"Booze Cruise"
Jim waits patiently for Dwight to realize that he’s put all of his belongings in the vending machine. Pam buys Dwight’s pencil cup before he tries to find his wallet so he can buy back all of his stuff. Jim has smartly put the wallet in the vending machine, but he gives Dwight a bag of nickels and Dwight goes to town. Michael arrives at work and everyone asks them where they’re going that afternoon for their “first-quarter camaraderie event.” In an interview, Jim and Pam list everything he told them to bring (including a bathing suit, a toothbrush, rubber-soled shoes, and a ski mask). Stanley asks a tight-lipped Michael if his wife needs to tell her boss she won’t be at work the next day, since they were told to bring a toothbrush, which implies an overnight trip. Michael finally tells him that they’re going on a booze cruise on Lake Wallenpaupack, though Stanley notes that it’s January. “It’s cheaper,” Michael notes. He interviews that this is a party and a leadership training exercise, so he wants it to be great.
Michael gathers everyone in the conference room and tells everyone where they’re going. Meredith is especially happy that they’re doing a booze cruise. Ryan asks if he can skip it because he has a test for business school the next night, but Michael tells him the cruise is mandatory and he’ll learn something anyway. Kelly is upset that Michael told them to bring bathing suits because she went out and bought one. Michael introduces Brenda from corporate and tells everyone that she’s there to learn from him, as everyone else is. He interviews that he’s a great motivational speaker, having learned from a Tony Robbins course overview. In the conference room, he tells everyone that the theme for their trip is leadership, which is why they’re going on a ship. Since Michael is the boss, he’s the captain of the ship. However, because of teamwork, they’re all in the same boat. Oscar interviews that last year’s theme was “bowl over the competition,” which makes their destination pretty obvious.
Michael challenges his employees to figure out which parts of the company are other parts of the boat. Darryl suggests that the sales department is the sails, but Michael thinks it’s the furnace. (Pam thinks it might be the anchor.) Michael tries to get his point across by mentioning the movie Titanic, but Jim questions this and Pam asks if he means The Hunt for Red October. “Michael stands in the front of the boat and says he’s king of the world within the first hour, or I give you my next paycheck,” Jim tells a camera guy in an interview. Michael rethinks his sales/furnace metaphor when he realizes the warehouse guys might be more like the people who worked in the furnace. That evening, everyone heads to the cruise as Michael sings the Gilligan’s Island theme song and matches up his employees with various characters - Pam is Mary Ann, Jim is the professor, Katy is Ginger, Angela is Mrs. Howell, Kelly is a native, Stanley is a Harlem Globetrotter, Michael is the Skipper, and Dwight is Gilligan. Captain Jack, who’s in charge of the cruise, says he’s actually the Skipper, but Michael can be Gilligan.
Michael starts things off by standing at the front of the boat and announcing that he’s king of the world. Jim checks his watch and mouths to the camera, “The first hour.” Jack tries to give a safety speech to everyone, but Michael keeps interrupting. Pam, Roy, Jim, and Katy share a table and start talking about high school; Roy announces that Pam was artsy. Roy and Katy went to rival high schools and Katy starts a cheer that her squad used to do. Elsewhere, Brenda asks Michael when he’s going to start his presentation. He tries to talk to everyone about how IT support is like a life preserver on a boat, but Jack has everyone distracted with limbo. He then gives Dwight the job of “steering the ship” to get him out of the way. Michael tries to continue his presentation but winds up dancing instead. As Dwight fails to notice that someone else is actually steering the boat, Angela tries to get him to come inside but is rebuffed. Roy does a snorkel shot and tries to get Pam to join in, but she wants to hang out somewhere quieter. Instead, she goes out to the deck with Jim, where they share their now-famous 27 seconds of silence but fail to realize they’re with the wrong people.
Michael talks to Jack about another of his metaphors, but Jack is unimpressed. Michael thinks he doesn’t know anything about being a leader, but Jack was the captain of a coastal patrol boat during Desert Storm. Back at their table, Katy asks Pam how she got engaged and Pam tells her she’s been engaged for three years with no wedding date set, so Katy shouldn’t ask her advice. Jack asks Jim who he would save if his office building were on fire. Jim looks at Pam, then answers that he would save the customer. A tipsy Roy asks Jack if he ever died when he was in the Navy. Jack says he was, and he was thinking about his first wife at the time. When he got home, he proposed to her. As Roy realizes something, Jim tells the camera that he would save the receptionist. He heads back to the table, but before he can say anything to Pam, Roy grabs the microphone and tells Pam he wants to set a wedding date, suggesting June 10th. Pam and Roy celebrate and Michael asks if he influenced Roy’s decision to set a date. Roy says it was Jack, which of course disappoints Michael. Jack offers to marry Roy and Pam right then and there, but Pam wants her family there.
Later, Katy watches Roy and Pam dancing and asks Jim if he thinks that will ever be them. “No,” he replies matter-of-factly, then promptly breaks up with her. As a drunken Jack and Meredith head to a cabin, Michael gets seasick, then decides it’s time to start motivating people. He announces that the ship is sinking and there aren’t enough seats on the lifeboats, so they need to start figuring out what to save. The people there who don’t work for Dunder Mifflin start panicking and Jack returns to chaos, eventually tying Michael to the rail of the ship to keep him out of the way. Jim comes out to visit and as they talk about Roy and Pam, Jim admits that he used to have a crush on Pam. Michael replies that he made out with Jan (see “The Client”), but Jim already knew that. Michael tells him that if he likes Pam so much, he should go after her, even if she’s engaged. Uncharacteristically serious and helpful, Michael advises, “Never, ever, ever give up.”
PRANKS JIM AND PAM PLAY ON DWIGHT: Jim puts all of Dwight’s belongings in the vending machine.
MEMORABLE QUOTES: Jim: “‘So pack a swimsuit, a toothbrush, rubber-soled shoes, and a ski mask.”
“In an office, when you are ranking people, manager is higher than captain. On a boat, who knows? It’s nebulose.” - Michael
“I was the youngest pilot in Pan Am history. When I was four, the pilot let me ride in the cockpit and fly the plane with him. And I was four, and I was great! And I would have landed it, but my dad wanted us to go back to our seats.” - Dwight
“Sometimes you have to take a break from being the kind of boss that’s always trying to teach people things. Sometimes you just have to be the boss of dancing.” - Michael
Michael: “If the boat is sinking, what do you save?”
Written by Greg Daniels; directed by Ken Kwapis
Pam: “A ski mask and a swimsuit?”
Jim: “So that he can have us rob a bank, and then escape through the sewers.”
Pam: “And brush our teeth.”
Jack: “Women and children.”
Michael: “No, no. Salesmen and profit centers.”
Jack: “That’s a stupid analogy.”
Michael: “Okay, well, obviously you don’t know anything about leadership.”
Jack: “Well, I was the captain of a PC-1 Cyclone coastal patrol boat during Desert Storm.”
Dwight: “Wow, you should be the motivational speaker.”