Reception
"Valentine's Day" originally aired on NBC in the United States on February 9, 2006. The episode was viewed by 8.95 million viewers. This marked a dramatic improvement from the previous episode "Boys and Girls", which was viewed by only 5.42 viewers.
"Valentine's Day" received mostly positive reviews. Michael Sciannamea of TV Squad wrote that "The Office continues to deliver outstanding episodes week after week." Sciannamea went on to say that the episode was "one of their best" and that it left him "wanting more". "M. Giant" of Television Without Pity graded the episode with a "A". Brendan Babish of DVD Verdict was pleased with the entry and awarded it an "A–". He named the highlight of the episode "Michael's overwrought 'The Faces of Scranton' presentation played over U2's 'With or Without You.'" Betsy Bozdech of DVD Journal called the episode "memorable" and noted that it illustrated Pam and Jim's relationship ebb and flow. Francis RizzoIII of DVD Talk declared that Ryan's statement about beginning to date Kelly before Valentine's Day was "one of the funniest lines in the entire season."
After the episode, fans wanted their own bobblehead dolls of Dwight. A petition was started to get NBC to sell them at their online store. NBC responded by creating an initial run of 4,000 bobblehead dolls, which sold out almost immediately. The network decided to make more, and since then, the bobblehead has become the best-selling merchandise on the NBC website, and has sold over 150,000 units.
Read more about this topic: Valentine's Day (The Office)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)