“The Promotion” opens with Dwight on a rampage about how he deserved the promotion more than Jim did. He tries to confront Jim, but to no avail. He ends up retreating to his office where we get to hear a monologue where he compares his plight to that of a WWE wrestler who takes the match and wins the prize.  Of course, he gets too loud and Jim sends someone to put him in his place.

Next up, Jim confronts Michael about having too many meetings. He says meetings are a the biggest time waster of the day and Jim counters that naps are the biggest time waster.  Jim brings up the fact that most of Michael’s meetings end up going off down a rabbit trail and end up being about things totally unrelated to work.

Michael finally agrees to have no more meetings this week. Not five minutes later, however, Jim catches Michael with a group of employees in his office, holding another useless meaning.  Does he seriously not understand this, or is he just on a power trip?

So, Michael and Jim exit the “non-meeting” to discuss their power struggle over whether they are c0-managers or if Michael is the senior manager of the branch.  They decide to call David Wallace (Andy Buckley), the company’s CEO, when someone tells them he is on the phone.  They take his call only to discover that they will have to inform the staff that there will be no cost of living wage increases this year, but they do have a lump sum they can distribute as they see fit. During the entire conversation they are talking over each other in an attempt to show David who is going to take charge.  It’s office politics at its worst and quite pathetic actually.

Several plans are proposed, none of which the office staff likes. Dwight, of course, is eating it up and trying to push people to revolt. However, unlike the founding fathers (as Dwight points out) the office staff isn’t really motivated to start a revolution.  In the end, Michael and Jim share a drink of gin while hiding in Michael’s office.

As a side note, Pam has announced that she is registered for the wedding, but that they would prefer getting cash. She finally gets over her hesitancy to ask for cash, only to end up giving someone cash as an “investment” in a sports gambling algorithm.  Overall this wasn’t a very funny episode to me, unless there’s something wrong with my funny meter.  I sure hope they kick it up a notch.  The Office is NBC’s highest rated scripted show, and the network needs it to stay that way.  Someone over there needs to prod the writers and get their creative juices flowing again.  That’s my two cents’ worth anyway.

Here’s a clip so you can get a head start on next week’s show: