Back from Vacation

The series depicts the everyday lives of office employees in the Scranton, Pennsylvania, branch of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company.

In this episode, Michael Scott (Steve Carell) returns from his vacation in Jamaica and has a luau in the warehouse to celebrate.

Pam tells the documentary crew that she was glad to help Jim, but is then shown later to be crying in private, secretly in love with him and heartbroken over the fact that he is with Karen instead.

Michael is terrified that Jan is there to confront him over the widely spread photo, but she appears to be unaware of it, instead confessing her attraction to him against all reason and kissing him.

[5] Spitzer found Jan's final scene with Michael – in which he expects she will yell at him for their circulated picture but instead informs him they are staying together – especially tricky to write.

Sitting on a panel of television writers at Northwestern University, Spitzer briefly described her reasoning, "Jan’s nuts.

[7] Recurring actors Creed Bratton, Ed Helms, Rashida Jones, Craig Robinson, and David Koechner appeared as guest stars in "Back from Vacation".

The season three DVD contains a number of deleted scenes, such as Michael arriving from Jamaica at the airport, wearing warm-weather clothes, Dwight, Meredith, Angela and Kevin separately reacting to the news that Michael took Jan to Jamaica, and Jan maintaining the ruse that she was in Scottsdale while talking to a coworker at Corporate, who is viewing the photo on his computer.

Stated highlights included the opening sequence, Carell's performance, and Pam's storyline with Jim and Karen.

Zoromski concluded in his review that "with so much attention to detail, realistic character reactions, and very few completely over-the-top comedy moments, 'Back from Vacation' is one of the best Office episodes yet this season.

"[13] BuddyTV's Oscar Dahl believed that "Back from Vacation" was "one of the two or three best of the season", opining that "simplicity" was the key to the series' success.

We also had some nice development in the Jim-Pam-Karen triangle, with Pam giving Jim relationship advice, then bawling her eyes out afterwards.