The Office recap: Michael realizes he's a loser. Again.

Pity the costumed children of the Scranton Industrial Park Community who had to settle for a Halloween tour of what Michael Scott tried to convince them was the spookiest warehouse in the world.

Little did they know that Michael's "[Junk] in a Box" homage to Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake's classic Saturday Night Live video would be the highlight of Thursday's tepid episode of The Office. At least the kids got off easy with a ride on Darryl the Gangsta Pumpkin's pallet truck of doom.

Maybe they were scarred for life by Michael, giftwrapped box affixed to his crotch, swinging from a noose and reminding them that suicide is never the answer. But at least they got to go home. The rest of us were stuck enduring the rest of an episode that plunged into Yawnville after a promising opening.

If you want to get all existential, you could argue that Michael pretending to hang himself was a foreshadowing of his own despair, which he unwisely shares with his employees, following some unwise advice by Jim. But before we get to that, let's acknowledge there were some laughs mined out of the costumes the Scranton branch employees chose for the kids' warehouse tour.

Creed went old-school with a Bela Lugosi-style vampire look, earning him the scorn of too-hip-for-this-world Ryan, who went instead for the trendy, sensitive vampire look of the Twilight set. At least I think that's what he was trying to get across with the trench coat, poofy hair and wan look on his face, but I'm not sure.

I haven't read the books or seen the movie, so I can only go by what I've seen on the 27 consecutive Entertainment Weekly covers devoted to the Twilight series.

Of course Kelly would pick orange-haired Leeloo from the forgettable Bruce Willis movie "The Fifth Element" for her costume, and no surprise that Dwight's chose to dress as Jigsaw from the "Saw" torture porn movie series.

But you had to laugh at Darryl's confused descriptions to the kids of some of the other costumes. Meredith dressed up as a hobo, so she didn't appreciate Darryl calling her "that old crone from 'Drag Me to Hell'." And Jim thought he was being precious writing "Book" across his face — Get it? Facebook? — but he wasn't counting on Darryl calling him "Bookface".

"Label yourselves, or take what you can get," Darryl tells them when they whine about him getting their costumes wrong. 

And that wraps up the amusing portion of Thursday's episode, which revolves around Michael's embarrasment about falling into a koi pond during a sales call with Jim, and Andy revealing a disturbing comfort with kissing and cooing at Pam's pregnant belly during their joint sales pitches.

Jim is disgruntled by Michael's attempts to "micro-comanage" him by shadowing him on a visit to a Dunder Mifflin client. Naturally, Michael makes a fool of himself, falling into a pond at the client's office and getting billed the $300 replacement cost of the koi fish he stepped on and killed trying to fish himself out. 

Michael returns to the office soaking wet and needs to borrow a suit from Jim to finish the day. Shorter Michael looks silly in taller Jim's clothes, and the rest of the staff can't help but start cracking jokes about Michael's koi pond disaster. Ever faithful Dwight can't stand Kevin and Oscar's puns at his office sensei's expense.

"Michael, they're mocking you with wordplay!" Dwight cautions him.

This triggers a sensitivity training meeting in the conference room where Michael, king of humiliating his employees with insensitive jokes at their expense, announces the creation of a "Do Not Mock" list.

"You can't make fun of somebody for something they regret," Michael declares.

So for Michael, that means no more Koi pond jokes. For Dwight, no jokes about his tiny nose. For Meredith, no cracks about her having sex with a terrorist. (That joke goes  nowhere.)

Kevin asks that people stop making cracks about his weight, but Michael immediately says that's "too broad" a subject. As a compromise, Michael decides that jokes about Kevin's "huge gut" are now off limits.

It's clear that no one is taking the Do Not Mock list seriously, though, so Jim later suggests that Michael defuse the situation by making jokes about himself to let everyone know that the Koi pond incident wasn't such a big deal. Sounds like good advice, until Michael, like a puppy rolling over on its back to win the alpha dog's approval, starts sharing all the humiliating incidents in his life.

Sharing stories of how the girls' volleyball team used to throw you in the frozen pond in high school? Sort of funny. Acknowledging that you don't have enough friends in your life to designate five people on your cell phone's friends and family plan? Just depressing.

We're headed to another downward spiral of existential gloom until Meredith scores a copy of the Koi pond security tape from her roommate's friend the night janitor. (Is he the terrorist? What the heck was that about?)

The grainy tape shows that Jim clearly had the opportunity to grab Michael and stop him from falling in, but Jim leaned away and watched Michael splash down. A shamefaced Jim had to acknowledge his own "A Separate Peace" moment.

(Apologies for the gratuitous high school English class reference. Do they even teach that novel in school anymore?)

Jim acknowledges to Michael that he had been upset that Michael didn't trust him enough to visit a client on his own, even if he isn't as good a salesman as Michael. 

Michael takes this to mean that Jim, effortlessly cool Jim with tons of friends and a lovely knocked-up bride, is jealous of him, so he recovers from his angst.

Speaking of Jim's bride, Pam is stuck making cold calls with lonely Andy, their punishment for racking up the lowest sales numbers for the quarter. Their first appointment incorrectly assumes that they're a couple, and Andy gets his feelings hurt at how energetically Pam tries to set the record straight that they're definitely not together.

"Somebody's got a case of the 'definitelys'," Andy snipes in the car afterward. 

Apparently in the Scranton metropolitan area, business people aren't accustomed to seeing a man and woman making sales calls together without assuming they're a couple, because every potential client they visit draws the same conclusion.

Andy kills one deal in his attempt to get back at Pam for her earlier protestations, telling one potential client that Pam is really a surrogate mom, carrying the baby for his "face" model girlfriend  — "On a scale of 1 to  Giselle, she's a 9," Andy brags about his imaginary Boo.

Eventually, Pam and Andy figure out they can use people's assumptions about their relationship to close sympathy deals. In playing along, though, Andy reveals that he knows way too much about who the best birth coaches are in Scranton. And Pam gets a little uncomfortable with all the kisses of her belly and Andy's crying jags of happiness.

Andy later confesses to her that he's tired of being single. He wants a relationship, bad. Will someone put Andy out of his misery and shove him out of the closet so that he can start dating Oscar, his office soulmate?

Before that happens, though, Andy still has a crush on Erin, Pam's mousy replacement as office receptionist. Feeling pity for him, Pam sets out trying to convince Erin what a cool guy Andy is.

This should be an easy matchmaking assignment, since Erin tells Pam that she thinks Andy is "the coolest person I've ever met." An a capella singer who drones on about Dartmouth is the coolest person she's ever met? We'll let that one slide for now. But come on ... the guy who wears a navy blazer and khaki pants to work every day is the coolest person she's ever met?

If your standard for cooldom is Marlon Wayans, I guess anything's possible.

But if you use the Wayons Brothers' scale of comedy, this episode would definitely rank on the lower, Marlon Wayans end of the humor scale.