The series depicts the everyday lives of office employees in the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company.
Kevin Malone shows a hidden talent for math now that pie is involved, able to calculate the time it would take to drive to the stand before it closes.
Jim learns that Dwight thought his magnetic power prank was real as he suspects he is infertile, which he believes explains why he was not the father of Angela Martin's baby.
Andy promises to read her application letter, but tells the camera crew he will only sign it if she admits that she is a horrible person in it.
He finally adds some mildly snarky but complimentary lines to her letter and signs onto it as a reference, leaving Nellie overjoyed.
"Work Bus" was written by executive producer Brent Forrester, marking his tenth writing credit for the series, his first since the seventh-season episode "The Search".
[7] In the second 104-second clip, the office continues their "Shabooya Roll Call", with Phylis, Oscar, Dwight (reluctantly) and Andy participating, while Angela criticizes their game.
[9] The cold opening for the episode features Andy showing the office various sports bloopers that he edited to make look funnier than they actually are, a reference to the popular "Fail" internet memes.
[10][11] Dwight notes that he is fine living in an EMF field, because most of his super-hero idols got their powers from massive amounts of electricity.
But, once pie comes into the equation, it's like Forrester and his fellow writers hit upon a magical key that unlocks the height of funniness within The Office's ensemble.
Club reviewer Erik Adams considered "Work Bus" to be the funniest episode of the series since the seventh season.
[14] Michael Tedder of New York gave a positive review and praised the scene featuring Jim and Dwight on the roof of the bus, saying their dynamic had matured over the years.
[15] Brett Harrison Davinger of California Literary Review was more positive, writing that the episode had a more "classic Office" feeling, due to its humor and emotion, which he considered missing from the series in the previous seasons.
While he criticized Andy's behavior for being too much like Michael Scott, and Kevin for being "developmentally disabled", he complimented the episode for having "some decent laughs" and for the Jim-Dwight-Pam storyline.