Plot
Andy (Ed Helms) still has not learned about fiancee Angela's (Angela Kinsey) affair with Dwight (Rainn Wilson), seventeen days after Phyllis (Phyllis Smith) revealed it to everyone else in the Dunder Mifflin office. Michael (Steve Carell) suggests he should inform Andy, but the entire office tries to dissuade him. Jim (John Krasinski) is particularly concerned that Andy's past anger management issues may lead to violence between Andy and the combative Dwight. Nevertheless, Michael asks Andy to accompany him to the parking lot before he leaves for a meeting with David Wallace (Andy Buckley). Michael reveals the affair to Andy at the exact moment that he drives out of the parking lot, leaving Andy shocked and dismayed. Angela reluctantly confirms the affair occurred, and Andy realizes everybody else in the office already knew about it.
Andy confronts Dwight about it and challenges him to a duel (without weapons) in the parking lot, with Angela as a prize to the winner. Dwight accepts and Angela, anxious to avoid making a choice between the two men herself, says she will honor the results of the duel. Jim, acting as office manager in Michael's absence, tries to stop the duel, but concedes he does not have the power to prevent a fight outside the office. Dwight and Andy therefore decide to hold the duel outside in the parking lot. Meanwhile in New York, Michael is nervous about why David Wallace wants to meet with him. But he is surprised to learn Scranton is the most successful Dunder Mifflin branch amid a difficult economic climate. David wants to learn why Michael's management has been so successful. Delighted with the compliment and attention, Michael remains smug throughout most of the meeting, even though his answers are vague, off-topic and largely nonsensical. David claims it is difficult for someone to make a self-evaluation, and Michael eventually leaves the meeting in a very pleasant mood.
Meanwhile, Dwight waits in the parking lot, but Andy has not shown up on time. Dwight finds a note hanging in the bushes claiming Andy has given up. However, as Dwight reads it, Andy sneaks up behind him in his Toyota Prius, a hybrid car that remains completely silent when driven below five miles per hour due to the electric motor. Unable to hear him, Dwight gets pinned between the car and the large bushes in the parking lot. The two angrily bicker back and forth about Angela, and Dwight mocks Andy as a pathetic cuckold. However, Dwight becomes upset when he learns Andy has had sex with Angela twice, because he believes the two had never had sex. Crestfallen, Dwight and Andy both return to the office, where Andy calls to cancel his wedding cake, and Dwight throws away a bobblehead doll Angela previously bought him as a gift. A saddened Angela realizes she has lost both men.
Read more about this topic: The Duel (The Office)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)