Beach Games
One of Helms' scenes involved him being trapped on a lake in a sumo wrestling outfit, forcing him to wear a harness and be pulled by a boat crewed by a member of the production team.
An estimated 7.2 million viewers watched "Beach Games" on its first American broadcast on May 10, 2007, resulting in the episode placing fourth for the night in its timeslot.
When Michael Scott is invited by CFO David Wallace to interview for a position at Dunder Mifflin corporate headquarters in New York City, he assumes he will get the job.
Michael selects the "tribe" captains (Jim Halpert, Dwight Schrute, Andy Bernard and Stanley Hudson) and instructs Pam Beesly to take detailed notes on the events, which include egg and spoon races and hot dog eating contests.
To support her secret lover Dwight, Angela Martin sabotages Andy, leaving him adrift in the lake in an inflatable sumo wrestling costume.
Feeling a new sense of confidence because of the experience, she interrupts the Tribal Council to berate her colleagues for treating her poorly, citing the fact that almost no one attended her art show.
"Beach Games" was written by co-executive producer Jennifer Celotta and series creator Greg Daniels, and was directed by Harold Ramis,[2] whose credits include the episodes "A Benihana Christmas" and "Safety Training".
"[2] Eventually, much of the episode was filmed at a fake beach at the reservoir of Hansen Dam,[4] where it was "a thousand degrees during the day and minus 40 at night," Celotta remarked in the DVD audio commentary.
[4] The cast members spit out the hot dogs into a shared bucket between takes, an act that sometimes activated Ed Helms' gag reflex.
[2] To create a safe enough fire pit to allow the actors to walk on it, the crew used a "light box buried in the ground with orange and yellow gels on it, and lava rocks on top," according to Ramis.
Many of the scenes and lines of dialogue were improvised, such as Andy throwing a rock at a duck and Jim guiding an unsuspecting Karen into the water.
Notable cut scenes included Jim receiving a call informing him of the job opening, Michael annoying Pam by telling her to grill the hot dogs faster, Dwight sumo wrestling with Stanley, Ryan asking to participate in the fire walk, and Andy failing to flag down a passing car.
[11] Entertainment Weekly columnist Abby West considered Pam's speech to be "a terrific payoff for those of us invested (some might say too much) in the Jim-Pam-Karen love triangle."
West also praised other aspects of the episode, such as the fire walk and the sequences with Stanley; to her, "everyone brought his or her A game (in hilarity, if not in effort) to the race to succeed Michael.
Fickett concluded that "while this episode's closing scene doesn't have the impact of Jim telling Pam he was in love with her at the end of Season 2, it is one of those long awaited moments that we knew was coming.
He wrote, "I thought that it was a bit more low key than some of the previous episodes (hilarious sumo outfits not withstanding) and that suited me just fine.
