Aren't office Christmas parties usually the same? You start off not wanting to go, wind up having some fun, and end up staying way too long?

I was hoping that the Christmas episode ("A Benihana Christmas") of The Office, written by Jen Celotta and directed by Harold Ramis, wouldn't feel that way, but I did feel that it dragged on a little too long and would have been a lot better (not to mention tighter) at a super-sized 40-minute length than the one-hour episode it was stretched into. I'm not sure why the network decided to increase the length of the episode the way it did, but I wish they hadn't been quite so overzealous, because a compacted version of "A Benihana Christmas" may have become one of my favorite episodes.

Which isn't to say that I didn't have fun, because I did. There's a lot going on here and the central storylines were hilarious and managed to come together in expected ways. Brief recap: Michael gets dumped by girlfriend Carol (Carell's real wife Nancy Walls) right before Christmas and slumps into a depression, which is alleviated when Andy, Jim, and Dwight take him for a long working lunch at Benihana (sadly no Buddha drinks to echo the scene between Carell and Catherine Keener in The 40-Year-Old Virgin). Meanwhile, back at the Dunder-Mifflin offices, a clash between Angela and Karen at the party planning committee leads to not one, but two office Christmas parties.

I think that the idea behind the episode was comedy gold. Angela angry is always a treat. (Remember last year when she destroyed a box of ornaments after Yankee Swap went awry?) I loved the new relationship between Pam and Karen, suddenly partners-in-crime united for the newly formed Committee to Plan Parties, who decide to throw a margarita and karaoke party, in sharp contrast to the solemn Nutcracker-themed affair that Angela is hosting. Seeing just that little bit of prickliness from Jim when he notices his current girlfriend and his former flame suddenly bonding was perfect; you'd be uncomfortable too. I nearly cried when Pam tried giving Jim his Christmas present (fake letters from the CIA that she had been sending Dwight; Jim's present was to choose the mission he'd like them to send Dwight on) and he gave them back to her, saying that he didn't think he should do stuff like that anymore. His rationale was that he was back at Scranton for a clean start and falling into old ways meant falling into old pitfalls too. While he may have been talking about pranking Dwight, he was really (sniffle) talking about his friendship with Pam.

Other highlights: the scene in Benihana, which could have SCREAMED product placement, went off without a hitch, providing a funny and random backdrop to the male bonding (and alienation in the form of Dwight) that was going on; Carol's split with Michael, precipitated by a Christmas card he sent out in which he had Photoshopped himself into a pic of Carol and her kids on a ski trip; Oscar's cameo ("It's still too soon," he mutters to his boyfriend); Kelly singing karaoke about and to Ryan; a spiffy-looking Roy giving Pam a Christmas present after seeking her advice on how to wrap presents. Michael doing something terribly, terribly racist and marking his Japanese date so he could tell her and her friend apart, as all "waitresses look alike." And how could you not love Jim's spontaneous creation of a committee to determine the validity of the committee to plan parties', er, party?

What didn't work so much? The cold opening with the dead goose, for a start. It went on way too long and was too complicated. It just didn't ring true at all with the rest of the show. While Dwight might be an eccentric (a creepy one at times), I can't honestly believe he would slaughter a goose in the office. Think about health and safety, for one. (I know Dwight would.)

Also, did anyone else actually immediately notice that the girls that Michael and Andy brought back from Benihana were not their waitress Cindy (Brittany Ishibashi) and her friend but two different girls altogether? I think the joke was supposed to hit when they walked through the door to the office, but I had to rewind TiVo as I suddenly thought to myself, wait, that's not Cindy. I think that we're supposed to believe that Michael couldn't pull Cindy and so went off with a different waitress, but it would have been far funnier if the girl Michael brought to the party had been a lot less attractive than she was. Instead, it just seemed odd and deadened the flow of the previous scene.

But all in all, I'd rather spend a winter's night with the gang from Dunder-Mifflin than anyone else. "A Benihana Christmas" had its hysterical moments and its emotional ones (I'm getting all misty-eyed thinking about Jim changing his mind about Pam's gift), along with a surprise ending in which Michael calls ... someone and invites them to share the all-inclusive trip to Sandals Jamaica that he arranged for now ex-girlfriend Carol.

Hmmm. I wonder who this mystery woman could be. We'll find out in "The Return," scheduled to air right after New Year's, which sees not only prodigal employee Oscar return to Dunder-Mifflin, but a newly tanned Michael as well. Happy holidays, Office workers, and see you in January.

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Jace is an LA-based television development and acquisitions junior exec who watches way too much television for his own good and would love a TiVo for every room in the house. (He’s halfway there.) His blog, Televisionary, can be found at televisionary.blogspot.com.

Televisionary has been named a finalist for Best Culture Blog in the 2006 Weblog Awards.