Current Events > Those bizarre rare moments where Michael Scott is smart. The Office Spoilers

(+) Yeah! (+)

When he tells Ryan a manager doesn't fire people, he inspires people. People Ryan. That was weirdly poetic of him from the idiot who didn't know how to say most words

Or when he's negotiating with David Wallace during the Michael Scott Paper Company saga and he says I don't need to wait out Dunder Mifflin I just need to wait out you.

It just doesn't fit into everything we see in every other episode over how dumb Michael Scott is

The Chilis episode where he acts like a clown through the whole meeting but then its revealed that he was getting the client to lower his guard and then he lands the sale

It doesn't happen very often, but the show is pretty consistent in portraying that he was an incredible salesman that fell into a manager position that he was neither qualified or really capable of filling. It's why all of his shining moments are when he goes into negotiation mode.

BlueBoy675 posted...

The Chilis episode where he acts like a clown through the whole meeting but then its revealed that he was getting the client to lower his guard and then he lands the sale

Yeah this is the one people always bring up

BlueBoy675 posted...

The Chilis episode where he acts like a clown through the whole meeting but then its revealed that he was getting the client to lower his guard and then he lands the sale

To be fair, they've always shown/referenced the fact that Michael is/was excellent at sales.

Being the boss wasn't his forte, but he was a very good salesman before he got promoted out of that position.

BlueBoy675 posted...

The Chilis episode where he acts like a clown through the whole meeting but then its revealed that he was getting the client to lower his guard and then he lands the sale

Yeah that one was great. Not only did it show Michael's brilliance in sales and being likable for people (when he's usually not likable at all to any of the staff or guest stars) but it also showed Dunder Mifflin's management incompetence by comparison

Yes. The only moment (or rare moments) in the show where Michael shows competency as a manager is when he teaches Ryan the lesson about inspiring your workers to be better.

other than that, michael was always an incredible negotiator and people person when it came down to sales.

he just could never share that gift with his staff. He always wanted to be a friend, not a boss. Although the people he had at the office were more than qualified for their jobs.

oscar was very intelligent and a great accountant, Angela was always pretty much on the ball. Jim was a great salesman as was Dwight. Stanley and Phyllis also carved out their own niche as successful sales people.

creed was the wild card.

You have no idea how high I can fly

It's pretty well established that he's a brilliant salesman.

The one place in the show where I can't tell if Michael is being smart or dumb is the episode where he goes in front of all the stockholders who are angry over shares sliding in value and promises them that he would be back with a plan.

It's obvious from that episode that the actual senior leadership doesn't have a plan, nor do they even want to put in the work to try to come up with a plan, and they get super pissed at him for making that promise.

So like, on the one side it seems like legitimately good leadership to say that you're going to buckle down and come up with a concrete series of steps you're going to take to try and resolve the issue, but on the other end you probably don't make a promise like that on the fly in front of an audience like that. I just can't tell whether he made that promise because the audience was angry at him and his top priority is to be friends with everyone, or if he made that promise because he realized action wasn't being taken and took the initiative.

Kevin is secretly a genius

DD_Divine posted...

Kevin is secretly a genius

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/2/0/AABJX0AADv0w.jpg

I always loved the subtle, ominous queues that Jim was more like Michael than he wanted to admit, especially with the birthday cakes.

Yeah, because we really are The Office

JACKBUTTMOMMY posted...

When he gave away the Golden ticket. No, really. It worked out in the end. Just not exactly in his favor.

Immediately after this episode is when David Wallace brings in Charles Miner to babsit Michael. I wonder if they're related/he'd had enough from Michael

s0nicfan posted...

The one place in the show where I can't tell if Michael is being smart or dumb is the episode where he goes in front of all the stockholders who are angry over shares sliding in value and promises them that he would be back with a plan.

IIRC, it's being dumb, but in that instance it's out of naivety and a good heart. He believed in Dunder Mifflin as a company, so he really thought the executives were going to come up with a solution.

There's also a fan theory that Michael is better at his job than he appears, he's just playing up for the camera.

pegusus123456 posted...

IIRC, it's being dumb, but in that instance it's out of naivety and a good heart. He believed in Dunder Mifflin as a company, so he really thought the executives were going to come up with a solution.

There's also a fan theory that Michael is better at his job than he appears, he's just playing up for the camera.

Good heart? Michael apologists are the worst lol. He did what he did, hell he does what he does because he likes to hear praise without any of the work, and he would happily steal credit for others' achievements in order to hear praise and adoration be showered unto him

Hell he flat out admits it to Dwight when teaching him how to "deliver news"

saspa posted...

Good heart? Michael apologists are the worst lol.

I'm not a Michael apologist, I do think he's generally kind of an asshole, but from what I remember in that instance, he was just as surprised that the executives weren't going to bother trying to fix the situation. So in the specific instance where it's him versus a bunch of corporate parasites, he is the good guy.

I just have first hand experience with people promising something on someone else's expense eg my expense, which is what michael was doing and is a real dick move. I think he's worse than those parasitic corporate execs because of it

saspa posted...

Or when he's negotiating with David Wallace during the Michael Scott Paper Company saga and he says I don't need to wait out Dunder Mifflin I just need to wait out you.

"I don't think I need to wait out Dunder Mifflin. I think I just need to wait out you."

fucking master

Doom_Art posted...

"I don't think I need to wait out Dunder Mifflin. I think I just need to wait out you."

fucking master

You're gonna have to explain why your most profitable branch.. is bleeding.

the writers sprinkled in moments where he's competent and made him an excellent sales person to counteract his sheer unlikability. they needed him to have some kind of redeeming factors or else everyone was gonna hate him and the show wouldn't have lasted very long

UnfairRepresent posted...

Yeah this is the one people always bring up

Yeah, that's when Jan decided she wanted to consume him

Pam's art show when he compliments her terrible painting. It wasn't overt, and was sort of a backwards-clumsy wisdom thing, but he knew exactly what to say to cheer her up

When he chews out Stanley for insubordination, saying he can't do that because it undermines his authority, even though Michael was being a clown. This is painfully real in the IRL working world.

May your hats fly as high as your dreams

_____Cait posted...

I always loved the subtle, ominous queues that Jim was more like Michael than he wanted to admit, especially with the birthday cakes.

I don't remember this, what happened with the birthday cakes?

Giblet_Enjoyer posted...

I don't remember this, what happened with the birthday cakes?

Jim tried to combine all the birthday parties into one group birthday, and then everybody wants a different cake

He was good at ice skating and possibly hockey in his birthday episode

MICHALECOLE posted...

Jim tried to combine all the birthday parties into one group birthday, and then everybody wants a different cake

I didn't see that as a hint that Jim was like Michael. I saw it more as like Jim thought managing people was easy and Michael was just that dumb, and the moment he got put in a real conflict with the people who reported to him he realized it was actually just easy to piss everyone off and that the hard part was actually making everybody happy enough.

I took it as a Jim was like Michael thing. Just like when Jim did the awkward rewind thing during the raises

_____Cait posted...

I always loved the subtle, ominous queues that Jim was more like Michael than he wanted to admit, especially with the birthday cakes.

In this case you use "cue."

You cue an actor, you wait in a queue.

Similar to how moments of Michael's brilliance are sprinkled throughout the series, Jim's moments of inexperience (and maybe outright stupidity) are sprinkled throughout the series. They're few and far between, but it does happen.

Him combining the birthdays is a rookie mistake, but his little rewind thing shows how he also has a need to be liked. Not as badly as Michael does, but who knows maybe that's only because Jim is so effortlessly charming and it comes easy to him that when he does hit a snag, he doesn't know how to handle it. Charles Miner being the biggest example

Kind of an oaky afterbirth

Jim's big flaw isn't so much that he needs to be liked, it's that he has a crippling fear of confrontation.

pegusus123456 posted...

Jim's big flaw isn't so much that he needs to be liked, it's that he has a crippling fear of confrontation.

That's true, he also somewhat displays traits of passive-aggressiveness sometimes

I do like that in one of the extended scenes currently airing on peacock, Jim actually has a yelling match with Roy about Pam's future. They cut that out of the aired episode but it was the first time they really came to blows about Pam