Quick Take: The Office, “Threat Level Midnight”
“It's gonna take a lot more than a bullet to the brain, lungs, heart, back and balls to kill Michael Scarn.” - Michael Scarn/Scott
Review: The Office, “Threat Level Midnight”
In Season Two of The Office, “Threat Level Midnight” and agent Michael Scarn were introduced to us when Pam found a script in Michael’s desk that he had written. Michael was away from the office that day, so the gang made their way to the conference room to read it out loud and make fun of it. Threat Level Midnight has been talked about here and there throughout the series, but in this week’s episode we finally got to see the movie brought to life.
After three years of writing, one year of shooting, four years of re-shooting, and two years of editing, Michael has finally completed Threat Level Midnight. Erin announces that the film is done and Michael wants to watch it with everyone. They agree to watch the movie and when Michael goes to get Holly to watch too, Pam has to remind people how sensitive Michael is since the first preview of the movie didn’t go over so well, with everybody not taking it seriously. Creed’s response of “thanks Mom” was awesome -- he said what everybody else was probably thinking.
The "movie" features Agent Michael Scarn (Michael), who is asked by the president of the US (Darryl) come out of retirement to stop Goldenface (Jim) from setting a bomb off at the NHL All-star game, with hostages' lives on the line (Pam, Toby, Kevin). Scarn needs to learn how to play hockey from Cherokee Jack (Creed) to get access into the building. He goes to a jazz singer (Jan) to learn where the hostages are. He goes to tell the president about the hostages, but the president was in on the plan with Goldenface the whole time. Scarn loses his confidence, but after getting advice from a bartender (Andy) and doing the dance “the Scarn” he gains it back. He goes to save the hockey arena and blows up Goldenface in the end.
Threat Level Midnight was everything you would think it to be: it has terrible acting, cheesy lines like “go puck yourself,” and Michael dancing along with Dunder Mifflin employees as the characters in the movie. Jim as Goldenface was awesome, Dwight was just right as the robot sidekick and Creed as the hockey mentor, Cherokee Jack, was perfectly random. There were even some cameos from Jan, Todd Packer, Roy, Karen, and Pam’s mom Helene. Loved it when she was on screen in a sexy nurse outfit and Pam gasped! Including these characters really showed how long Michael had been filming.
During the dance scene, Jim ends up laughing and this makes Michael upset. He turns it off, even though everybody doesn’t want him to. When he goes to talk to Holly about what she thinks of the movie, her body language reveals to him that the movie is not good. He gets upset since he says it has been his dream to make this movie and she wonders why he had never mentioned this dream before. He tells her that the movie is all he has and she is upset that she does not qualify as something that he has.
Michael finally turns the movie back on and while watching he realizes the movie isn’t as good as he thought it was. He goes to find Holly and admits this. She apologizes, but he tells her it is okay. He is just happy that the employees are enjoying the movie.
I thought this episode was one of the better ones they have done in a while and it was a perfect tribute to the character of Michael Scott. It was fun to watch the “movie” and I liked seeing past characters. I loved the jokes, like how Catherine Zeta-Jones’ face was pasted onto everything since she is Catherine Zeta-Scarn, Oscar dying and then blinking after, Michael barely hitting the painting over Darryl’s head, Michael and Goldenface’s gun battle, and Toby’s head exploding over and over. Michael wouldn’t want it any other way. It feels like they are creating these moments just for we fans who love Michael and are going to miss him. Hopefully the rest of the season will be just as good as this episode was. I would definitely like to see Michael at his best before he leaves.
Great run down of the history of Threat Level Mignight up through this episode Erin !
I thought the episode was solid and a fine tribute to everything we love about Michael Scott as well. His transition from pouty to the "new" mature Michael at the end was a bit sudden but that's a little bit of a nitpick at this late date in the series' and Michael's run.