The Duel (The Office)

The episode was written by Jennifer Celotta and directed by Dean Holland, the show's long-time editor making his directorial debut.

During its original American broadcast, it received particularly strong competition from the CBS drama series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which that night featured the final appearance of actor William Petersen.

Andy Bernard still has not learned about his fiancee Angela Martin's affair with Dwight Schrute, seventeen days after Phyllis Vance revealed it to everyone else in the Dunder Mifflin office.

As Dwight reads it, Andy sneaks up behind him in his Toyota Prius, a hybrid car that remains completely silent when driven below five miles per hour due to the electric motor.

[2] The episode featured the conclusion of the love triangle between Dwight, Andy and Angela, a subplot that had been going on since the fourth season finale, "Goodbye, Toby".

[5][6] This set the stage for a continuing motif of financial difficulties for Dunder Mifflin, which would eventually culminate in the sixth season episode "Secret Santa", in which it is revealed the company has been sold and its executives all fired.

It was writer Paul Lieberstein, who served as show runner along with Celotta at the time, who suggested the idea of Andy sneaking up on Dwight with his Toyota Prius.

However, the staging proved awkward during filming, so John Krasinski suggested that only Jim go down to the parking lot while the others stayed behind, and the change was eventually incorporated into the episode.

[3] Despite the extremely hot temperatures, fake snow was placed in the exterior shots because the writers were trying to simulate the winter season weather of Scranton, Pennsylvania, where The Office is set, rather than the Van Nuys district in Los Angeles, California, where the show was filmed.

[3] During a scene when Andy returns to the office and confronts his co-workers; there is a long, awkward silence, and the script originally called for Kevin to pass gas and ruin the tension.

During the editing process, Holland decided the joke did not work very well and cut it, but a brief moment of Dwight reacting in a disgusted way to the flatulence, while maintaining a defensive fighting pose toward Andy, can still be seen in the finished episode.

Natural lighting from the sun changed so drastically over that time, large bounce cards had to be placed above the hedges so the shadows would remain consistent throughout the shoot.

[3] During the cold open, after Michael believes he has run extremely fast, he says, "Eat that, Carl Lewis", a reference to the American track and field athlete and gold medalist.

It aired the same night as actor William Petersen's final appearance on the CBS drama series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which drew an unusually high viewership of 23.13 million viewers.

Both shows were outperformed in that age group by the ABC drama series Grey's Anatomy, which drew a 5.2 rating/13 share, and a total of 12.95 million viewers for the night.

Andy calling off the wedding after learning Angela cheated on him with Dwight ranked number 6 in phillyBurbs.com's top ten moments from the fifth season of The Office.

[14] Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger said the episode "brings the Dwight/Angela/Andy triangle to an effective close" that made him feel sympathy for both Dwight and Andy.

Club writer Scott Tobias said "The Duel" efficiently resolved a major storyline in 30 minutes, and was "a nice mix of the wacky and the melancholy, though it's perhaps a little long on the former and a little short on the latter".

[6] Entertainment Weekly writer Alynda Wheat called it an "instant classic" and a vast improvement over the most recent string of episodes.

[5] Brian Howard of The Journal News called it a "great episode", and particularly enjoyed the moments between Angela and Dwight, and the way Jim tried to prevent Michael from telling Andy about the affair.

[17] Jay Black of TV Squad said he enjoyed seeing Angela get her comeuppance, and felt he could relate to the voyeuristic interest the office co-workers took in the duel.