3.23: Beach Games
Thursday, May 10th, 2007
Written by: Jennifer Celotta and Greg Daniels
Summary (NBC): Michael is being considered for a position in corporate and has to recommend his replacement, but while the group expects a fun outing at Lake Scranton, Michael has planned a day of “Survivor”-like competitions to find his successor. Meanwhile, Pam is not asked to join in any of the activities and is forced to watch Jim and Karen have fun together. Directed by Harold Ramis. Supersized.
Icon courtesy of callmelydia at LiveJournal.
Tidbits
- Videos: Promos/previews | Pam’s speech | Flintstones tag
- Reviews: TV Guide
- Photos: Promos | Behind the scenes
- Buy Beach Games at the iTunes Store
Favorite quotes
Dwight: You have to point to a specific part of the body.
Michael: Right there.
Dwight: “Abdomen. Menses.”
Michael: Maybe.
Dwight: “The uterus contracts after your egg passes through it.”
Michael: Not it. I don’t have eggs.
Pam: About 40 times a year, Michael gets really sick, but has no symptoms. Dwight is always gravely concerned.
Dwight: Oooh, is it possible you ate food that contained animal waste?
Michael: To what do I owe this great honor, David Wallace?
David: Michael, I am calling …
Michael: And Gromit.
Michael: You sigh like Jan.
Michael: It was never my intention to ruin a life. But you know what? Sometimes, you just gots to get your freak on.
Michael: I wish I had prepared something to say.
David: That’s not necessary.
Michael: May God guide you in your quest.
David: Yes.
Michael: I suggest that you all go potty now.
Meredith: Oh, I’m excited. Today is beach day. Michael is taking the whole office to the beach, so I’m wearing my bathing suit underneath my shirt (flashes camera) … oh yeah, I packed it in my purse.
Michael: Oscar, you brought your Speedo, I assume?
Oscar: I don’t wear a Speedo, Michael.
Michael: Well, you can’t swim in leather pants. (Laughs) I’m just yankin’ your chain. Not literally.
Michael: I want today to be a beautiful memory, that the staff and I share after I have passed on to New York. And if Toby is a part of it … then it’ll suck.
Michael: I would like you to take notes. And I want you to find out about people’s character. Not their hotness, per se, but their humor, and their charisma, and the indefinable quality that makes you all glad to follow me.
Michael: What happens to a company if somebody takes their boss away? I will answer your question with a question. It’s like what happens to a chicken when you take its head away. It dies. Unless you find a new head. I need to see which one of these people have the skills to be a chicken head.
Pam: I have the most boring job in the office, so … why wouldn’t I have the most boring job on beach day?
Kevin: I just want to lie on the beach and eat hot dogs. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.
Michael: Today, we are not just spending a day at the beach.
Stanley: Oh sweet mother of god.
Michael: If you don’t like it, Stanley, you can go to the back of the bus.
Stanley: Excuse me?
Michael: Or the front of the bus. Or drive the bus.
Michael: We are all participating in mandatory fun activities. Funtivities! And there is a special secret prize for the winner!
Dwight: Yes, funtivities! I knew it wasn’t just a trip to the beach.
Michael: Okay, you know what? Your enthusiasm’s turning people off.
Dwight: I hope there will be management parables.
Michael: I can’t stay mad at you.
Michael: Last one down is a rotten egg!
Michael: Watch out for snakes!
Michael: We are situated on the northeast corner of scenic Lake Scranton. America’s eighth largest indigenous body of water.
Michael: One day, 14 strangers who work together, but only one survivor.
Oscar: What?
Michael: Just words. Inspiring words. (Under breath) Not a contender.
Michael: Each tribe will have a leader that I will pick randomly off the top of my head without thinking.
Michael: Choose your tribes. Except for Pam. Not Pam.
Michael: Jim Halpert. Pros: smart, cool, good-looking. Remind you of anybody you know? Cons: not a hard worker. I can spend all day on a project, and he will finish the same project in a half an hour. So that should tell you something.
Michael: Dwight is an obvious candidate for my job. He has the best sales record in the office. He loves the work. He is, however, an idiot.
Dwight: We will be called Gryffindor.
Jim: Really? Not Slytherin?
Dwight: Slytherin are the bad guys, Jim.
Jim: I know. Okay, we will be Voldemort.
Dwight: He who must not be named? I wouldn’t do that.
Jim: Vol-de-mort, Vol-de-mort …
Michael: Pam, please take a note that Andy is patriotic.
Michael: Andy Bernard. Pros: he’s classy. He gets me. He went to Cornell. I trust him. Cons: I don’t really trust him.
Kelly: I don’t want to hit the big rock.
Andy: I am okay if I lose every single contest today. Honestly. Because I see these contests as an opportunity for me to demonstrate what a good sport I am. Mallard!
Dwight: C’mon, andale, arriba, arriba!
Pam: There’s nothing better than a beautiful day at the beach, filled with sun, surf, and uh … diligent note-taking.
Dwight: Come on! Mush! Mush! Come on, you bastard!
Kelly: Can I have a turkey burger?
Michael: No, I have the only one. I claimed it.
Phyllis: Is there any mustard?
Michael: No mustard, no mustard. Just eat it, eat it, Phyllis. Dip it in the water so it’ll slide down your gullet more easily.
Jim: You can’t say, or you can’t pronounce it?
Michael: The winner gets a regional manager’s salary for a year, and a Sebring, and the feeling that they are making a difference in the world.
Kelly: Can we just take those first two things?
Michael: The winner of today gets my job.
Stanley: I would rather work for an upturned broom with a bucket for a head than work for somebody else in this office besides myself. Game on.
Michael: And the winner is Andy Bernard, with 14 hot dogs.
Kelly: Team U.S.A.!
Andy: One came up.
Michael: 13 hot dogs, everybody!
Creed: Nobody told me we were going to have hot dogs!
Dwight: Sabotage.
Angela: What? What are you saying? Did you say “sandwich”?
Dwight: No, I was saying that before. Not now. Now I am saying … sabotage. The ancient Dutch art of screwing up your own team.
Angela: I knew you were saying sabotage. I was giving you an example of it. I will misunderstand everything that Andy says until he goes insane.
Dwight: If Michael organizes some kind of group hug, stand next to me.
Stanley: We don’t have any safety mittens.
Karen: Go get em, big boy!
Jim: Oh my god, I have never seen that look in a man’s eyes … ever. I thought that I might die. On beach day.
Oscar: If either of these guys are put in charge of the office, I will transfer to Albany. Gil can come if he wants. I’m kind of looking for a way out of that relationship anyway. I think I might try girls for awhile. Angela thinks I can cross over. We’ll see.
Andy: Go tell them I’m floating away, obviously!
Angela: I don’t understand what you want from me.
Andy: Angela, it’s pretty simple. Look at what I’m doing, and go tell somebody it!
Angela: Sorry! Bye, Andy!
Andy: Angela!
Michael: Who’s ahead in points?
Pam: I think they’re even. At various times, you gave Jim ten points, Dwight a gold star, and Stanley a thumbs-up. And I don’t really know how to compare those units.
Michael: Well, check to see if there’s a conversion chart in that notebook.
Pam: I really doubt it, Michael.
Michael: Please just check.
Jim: If this job is in a well, I don’t want it.
Michael: What does a great manager need most of all? Courage?
Stanley: How so? I mean, sure thing, that sounds smart. I can’t do this anymore. I’m going to sit in the bus.
Michael: The mind has to wrap around … the foot.
Michael: Being a boss is also about image. I’ve never looked like that. That was gross.
Kelly: Who’s Bob Hope?
Michael: God! He’s, he’s a comedian.
Kelly: Oh, like Amanda Bynes.
Michael: Who’s Amanda Bynes?
Kelly: She’s from What A Girl Wants.
Michael: Oh, I love that movie.
Pam: Hey, I want to say something. I’ve been trying to be more honest lately and I just need to say a few things. I did the coal walk! Just, I did it. Michael, you couldn’t even do that. Maybe I should be your boss. Wow, I feel really good right now. Why didn’t any of you come to my art show? I invited all of you. That really sucked. It’s like sometimes, some of you act like I don’t even exist. Jim, I called off my wedding because of you. And now we’re not even friends. And things are just like weird between us, and that sucks. And I miss you. You were my best friend before you went to Stamford. And I really miss you. I shouldn’t have been with Roy, and there were a lot of reasons to call off my wedding. But the truth is, I didn’t care about any of those reasons until I met you. And now you’re with someone else, and that’s fine. It’s … whatever. That’s not what I’m … I’m not … okay my feet really hurt. The thing that I’m just trying to say to you, Jim, and to everyone else in the circle I guess, is that I miss having fun with you. Just you, not everyone in the circle. Okay, I am gonna go walk in the water now. Yeah, it’s a good day.
Michael: Pam, that was amazing. But I am still looking for someone with a sales background.
Rating
Ed Helms, Steve Carell, Rainn Wilson rocked this episode. Nothing new.
622 | Mrs. Michael Scott Sun. Jun. 15, 2008 at 7:37pmI just watched this episode again. Does anyone know who the person in the background making the fire is? It doesn’t look like anyone in the office.
621 | Sheikia Sun. May. 25, 2008 at 6:08pmwell they were best friends before Stamford. and he got a new girlfriend. forgive and forget!
620 | Sara Thu. May. 17, 2007 at 8:17pmHow can any of you expect Jim to be friends with Pam?! He clearly said that being friends is not enough. When a guy puts it on the line, there is no going back to friends. I would never tolerate such a situation, and neither can Jim. The nerve of Pam saying that they were best friends before Stamford!
619 | Dundee Thu. May. 17, 2007 at 1:35pmwatching the episode yet again, I think the lighting was terrible. Pam looked so old in her speech with her brow furrowed.
618 | gwennie Thu. May. 17, 2007 at 11:27amI dont know if people have said this but I am not going to go read 600 comments to find out. Does Pam know that Jim has applied for the same job as Michael??? I dont think so, because when he said it in the circle, Pam was off in the distance walking on fire. I just dont know how that is going to play into the finale. Maybe they’ll just ignore this fact all together.
617 | Mrs. Michael Scott Sat. May. 12, 2007 at 6:23pmThat was a great episode…..but what got me really mad was how my tivo cut off right after Pam’s little speech. I wondering did this happen to anyone else? I saw a couple other people wrote about. I was also wondering if it was nbc or the tivo?
616 | Office Fanatic Sat. May. 12, 2007 at 4:53pmI hate to say it, but I thought this was the WORST episode this season, if not the entire series. I’m hoping for a much stronger finale.
615 | Dwight's Bobblehead Sat. May. 12, 2007 at 3:36pmDid anything happen after Pam’s speech? My tivo cut off as soon as she walked away.
614 | andrew Sat. May. 12, 2007 at 3:31pmAbout the whole Karen/look thing during Pam’s speech: I don’t think she was impressed by Pam’s ballsy-ness at all. The camera doesn’t show her until Pam says something like “And you’re with someone else and that’s fine…” To me, that look was a response to “That’s fine…” like, ‘Who made Pam the authority on whether or not it’s fine for Jim to date someone?’ I think she looked peeved.
Just from watching the episode, I think that Jim and Karen called David Wallace, not the other way around. And for some reason I think that Michael is totally gonna land the job. And how much more entertaining would it be if Michael did get it, and suddenly he wasn’t a self-perceived big fish in a little pond anymore, but some kind of guppy in a lake? The Scrantonites endlessly humor him because deep down they care, but in New York his indefinable Michaelness is bound to cause some serious tension. That makes for far better comedy in my opinion.
It might be true that the show isn’t the way it used to be, but if the show never changed that wouldn’t be good storytelling. Without some kind of change, we wouldn’t have the beautiful coal-walking, speech-making Pam we got on Thursday night. And you can go back and pinpoint every moment this season that moved her along to this point.
I know a lot of people are and have been disappointed by the whole Jim/Pam thing not panning out from the beginning of the season, but I think the way the show has been written has been perfect. And, you know, the show is only 20-something minutes long each week, and every single second is carefully deliberating over before the episode is sent to the network; for people to criticize and say that something (like Pam’s speech) was out of character seems a little bit presumptuous. I just think that the creators, producers, and writers know what they’re doing. And God bless ‘em.
613 | Gina Sat. May. 12, 2007 at 1:52pmAlso, I just have to say that the writers really do make this show amazing. Yes, that is a really big understatement, but think of it this way. In television shows, a love confession/kiss is not really a big deal. It happens on every show practically at some point. Even though those things would be a big deal in real life (i mean if they happened in our own lives)at this point in television, it is hard to shock people, especially when it comes to TV romances, because people think they have seen it all before. And yet these writers continue to amaze us with rather ordinary people doing sort-of ordinary stuff and somehow manage to make it so compelling.
I think the best possible evidence I have of this (even more than casino night or booze cruise or christmas party or the secret)is a seemingly rather insignificant episode: the carpet. Honestly, it takes a lot of talent to make pam’s couple of little trivial phone messages at the end of the day into a sort of happy giddy moment for viewers. Those silly phone calls were just little signs that pam cares a lot about jim, and just what a connection they have, enough to make viewers really happy.
612 | Ellie Sat. May. 12, 2007 at 1:46pmUm, it may be a really really small sort of insignificant thing, but just something I wanted to add that might redeem Jim just a little bit more from this episode. Watch the scene when Dwight is on the hot coals and literally has fallen over from burning. Jim, in the background, is getting ready to try to help/save him from the coals. I just thought that seemed nice.
But that being said, I think being with Karen this entire season, paired with him putting up a wall against Pam, has made him a little less lovable, more ambitious in a way that seems sort of cold. Karen seems to have him thinking that the job, making money, moving up the corporate ladder, etc. is the most important thing. We know from how many years he spent working at Dunder Mifflin, despite the fact he was annoyed by his fellow employees and bored with his job, was because he knew what was really important (to him at least). He seems to have forgotten that, with some of Karen’s help.
It also seems, to me at least, that Pam’s speech is sort of a wakeup call. That he really isn’t the same way he used to be and it might be time to assess which version of himself makes him happier.
611 | Ellie Sat. May. 12, 2007 at 1:33pmRE: one of the 500s posts about how this show is supposed to be about the comedy, not Jim and Pam:
I used to watch it for the comedy, but this season I’ve felt there wasn’t as much as there used to be. I don’t necessarily watch it for Jam, but I think that their relationship added to a lot of the comedy in the first season at least. They were having fun, and brought the whole Office along for the ride. This season there isn’t a Jam at all (as Pam mentioned in her monologue) and I think it has cast a pall over the whole Office. I’d like to see at least them back to their old tricks - how about Karen gets the NY job and Jim stays in Scranton, so they have a flip of what was happening in the beginning - Pam has to pine for Jim while he’s in a dysfunctional relationship?
In any case, I’d love to see more of the comedy back, and that involves Jim being the instigator more than he has been.
610 | Elspeth Sat. May. 12, 2007 at 11:36ami have to add to my last post (which was hundreds of posts ago)that i love the smile michael had when pam said maybe she should be his boss. there was something about that smile that touched me.
609 | jack m. fan Sat. May. 12, 2007 at 11:09amI know I sound like a dork, but I loved it when Steve Carell sang on the bus. It was so cute. ;)
608 | The Office Fanatic Sat. May. 12, 2007 at 10:49amThis is just my opinion but I rewatched (obsessive I know) Pam’s speech on NBC.com and Karen looks pissed! Jim looks totally shell shocked. Glad Michael’s last comment left it on a funny note.
607 | Renee Sat. May. 12, 2007 at 10:16amOh yeah, and post 592 — my sentiments exactly!
606 | H Sat. May. 12, 2007 at 9:49amRe 594
605 | H Sat. May. 12, 2007 at 9:47amI think the yellow thing in Andy’s hand was the bandana they used for the egg race. I still have no idea what he was doing with it!
Did anyone notice how Dwight was still calling Ryan “temp” even though he’s been a full-time employee for at least six months? That Dwight.
604 | Voltaire Sat. May. 12, 2007 at 9:20amwhat was andy doing when he fell into the lake? he looked like he was holding a napkin, but i’m not sure.
603 | mufasa howard Sat. May. 12, 2007 at 9:07am