brains."
- Andy describes his relationship with Karen as "Sam and Diane."
- In his slide show of "famous Indians", Michael starts off with Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
, then his second slide is Apu. - In a deleted scene, Kelly tries to explain Hinduism to Michael: "There’s a bunch of different gods, and each of the gods has a special power, like the Care Bears."
- Shown Their Work: This episode has been praised for getting the details of a Diwali celebration accurate, right down to the music featured (several classic Bollywood songs and Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love", which is a popular choice for South Asian get-togethers).
- Song Parody: The episode ends with Michael performing Adam Sandler's "The Chanukah Song" with the lyrics changed to being about Diwali. The crowd actually appreciates and applauds his performance.The goddess of destruction Kali
Stopped by to celebrate Diwali
Don't invite any zombies
To a celebration of Diwali - Straw Vegetarian: During the festival, Angela asks what she can eat because she's vegetarian. When the server replies that all the food is vegetarian, she settles for some naan bread.
- Thinks Like a Romance Novel: Michael assumes no woman could possibly turn down a grand gesture like a public marriage proposal, even if they've only been dating a few weeks. Carol shows him otherwise.
