The Day-After Thoughts on The Office’s “Night Out”

Last night’s episode of The Office, “Night Out,” saw the return of Ryan, the temp-turned-boss from Dunder Mifflin Corporate, and a hysterical trip to the NYC club scene. Because the company’s online store isn’t doing as well as the customer-service-oriented salespeople, Ryan comes in to make sure everyone is turning their sales over to the Web site.

The episode had a great story line running through it: the office people locked inside the building on a Friday night because of Jim, and Michael and Dwight naively partying hard with a coked-up (I assume) Ryan. Each time Jim tries to be a leader, his seemingly pragmatic plans backfire, causing everyone to question if he is really much better than Michael Scott. Meanwhile, there was an interesting moment towards the end of the episode with Toby… and you have to wonder if that guy is ever coming back (which is a shame because I loved Toby).

Overall, it was a fantastic episode and certainly the best since returning from the strike (okay, there have only been three).

What concerns me at the moment is NBC’s switch back to full screen on standard definition TVs. Perhaps this is only my problem, or DishTV’s (to whom I subscribe), but something leads me to believe it’s an NBC thing. You see, the show, like all of NBC’s shows, used to be widescreen. But since returning from the strike, they’ve done the old full screen bit, without any panning and scanning. So what remains is a show that’s filmed for widescreen, but cropped to be full screen, with faces and text cut off all over the place. It’s disappointing… and I’m not ready to upgrade my ye olde television set just yet.