photo: nbc
Garage Sale
Original Air Date: Mar 24, 2011
Shannon – Associate Editor
shannon@thetwocentscorp.com
The office is having a first annual garage sale in the warehouse. Oscar has a table of Will and Grace DVDs. Ryan is selling jars of his mother’s pesto with Phyllis’ face on the label.
Dwight wants to swap to end up with the best item. He starts with Meredith and trades her a thumbtack for a used candle. Dwight works on Kelly and trades the used candle for a bunch of Kelly’s junk. Jim has a packet of magic beans and gives Dwight a story about buying them in Jamaica. Dwight isn’t buying it but seems intrigued.
Dwight has exchanged a bunch of stuff for a stuffed squid of Erin’s. Jim and Dwight talk about the beans again and Jim throws them away. It only intrigues Dwight more. The packet shows up again uncrumpled. Jim talks Dwight into trading a telescope for the packet of beans.
Michael calls Holly’s dad to get his blessing to ask Holly to marry him. He left a message by the way. Michael is writing his proposal in gasoline in the parking lot right up next to the cars. Pam manages to stop him. Michael has no idea why this is a bad idea. Pam gets Jim, Ryan, and Oscar into the conference room to suggest to Michael appropriate ways to propose. Also, Michael spent 3 years salary on the ring. It’s enormous. Michael wants this proposal to be an event. This includes, in Michael’s mind, dropping a corpse off the roof.
Holly calls her parents (she figured out that Michael called her father to ask his blessing) and her dad seems in the first stages of dementia and thinks she needs to go home to Colorado. She discusses it with Michael in the breakroom and asks him to go with her and also attempts a proposal to Michael when he tells her to “shut it”. Later, Holly and Michael go for a walk. He takes her to the coffee shop (his favorite place because that’s where Toby announced his trip to Costa Rica), he takes her to the stairwell, and the rest of the office places where they have memories together. He walks her to the break room where all the staff is lined up holding candles. A few of the staff asks Holly to marry them and she declines of course. They walk through to the annex where it’s covered in white candles. I’m surprised the sprinklers aren’t going off. Michael proposes by Holly’s desk. He starts in and the sprinklers go off. Michael asks her to marry him in a Yoda voice and of course Holly accepts in her Yoda voice and everyone rushes in. It’s incredibly sweet. Then Michael announces that he and Holly are moving to Colorado. The group is stunned.
The end cap has Dwight planting the “magic” beans and walking away. Jim wheels a cart in with some two feet tall bean plants. He even does a little heel kick and it’s adorable.
You know, for as often as this show disappoints me, they sure do sentiment well, don’t they? This was an amazing episode. The proposal was completely perfect and almost overshadowed the Jim/Pam proposal for me. It was just so beautiful and sincere and real.
So this is how we lose Michael. Going to Colorado with Holly. I don’t know if I’d want him to leave any other way. What do you think? Were you happy with the way things played out? Looking forward to Will Ferrell next week? Leave your two cents in the comments!
TheTwoCents 
I thought the episode was really lame in the warehouse, but then it got going!
The ending was perfect. Those of us that really are huge fans couldn’t help but get a little choked up. We care about these characters.
When the water works went off – it was like DunderMifflin crying for Michael. No one loves that office the way he does, but it shows how much more he really loves Holly.
AMAZING episode.
Yeah, I thought the beginning was a little weak, but I knew things were going to pick up later because I’d seen preview commercials.
I guess I didn’t think about the sprinklers crying for Michael, but that’s a great metaphor. For me, the sprinklers going off just made it more real. If they hadn’t it would have lost something for me because of the sheer number of candles would have made it impossible. It’s just one of the things that makes this less a cookie cutter sitcom and more of a faux documentary and why I love the show in the first place.
LOVED it. When the water went off, I thought “How very Office.” I also thought what a great story Michael & Holly will have when someone asks how he proposed. Perfect.
Gotta say-I got choked up myself. The ending was perfection! And their reaction when Michael said he was leaving left me wanting more!