Plot
Michael (Steve Carell) is depressed because it is the first Valentine's Day since he and Holly broke up. Michael donates blood at a mobile blood drive being held in the business park's parking lot and has a nice conversation with a female donor (Kathryn Aselton) sitting next to him. When they both finish at the same time, Michael passes out because he did not eat much before giving blood, and when he wakes up she is gone. A disappointed Michael finds a glove he assumes she left behind and takes it, hoping she will come back for it. When Michael goes back into the office, he decides to gather all the single employees into the conference room to discuss their own personal romantic dilemmas. After becoming further depressed by their sad dating stories, Michael decides to try lifting their spirits by holding a singles mixer. He puts up flyers which also advertise the finding of a missing glove, and Michael hopes his mystery woman will come to the party as a result.
When Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam (Jenna Fischer) are threatened with banishment by Michael after they constantly gaze happily on each other, Phyllis (Phyllis Smith) invites them to have lunch with her and her husband Bob Vance (Robert R. Shafer). Their meal initially goes well, but Phyllis and Bob disappear for a while after their food arrives. Hungry and not wanting to be rude by eating before they get back, Jim and Pam check the bathrooms and hear Phyllis and Bob having sex in the disabled bathroom. Phyllis and Bob finally come back to their table and Jim and Pam lose their appetites and look on in disgust as Phyllis and Bob seductively put food in each other's mouths.
Back at the office, a few outsiders attend Michael's party. One of the attendees (Tate Hanyok) strikes up a conversation with Dwight (Rainn Wilson), who tries to sell her paper; Dwight becomes angry when she tells him she already has a paper supplier. Another attendee named Lynne (Lisa K. Wyatt) converses with Kevin (Brian Baumgartner), who is still somewhat depressed over his breakup with his fiancée Stacy and walks away when he admits it was she who broke it off. Kevin returns later to apologize to Lynne and admits he gets nervous talking to pretty girls; Lynne is flattered and gives Kevin her e-mail address. Afterwards, Michael is disappointed the woman who lost her glove does not show up and tells the employees they can go home early, but the empathetic staff decide to stay and later encourage Michael to leave with them.
The episode ends when Stanley (Leslie David Baker) attempts to get a cookie from a blood drive nurse at the drive by claiming he gave blood earlier and showing a cotton ball taped to his arm as proof. The nurse recognizes he is lying because they are using band-aids; a frustrated Stanley leaves, and tells Phyllis, who is about to try the same trick. In the final scene, Creed (Creed Bratton) is seen leaving the blood mobile with a bag of donated blood in his coat pocket.
Read more about this topic: Blood Drive (The Office)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“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)
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no ones actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)