Sex Ed (The Office)

The episode features the return of several recurring characters, most notably Melora Hardin as Jan Levinson, Linda Purl as Helene Beesly, and Nancy Carell as Carol Stills.

The series—presented as if it were a real documentary—depicts the everyday lives of office employees in the Scranton, Pennsylvania, branch of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company.

In the episode, Michael Scott (Steve Carell) comes to work thinking he has a pimple, but it turns out to actually be a cold sore.

Along with several actresses reprising their characters, "Sex Ed" also saw the introduction of warehouse worker Nate Nickerson, played by Mark Proksch; he would go on to recur for the remainder of the series.

The episode was also the highest-ranked NBC series of the night, but it received mixed reviews from critics, many of whom felt that Michael was characterized as too stupid and that Andy's subplot was not compelling.

Michael and Dwight drive out to tell Carol Stills, Jan Levinson, and Pam's mother, Helene Beesly.

He meets with Helene, Pam's mother, who is playing with Cece at a playground; after an awkward conversation in which she also points out his skewed memory, he insults her and walks off.

During the lesson, he disturbs the office with pictures of genitalia, cannot come up with any negatives to sex besides STD's, and attempts to use a pencil for a condom demonstration.

Distraught after realizing that they are having sex and after everyone mocks him, Andy throws a tantrum, hurling a box of pizza at the wall and storming out of the conference room.

"Sex Ed" was written and directed by showrunner and executive producer Paul Lieberstein, who also plays Toby Flenderson on the show.

[9][10][11] "Sex Ed" is the first episode to feature Dwight's assistant Nate, played by YouTube star Mark Proksch.

The cut scenes include Dwight looking up how herpes is spread, Dwight discussing how Holly brings out "a child-like wonder in Michael", Michael contacting the French-Canadian concierge he had a brief relationship with in the fifth-season episode "Business Trip", and more cut scenes from Andy's sex ed discussion.

[18] In its original American broadcast it was viewed by an estimated 7.36 million viewers and received a 3.8 rating/10 percent share among adults between the ages of 18 and 49.

However, McNutt panned the episode's secondary story focusing on Andy, noting that it "lazily tapped into the series' basic structure".