The Office 5x04 Baby Shower continues to reclaim the spirit of the first two seasons with a surprisingly deeply felt episode which despite outwardly focusing on the return appearance of a still deranged Jan, itself an artifact of the far weaker last two seasons, does a good job of moving the journey of the characters along.

Still despite Jan’s antics, The Office 5x04 Baby Shower is really more of a throwback to classics that form the best of The Office such as a Benihana Christmas. It’s not the great episode ever or even the season but it redeems itself by going back to a version of Michael who is actually learning something, instead of reverting to a Homer Simpson clown who does insane things because that’s the only way the show knows how to get laughs anymore. And in that way the US version of The Office stays at least somewhat marginally true to the UK version of The Office.

While initially The Office 5x04 Baby Shower appears to be replaying the same old gag of Michael behaving insanely, which is certainly the impression to be derived from an opening that has Dwight recreating the hypothetical birth of Jan’s baby, only to then go over the top in planning the party, but this isn’t Michael deploying an entire carnival outside or having a pointless race or trotting out some stereotype to make fun of in a practiced skit, it’s Michael trying to get what he wants out of life and realizing that the way he’s gone about getting it is all wrong. It’s the impulse that in Benihana Christmas pushed him to go on vacation with Jan and while that relationship crashed and burned horribly, it’s what pushes him to realize that he’s smashing his head against the wall of a dead end and leads him to kiss Holly instead.