Grief Counseling (The Office) - Synopsis

Synopsis

Michael Scott (Steve Carell) is informed by Jan Levenson (Melora Hardin) that his former boss Ed Truck has died. Kelly Kapoor (Mindy Kaling) and Phyllis Lapin (Phyllis Smith) console Michael after he breaks the news to a mostly unmoved staff. Later, Michael learns from Creed Bratton (Creed Bratton) that Truck, heavily inebriated, was decapitated in a truck accident. Michael summons the staff to a primitive grief counseling session involving a collapsible Hoberman sphere ball, in which Michael tells members of the staff to give stories of deceased love ones. This leads to the staff telling stories about losing loved ones based on death scenes in movies (Million Dollar Baby, The Lion King, and Weekend at Bernie's) with Ryan Howard (B. J. Novak) saying he would elaborate more on his story, but it would take about an hour and a half to do it.

Toby Flenderson (Paul Lieberstein) tells Michael death is a part of life, and uses an example of a bird that flew into a first-floor window that morning. Michael charges outside, picks up the deceased animal and tries in vain to revive it. Michael schedules a parking lot funeral for the bird. Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) fashions a makeshift coffin and reads a prepared speech that comforts Michael. Pam then proceeds to sing "On the Wings of Love" as Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) accompanies her on his recorder. The coffin is placed in a box of shredded paper and set afire.

Meanwhile, in Stamford, Connecticut, Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) gains authority over Karen Filippelli's (Rashida Jones) schedule for the day. When Karen mentions her favorite kind of Herr's potato chips is missing from the vending machine, Jim tells Karen that they cannot work until they find her chips. The duo spends the rest of the day searching stores and vending machines around town in a vain attempt to find the chips. But at the end of the day, Karen finds a bag of Herr's on her desk. Jim tells the documentary crew that he traced the chips from the manufacturer to the distributor to the vending machine company to an adjacent office building.