Michael presents the first Dundie to "someone who quietly goes about their job, but always seems to land the biggest accounts...the ‘Busiest Beaver' award goes to...Phyllis Lapin!" Phyllis gives Jim a totally cute high five on the way down to the dancefloor and Michael congratulates her warmly ("Nice work, per usual!") before she notices a typo on the trophy: "This says Bushiest Beaver." Why this still makes me laugh I do not know; perhaps it's the look Jim gives the camera. Michael spits a couple of nails and Phyllis sweetly tries to pass it off, but Michael wants us to see the best in ourselves, and "Bushiest Beaver" isn't cutting it: "We'll fix it up. You don't have to display that." Heh.

Parking lot, mid-distance, angry Pam and oblivious Roy, mid-fight. Roy can't understand what the problem is, somehow both with the whole "Longest Engagement" thing and but also with them leaving right now for Poor Richard's. She finally flounces out of Roy's grasp and tells him to leave, with some vaguely trashy sentiment along the lines of "...If you'd asked me that, then you would know!" It's one of those engaged-couple fights where it's about two things on the surface and six things underneath, and like, again: I cannot respect Pam, in this situation, any more than I can respect Jim in his. What the fuck are you so afraid of, as the saying goes, that Roy is the better choice? It's quite romantic and very endearing, but they both kind of...deserve what they get. Which situation admittedly gives me the vapors, but at the same time it's like: Roy? Really? Is your intention to hate yourself with such intensity that I cannot help but go along with it? And more importantly, why are you with Roy at this second, when Jim is inside? Come down from your fences, Desperada. We've all got an expiration date.

Or maybe, and this is interesting, maybe the situation -- between the three of them, which Pam has constructed for herself -- only works out in Pam's favor if all three of them are present. If Michael makes the engagement joke and Jim's gone, who's she going to get the sympathetic glance from? And if Michael makes the joke and Pam's gone, she won't get to see the pain on Jim's face. But if Michael makes the joke and Roy's gone, well, she can't look at Jim, because that's weird, so she's all alone -- and that can't happen. So no matter how much she hates the joke, she can't let Roy leave, even though he loves the joke. So basically, she has to keep both herself and Roy at the Dundies for full Jim/Pam angst to ensue. Which is exactly what she wants.