The Office recap: Jim wants a promotion

For Office viewers worried that Jim and Pam's wedding and impending parenthood could plunge the show into "Joanie Loves Chachi" lameness, Thursday night's episode offered troubling signs.

Sadly, it appears that the merry prankster of Dunder-Mifflin's Scranton branch has decided to grow up. Jim wants a promotion. Jim, the same shaggy-haired paper salesman who couldn't deal with the headache of ordering birthday cakes each month for his colleagues, wants to sit in the big boy chair of management.

What happened to the guy who liked nothing more than killing an afternoon inventing imaginary diseases to foil Dwight's plans to slash the office's health-care plan? Or the guy who took advantage of Michael's absence one day to launch the inaugural Dunder-Mifflin Olympic Games, awarding gold, bronze, and silver yogurt cup lids in the made-up sport of flunkerton?

Family demands responsibility, we get it. It's the same reason why, when my wife and I started our family, I gave up the aimless pursuit of corporate law for the more stable, financially lucrative world of newspaper journalism.

But let's hope that Jim doesn't put away all his childish things as he takes on the responsibilities of co-manager of the Scranton office. Thankfully, he'll be sharing managerial duties with Michael, who shows no signs of assuming a more dignified, corporate demeanor.

Michael's first concern, when he sees Jim meeting privately with Dunder-Mifflin CFO David Wallace, is that he's about to lose Jim.

Actually his first concern of the episode involves seeking Oscar's perspective as a gay man on what sensations or emotions Michael should expect from his upcoming colonoscopy.

"Is there anything I can do to make it more pleasurable for me or Dr. Chahnski?" Michael asks, sending Oscar almost sprinting out the door.

Colonoscopy fantasies aside, Michael fears that if Jim gets promoted, he'll also lose Pam, and their baby, according to Michael's belief that they're all one big happy family.

So Michael tries to kill Jim's chances for a promotion, sharing with Wallace Jim's personnel file, which is filled with H.R. guy Toby Flenderson's notes on all the time Jim used to waste hanging out by Pam's receptionist desk. (Something we know Toby would have killed to do if Pam had ever shown any interest in him.)

This dampens Wallace's interest in Jim, who had impressed him a few minutes earlier by making a pitch for a promotion in the company. Jim thought he had been wise to keep Michael out of the loop, but after Wallace tells him it won't work out, Jim realizes that Michael still managed to screw up his chances.

The old Jim would have shrugged his shoulders and gone back to figuring out a new way to encase Dwight's nunchucks in Jello. The new Jim confronts Michael and forces him to call Wallace back to set things right. It's clear that Michael's still conflicted about helping Jim, even after he learned that Jim's pitch to Wallace had included a promotion for Michael to oversee the company's Northeast sales region.

Wallace tells Michael on the phone that if he's OK with losing Jim — who told Wallace that he had another job offer — he could turn down the compromise solution of making Jim and Michael co-managers of the Scranton branch. But family's family, even if it's imaginary, and Michael agrees to the new power structure.

Jim gets day-to-day managerial responsibilities, while Michael gets to focus on the big-picture stuff for Scranton, which has absorbed the closed Buffalo branch's business.

While Jim and Michael are haggling with Wallace, the rest of the office spins off into more important pursuits.

Pam spends the day trying to convince everyone at work that it really would be OK if they decided not to attend her wedding. That's the whole reason why she and Jim decided to get married up in Niagara Falls, to make it more of a hassle for people to drive up from Scranton. But she wasn't counting on Michael offering Friday and Monday off to anyone going to the wedding, so Pam has a hard time convincing anyone it's not worth the drive.

Sneering at Pam's comment that the wedding is costing them $75 a guest, Ryan tells her, "I've had a glass of cognac that cost $77."

The firmest commitment she can get is from Meredith, who refuses to send in her RSVP but assures Pam that she'll be OK with the "fanciest" entree available. And she won't need directions, because she'll just text Pam the morning of the wedding.

At the same time, Dwight enlists Toby in his quest to prove that warehouse supervisor Darryl Philbin's workman's comp claim is a sham. Bonding over a shared interest in trainspotting, and the turn-of-the-century steam engine Dwight says he's building in his slaughterhouse, it's an unlikely alliance.

But spineless Toby is such a pushover that he finds himself staking out Darryl's house to see if he really needs those crutches. Mistaking Darryl's equally burly sister — who he spots carrying, sans crutches a gimongous bag of dog food over her shoulder— for him, Toby loses his cool in the passenger seat of Dwight's Thunderbird.

"Hey [expletive]!" Dwights shouts at Darryl's sister. "Gonna eat all that dogfood yourself?"

It becomes clear when she turns their way, with Darryl hobbling out the front door on crutches, that they've made a terrible mistake. Their attempt at speeding away undetected is foiled, though, as Dwight runs over Darryl's trash cans.

The aborted stakeout ends with Dwight and Darryl filing multiple complaints against each other to the corporate office, which means a mountain of paperwork for Toby.

At least some things never change.