Fun Dinner Party
Fun Dinner Party
"Dinner Party" is the thirteenth episode of the fourth season of the American comedy television series The Office —the show's sixty-sixth episode overall. Written by the writing team of Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky and directed by Paul Feig, the episode originally aired on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) on April 10, 2008. Guest stars in the episode include Beth Grant, Steve Seagren, and Gary Weeks.
The episode focuses on a dinner party thrown by Michael, the regional manager of the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch of the Dunder Mifflin paper company, and his girlfriend Jan, the former Vice-President of Regional Sales at the Dunder Mifflin corporate office in New York City. Attending the party are the couples of Jim and Pam, and Andy and Angela, as well as the uninvited Dwight along with his childhood babysitter. The party ends when Michael leaves with Dwight on the advice of two police officers who respond to a domestic disturbance call following a loud argument with Jan.
Plot
Michael Scott (Steve Carell) succeeds in his attempts to invite Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) to join him and his girlfriend Jan Levinson (Melora Hardin) for dinner at his condominium after Jim had previously turned him down nine times. He also invites Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) and Angela Martin (Angela Kinsey), but excludes Angela's former boyfriend Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson), much to Dwight's dismay. On a tour of the condominium, Jan shows the workspace from which she runs her candle-making home business. Jan's dominance in the relationship is apparent from the living arrangements; Michael sleeps on a small bench due to Jan's "space issues", and his sole comfort is a very small "plasma television", which he bought for $200. It is also later revealed that Jan had Michael undergo a vasectomy, only to later have it reversed and then reversed back again. Throughout the evening, Jan plays a song by The Hunted (the band to which her former assistant, Hunter, belongs), titled "That One Night."
In the kitchen, Jan quietly confronts Pam with a false assumption that Michael and Pam had once dated, while Michael attempts to get Jim and Andy to invest in Jan's candle-making business for "only $10,000". Jim's attempts to get himself and Pam out of the increasingly uncomfortable evening are unsuccessful. Dwight arrives, uninvited, with his own food and his former babysitter (Beth Grant) as his date; (he was desperate to get into Michael's dinner party). The feud between Michael and Jan escalates, culminating in Jan's destruction of the television using one of Michael's beloved Dundie Awards. Under the advice of responding police officers (Steve Seagren and Gary Weeks), Michael agrees to spend the night with Dwight. Jim and Pam share a warm moment together eating take-out food in their car, repeatedly calling each other "babe" in a mockery of Michael and Jan; Jim also puts on the Hunter CD, which he stole from the condo. In Andy's car, Andy attempts to flirt with Angela by leaning in and tasting her ice cream cone, she responds coldly by smashing the ice cream on the outside of the door.
Production
"Dinner Party" was the eighth episode of the show written by the team Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky. It was the sixth episode to feature Paul Feig as director. The episode was the first original episode of The Office to be broadcast since the episode "The Deposition" on November 15, 2007, due to the effects of the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) went on strike at 12:01AM Eastern Standard Time on November 5, 2007. Filming of The Office immediately halted on that date, as Steve Carell, who is a member of the WGA, refused to cross WGA picket lines. Members of Writers Guild of America, East and Writers Guild of America, West voted to end the 100-day strike on February 12, 2008. Writers were allowed to return to work on the same day. The WGA allowed for show runners to return to work on February 11, in preparation for the conclusion of the strike. The show runner for The Office , Executive Producer Greg Daniels, returned on the February 11, while the show's writers returned to work on February 13.
If not for the writers' strike, this episode would have completed filming successfully during the week of November 5, 2007. Also, a Christmas episode would have been produced and aired, but that script was discarded as the strike lasted past the 2007 holiday season, the time of year when the potential episode would have aired.
Reception
"Dinner Party" brought in an average of 9.2 million American viewers, which was the highest total audience since the fourth season premiere episode "Fun Run". This episode achieved a 4.8/12 in the key 18–49 demographic, meaning that 4.8 percent of 18–49 year olds were tuned in at any given moment and twelve percent of all 18–49 year olds watching television at the time were tuned in. The episode ranked in eighth place, in the 18–49 demographic, among all programs on television, which aired during the week of this episodes original broadcast.
Travis Fickett of IGN wrote that "This is one of those great episodes of The Office that is hysterical and difficult to watch at the same time. Only this time, it's not because of something Michael is doing that makes you wince. It's because of what's happening to him." Jay Black of AOL's TV Squad said that " was happy The Office was back" but "the only thing worried about was whether it'd still be good" after the writers strike. M. Giant of Television Without Pity graded this episode with an "A." Aubry D'Arminio of Entertainment Weekly said that her favourite moment of the episode "was when Jan popped on that song by her former assistant, Hunter." Jack Rodgers of TV Guide wrote that "on the one hand it’s a hilarious, brutally awkward look at the relationship (and apartment) from hell, a train wreck that you just can’t keep from staring at. But it’s also a study of four couples: one hideously dysfunctional (Michael and Jan), one loving (Jim and Pam), one mismatched (Angela and Andy), and one, ahem, "purely carnal" (Dwight and babysitter).". Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky's writing in the episode was nominated for an Emmy at the Primetime Emmys in the "Best Original Writing for a Comedy Series" category in 2008.
References
- ^ a b NBC Universal Media Village . "04-10-2008 09:00 PM The Office — "Dinner Party"". Press release . http://nbcumv.com/listing_detail.nbc/nbc-20080410210000.html . Retrieved 2008-06-13 .
- ^ " Dinner Party ". Paul Feig (director); Lee Eisenberg & Gene Stupnitsky (writers). The Office . NBC Universal. NBC. 2008-04-10. No. 9, season 4.
- ^ "The 100-Day Writers’ Strike: A Timeline". The New York Times . 2008-02-12 . http://tvdecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/the-100-day-writers-strike-a-timeline . Retrieved 2008-02-24 .
- ^ NBC Universal Media Village . "11-15-2007 9:00 PM The Office — "The Deposition"". Press release . http://nbcumv.com/listing_detail.nbc/nbc-20071115210000.html . Retrieved 2008-06-13 .
-
^
Andreeva, Nellie (2008-02-14). "NBC renews series, announces premieres".
The Hollywood Reporter
. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/television/news/e3if908f8e7990b715738fd1460067e3828
. Retrieved 2008-02-14
.
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