On the pull with The Office

S1E5 — ‘New Girl’ at the boys’ club

This piece is part of a series on The Office (UK), running up to the 20th anniversary of its finale this Christmas. Don’t miss out by following me on Medium.

This episode is the first where we get to see what The Office staff are like in the outside world — not the real outside, but that mutation of social life known as work drinks. It ends with David Brent’s commentary on the poem ‘Slough’ he’s reading out for the cameras:

‘In labour-saving homes with care / Their wives frizz out peroxide hair, / and dry it in synthetic air, and paint their nails’ — To look nice! Why’s he got a, doesn’t he like girls? — ‘And talk of sports and makes of cars in various bogus Tudor bars, / and daren’t look up and see the stars, but belch instead’ — What’s he on about?! Has he never burped?

Getting gassily drunk and girls: the goals of David Brent and his men on their night out.

David’s pulling tactic is to flit between the not-so-opposite guises of chivalry and Smoove B over-suggestiveness.

To Donna, coming to work at midday from a mystery location, he gives the example of how he could stay at Dawn’s if he himself was caught out late as there’d be “no funny business”. Dawn tells him he couldn’t, so he waits to catch the eye of…