Back at Dunder Mifflin, Jim was in charge. Pam, not wanting to be overprotective, stood back while he slipped up and decided to merge the month's birthdays into one group party. Angela hated his idea from the start (I did too!), Oscar tried hiding his disappointment, and Creed carped mutinously. Escaping into Michael's office, Jim soon inherited Michael's habit of being irritated by the very sound of Toby's voice. Maybe it was the cake requests, maybe it was Andy's plea for mushroom caps, but the substitute regional manager found new sympathy for any manager of such a relentlessly needy staff. Jim, horrified when Phyllis called him ''Michael,'' keeps making me wonder: If he's itching to do something different with his life, what is it (sports writing? guitar playing?), and what keeps him from it? Think on that, picketing writers, and come back someday to give us a satisfying answer. We just want Jim to be happy.

And we want Creed to dance more! Almost enough to revive the Creep-o-meter from Abby West's TV Watches. Oh, let's do it — I give him an 8 this episode, for the intense Mamet-esque pie negotiations alone. His skippy dance was off-the-charts loony! (I think I'll rate him — thanks, Abby, for the go-ahead — when the spirit moves me, as in this episode, but any of you Office fans are welcome to rate him on the comments board, anytime! That is, whenever this strike ends!)

In the ''wilderness,'' Michael asked to be alone with his duct tape, knife, and — since he can't ever really be alone — a small camcorder. Dwight watched (''I will remain close by, but I will never help him. I will let harm befall him….'') as Michael ineptly tried roughing it. Looking skyward to estimate the time, Michael told his camcorder, ''The sun is in the two-thirds easterly quadrant,'' and snuck a glance at his watch. Then he hacked up his suit because, it seemed, he didn't know what else to do with the knife; after a miraculous lack of bloodshed, he proudly modeled uneven shorts and uneven short sleeves and then showed off the new uses he'd invented for the fabric scraps. He marveled at his solitude, a.k.a. the freedom to shout anything. (''Jan has plastic boobs!'' ''I have hemorrhoids!'' And he even owned up to the reason he was there at all: ''Wish I could've gone with Ryan on that cool retreat!'') Once the temperature dipped, Michael duct-taped his suit back together and sang ''Happy Birthday'' (with a high descant at the end, of course) to Creed in absentia. His walkabout ended when he bit into a cluster of possibly poisonous mushrooms, and Dwight took him down with a running tackle.

Jim, holding cobbler with candles, was leading a lifeless chorus of ''Happy Birthday'' when Michael walked in, singing his high harmony and wearing a Battlestar Galactica sweatshirt, presumably from Dwight's car. I noticed his return made Pam's face light up. (Are birthdays perhaps the one thing Michael's staffers think he does well?) Summing up his day, Michael said, ''Man became civilized for a reason. I don't need the woods. I have a nice wood desk.'' And if that's not very eco-friendly (okay, it's the opposite of eco-friendly), we'll just have to be content with Meredith's words of wisdom: ''I love camping. Anything can happen.''

What did you think? Will Jim still be at Dunder Mifflin in 10 years? (If not, who will?) Have you noticed that the Office characters are interacting more directly with their cameramen than they used to? And how are you planning to keep yourselves entertained during the strike-caused hiatus?

You Might Also Like

• Television News Plots for a recession-stricken TV lineup | Jesse North
• Television Commentary Coming to America