The Office (UK) "Episode 2" (2002)

David is hitting an all time low as he continually crashes and burns with the Swindon imports while Neil wins over the Slough residents. You want to feel bad for David but he tries just a little too hard to show he's better and funnier than Neil who is already much loved by his former employees. He then gets angry and nasty when the Swindon employees don't fall in love with him right away. Even after Neil puts him in his place after David calls him out in front of the staff, rather than being the wake-up call he sorely needed, he tries to turn the Slough employees against Neil by saying that he was trash talking about them. I see some serious disaster looming on the horizon for David as he continues to alienate his new boss along with his new and current staff. The Swindon employees are already griping that the Slough employees don't seem to do much and that David leaves much to be desired as a manager and with the way David keeps aggravating them, it won't be too long before one of them has a disparaging word with Neil. I worry for Mr. David Brent but I'm sorry to say he's making his own bed and he will deserve to sleep in it when the time comes.

On a much more hopeful front, Tim and Dawn have seemed to patch things up and even Lee makes peace with Tim for his out of line behavior in the previous episode. It's good to see that Tim is no longer trying to push Dawn away but now in a reversal of last season's dynamic it is Dawn who is pining after Tim. Obviously this was coming as Tim is taking a more active interest in Rachel and she seems to be welcoming his advances with earnest. It's not a surprise as a fan of the American series, who has unfortunately seen that first, that Dawn also has some feelings for Tim, but here it's finally confirmed as it was only hinted at in the first season and not as blatant as Tim's feelings became as the season passed. Here she is certainly jealous of Tim and Rachel's flirtatious behavior and can't even find a way of joking about it with Tim. There is obvious tension in the room when Rachel comes in to invite Tim out for drinks after work with some friends. Tim is initially hesitant to accept with Dawn in the room but he doesn't back down and agrees to go out with her much to Dawn's disappointment.

Dawn isn't the only one not too happy with Tim and Rachel's new relationship as Gareth has also hoped to get together with her. Despite his talking head where he assures us that Tim stands no chance after already making a fool of himself in front of the entire office by asking Dawn out, his attempt to win her over is cut short by her revelation she will be dating Tim. It's interesting because he was able to get the very attractive girl in the season finale but we didn't witness exactly how he went about doing it. But in the last two episodes we have seen he has no idea how to talk with women, particularly ones he is interested in. He even considers breaking his no sloppy seconds rule when Rachel jokes she might want some more with him even if she goes all the way with Tim. Gareth and David both have their socially awkward tendencies but where as David is so pushy as to be pretty unsympathetic, Gareth is at least someone you feel sorry for every so often as you can see the pain when he is rejected whereas David shows some emotion and then acts worse than he did before.

Favorite moment: Keith's (Ewan Macintosh) appraisal where he continues to show a hilarious lack of interest in his job which was first discussed in "Training". He doesn't even bother to fill out the entire application and forces David to repeat the same choices for the multiple choice questions over and over again. His preferred answer being "Don't Know" when it comes to describing the skills attained necessary to do his job. Keith represents the dream for office workers the world over for publicly displaying their general disdain and absolute boredom with their positions with no worry of any recriminations whatsoever. He's generally been a background character but I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for him more often from this point forward.