The Injury - Reception

Reception

"The Injury" originally aired on NBC in the United States on November 22, 2005. The episode received a 5.1 rating/12% share among adults between the ages of 18 and 49. This means that it was seen by 5.1% of all 18- to 49-year-olds, and 12% of all 18- to 49-year-olds watching television at the time of the broadcast. The episode ranked as the third half-hour comedy during the week of January 16, and the series ranked as the number fifteenth highest-rated series out of 113 others, in the 18–49 demographic. The episode was viewed by 10.3 million viewers, making it the highest rated episode of The Office at the time, beating the series' pilot, which received a Nielsen rating of only 5.0.

An encore presentation of the episode, on July 5, 2006, received a 1.8/6 rating and was viewed by over 3.9 million viewers: an increase by 29 percent of its lead-in audience. Another encore presentation on August 22, 2006 received a 2.0/6 rating, was viewed by 5.3 million viewers, retained 100 percent of its lead-in "My Name is Earl" audience, and ranked as the most-watched episode of The Office during the summer of 2006.

Since its airing, "The Injury" has received largely positive reviews from television critics. The scene featuring Dwight crashing his car received specific attention. IGN ranked the scene with Dwight getting in a car accident as its seventh best moment in the first two seasons, noting that "he fact that this show can get such inspired and unusual comedy from what is essentially a puke joke is a testament to how clever The Office is." Rolling Stone named the same scene as the twentieth funniest in The Office's first three seasons. TV Squad's Michael Sciannamea said that "The Injury" was "another solid episode" and that the "show gets better with each and every week." M. Giant of Television Without Pity graded the episode with an "A–". Francis Rizzo III from DVD Talk wrote positively of the episode and praised the performance of Rainn Wilson as Dwight and wrote that "nothing he does compares" to his performance in "The Injury". He called Wilson's performance as Dwight "flat-out strange " and noted that the episode, along with several others, "wouldn't be nearly as entertaining" without his character. Mindy Kaling later stated in an interview that it was her favorite episode of the show that she had written. She later expanded that the entry's "full-on loopy" quality made it humorous. She noted that the episode was "so funny to me, because what happened to is so stupid."