Picking up a few months from where we left off last season, "The Office" wasted no time filling in summer backstory on Thursday night's season premiere: Pam's pregnant, but she and Jim haven't told anyone in the office yet - for obvious reasons. Three interns are on their way back to school after what was undoubtedly the oddest summer job they'd ever held, none of them having learned a thing. And Michael Scott, office ringleader and Dunder Mifflin village idiot, spends the day telling wildly inappropriate rumors to cover up one that's actually true.
Opening with a hilarious three-way bit of office parkour between Michael, Dwight and Andy, the return episode of "The Office" is every bit as funny as it left off last Spring, despite existing in a bit of a plotline bubble. The writers made a good choice in keeping the depth of last season's plot questions at bay (what happened to the Buffalo branch? Is Michael still in love with Holly?), allowing the familiar characters to find their former stride without things getting too heavy for new viewers right off the bat. After all, it's important to test the gears out before the wheels really get moving.
There's plenty of meat on the Season Six bone already, however, as we find out that not all is what it seems in Stanley's life, and as a result of Michael's gossip-monger hijinks Andy is thrown into an identity crisis that leaves him seriously (and hysterically) questioning his sexuality. It may be just another day at the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin, but when your boss is a wildly narcissistic eight year old in the body of a man in his mid-forties who's desperate for social inclusion, "just another day" has an entirely different meaning than it would for most.
There were some real gems in the season premiere (including the obese Kevin clarifying that there's not another person living inside him, manning the controls), but sexuality conflicts, gossip wildfires and extreme office sports aside, life goes on as always in Scranton. The character chemistry is fantastic, and there are good signs all around that the writers know they need to throw some curveballs to keep the die-hards satiated. Only the next few weeks will tell for sure, but one episode into its sixth season, "The Office" is as funny and promising as ever.
