Kennedy and Heidi: Vicarious Patricide as Tony’s Decompensation

At the risk of needless redundancy, I think it’s helpful to summarize Tony’s state of mind going into the episode Kennedy and Heidi. His consciousness is teeming with ancient but recently-agitated memories showcasing his father’s violence and toxic influence, like Johnny shooting a hole through Livia’s hairdo and baptizing him in the act of murder. He’s unable to shake stories of parental neglect leading to tragic outcomes for children. He’s painfully aware of Christopher’s hatred of him and desire for murderous revenge, feelings ultimately rooted in the fact that Tony guided him into the same corrupt existence into which he himself had been led by Johnny, Junior, and company, suggesting a reciprocal, if unconscious, rage by Tony towards those men. His subconscious mind is under constant assault from hats and movie posters and coffee mugs bearing the image of a bloody meat cleaver, an emblem of his own lost childhood innocence and inculcation by his father into his brutal, ugly vocation. He is racked with acute but intense guilt over the role he thinks his life’s example has played in shaping his son’s values and poor sense of self-worth. And he is still repressing a mountain of hurt over the fact that his uncle and second father tried not once but twice to kill him, a repression Melfi warned would someday result in a total collapse of his defense mechanisms, that is, a collapse of his paternal hero-worship and related quest for the macho validation that has prevented him from critically examining his father, uncle, and the men upon whom he modeled his life.
Now consider the circumstances immediately before the crash. Tony and Chris are on a routine drive back from business in Christopher’s new black Cadillac SUV (the first Cadillac Chris has ever owned, incidentally.) The conversation turns to life priorities. Chris, conspicuously clad in a Cleaver hat, specifically mentions how Kaitlyn has changed his priorities, and Tony mentions the “shit with Junior”. So the context is immediately pregnant with the fact that Junior shot and nearly killed Tony within the past year and with the fact that Chris is in a new place of responsibility, a position where he is, for the first time, truly the custodian and trustee for another life.
In a perfectly-timed illustration of just how ill-equipped Chris is to live up to those responsibilities, he nervously and repeatedly fiddles with the car stereo, fidgets, and widens his eyes, telegraphing to Tony that he is high as a kite on drugs. “Comfortably Numb” swells on the sound system as Tony stares at him, the lyrics underscoring that, in that moment, he does not see Chris as a youngster, as the “adorable kid” he once road around in the basket of his bicycle, but as a grown man:
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse Out of the corner of my eye I turned to look but it was gone I cannot put my finger on it now The child is grown, the dream is gone
Chris swerves, and the crash happens seconds later.

Tony as the Child in the Carseat

It’s critical to note that Tony initially manifests every intention of helping Chris, even as he’s fighting his own injuries. “I’m comin’,” he says as Chris asks for help. His expression and demeanor only change when he realizes what Chris means by “help”. “I’ll never pass a drug test,” Chris moans. “What?” Tony asks incredulously as Chris is inhaling his own blood. Almost simultaneously, Tony turns towards the back and sees that a tree limb has penetrated the passenger compartment, lodging in Kaitlyn’s car seat like a spear. While Tony would somewhat exaggerate the size of the branch in later narrations of the event, there’s no question that it was large enough to have impaled or seriously injured an infant.
Even after this warning shot over the bow, Tony apparently intends to help Chris, coming over to the driver’s side and breaking the window when he couldn’t get the door open. He draws his cell phone to call for help but stops when Chris again mentions being doped up, which suggests that Chris is more concerned about the legal consequences of his intoxication than about the fact that he is drowning in his own blood, completely belying his claim to a life newly ordered around the lofty priority of fatherhood.
That’s the moment when Tony forms a genuine murderous intent, an intent that has little to do with Christopher’s animosity towards him or the danger that he might flip. Those are conscious, background motives that help Tony rationalize and make sense of his actions later. But the factor impelling him to end Christopher’s life is his own, fundamental identification with the child who might just as easily have been killed or seriously harmed in that carseat.
To objectify this point, there is a slow pan of the limb sticking through the seat as Tony performs the suffocation, clearly not a shot representing Tony’s vision or gaze at that moment but objectively corroborating the earlier angle when Tony glances back and we see the seat from his point of view. The juxtaposition of these shots – subjective and objective – tells me the carseat is not just a convenient excuse for Tony. This is what he’s really feeling. In this moment, he is the phantom child in that carseat, a child whose safety and well-being come second to his father’s corrupt values and reckless self-indulgence, a child whose soul and humanity are metaphorically impaled by riding in and being taught to drive his father’s black Cadillac.
The exclamation point on the symbolism is provided by Christopher’s hat. Incredibly, it remains on his head throughout the crash and suffocation, its bloody cleaver logo pointing towards Tony when the car comes to rest. As Tony acts consciously on behalf of an innocent child, the symbol of his own lost childhood innocence is directly before him. And, for good measure, the cap and logo stare back at him in the hospital from the gurney laden with Christopher’s bloody clothing and the black bag containing his dead body. (The logo antagonizes Tony a final time from his coffee mug the next morning before he angrily tosses the mug into his backyard woods.)
Several points about the suffocation itself are remarkable. First was the look of absolute depravity on Tony’s face as he watched Christopher struggle to breathe. This look was unlike any ever seen on Tony’s face at any other moment in the series. Even when committing other personal and deadly acts of violence, his face and demeanor had always betrayed a commensurate level of animus, an active, passionate intent. In contrast, he reached through the window and pinched Christopher’s nose – and maintained that hold – with remarkable calm. His face and eyes throughout the suffocation were paradoxically both incredibly intense and completely devoid of human emotion, a look far more disturbing than any look of mere rage he’d ever worn before.
Second, although this act was, in my judgment, clearly about the release of Tony’s pent up rage towards his father figures, the method of killing evokes Livia. Besides her conspiracy with Junior to kill Tony (which she rationalized was for his own good) and general obsession with stories of child deaths, she had once threatened to “smother [her children] with a pillow” to save them from a fate she deemed even worse. Tony grabbed a pillow intending to smother her in the season one finale before nursing home personnel intervened. In Members Only, Tony spoke of being smothered with a pillow as a suitable form of euthanasia. Its functional equivalent at the scene of the crash had a definite vibe of putting Chris out of his own – and everyone’s – misery. So, in killing his “father”, Tony was also paradoxically suffocating his “son”, thereby channeling Livia’s filicidal urges and concept of mercy killing.
The most spine-tingling resonance with the scene comes from two season four episodes where Tony’s deep identification with “innocents” – be they children or animals – once again comes to the fore, as does his appreciation for the consequences of Chris continuing to use drugs. In Whoever Did This, Tony warns Christopher that he “can’t be high on heroine and raise kids.” And in The Strong, Silent Type, after learning that a doped-up Chris accidentally smothered and suffocated Adriana’s dog, Tony ominously snaps, “You suffocated little Cossette? I oughta suffocate you, you prick!” It’s such perfect foreshadowing that the earlier episodes seem to have been written with the outcome of Kennedy and Heidi in mind.

Righteous Retribution as the Explanation for Tony’s Lack of Sorrow

As previously noted, the most troubling aspect of the episode from the standpoint of character consistency and plausibility was not the fact that Tony murdered Chris. It was his vacuous expression during the killing and the fact that he never betrayed a moment’s genuine sorrow or regret afterwards. He remained, in fact, defiantly happy and unconflicted about it, especially to Melfi, and was sincerely troubled that neither she nor anyone else could see how Christopher’s death rescued Kaitlyn from a lifetime of risks and harm that she would naturally suffer as the daughter of a drug addict (and mob captain).
In his therapy scenes with Melfi, real and dream, Tony even makes the very contrast I raise, noting that he’s never felt this way after murdering any other person close to him. He alludes to his sorrow over Pussy and specifically allows that murdering Tony B left him “prostate [sic] with grief.” In effect, Tony himself is revealing that this killing feels righteous and justified to him on an instinctive level and is therefore not one about which he can feel guilt or sorrow.
That sentiment makes no sense if his dominant motives were those he talked about in therapy: Christopher’s animosity and resentment towards him after the Adriana hit and his drug-use and consequent risk to flip. Whatever weight those factors carry in justifying murder in the corrupt “ethics” of the mob (which, in any case, is less than the weight of the transgressions by Pussy and Tony B), they carry absolutely no legitimate moral weight outside it and could not sustain in Tony the sense of just triumph that he felt in response to Christopher’s death. What could inspire that sense of triumph is the perceived liberation of a child from a dangerous and toxic father, experienced subconsciously as vicarious retribution for the abuse and harm he himself suffered at the hands of his own father and uncle.

Significance of the Names “Kennedy” and “Heidi”

“Kennedy” and “Heidi” are the names of the young passenger and driver, respectively, in the car that sideswipes Christopher’s SUV before the fateful crash. The girls are barely onscreen a few seconds, just long enough to (somewhat artificially) learn their names in the following exchange:
Kennedy: Maybe we should go back, Heidi! Heidi: Kennedy, I’m on my learner’s permit after dark!
Much forum debate after the first airing of the episode centered around the significance, if any, of these names. I propose a related but even more basic question: why are the girls present in the scene at all?
Tony’s windfall opportunity to murder Chris and pass it off as death from accidental injury was entirely dependent upon being unobserved by others after the crash. Given Christopher’s intoxicated state and inattention to the curvy road while he fiddled with radio controls, a mere swerve and over-correction or swerve to avoid an animal (Tony’s crash with Adriana, anyone?) would have easily sufficed to trigger the accident but without the problematic involvement of another car, the driver of which would have to be made to flee the scene illegally and in contravention of the ethics and instincts of at least 95% of the motorists on the road. So the very fact that another car is involved, complicating both the story and the filming, suggests some symbolic or subtextual design to the involvement related specifically to the momentous event occurring right after the crash.
One aspect of that design is revealed and amplified when a grieving Kelly shows up at Christopher’s wake with dark hair framing her face and large, dark sunglasses covering her eyes. A member of the crew remarks, “Look at her. Like a movie star.” An odd look immediately crosses Tony’s face as he spontaneously responds, “Jackie Kennedy”, noting Kelly’s resemblance to the widow of John F. Kennedy.
In my mind, this striking moment in the episode can have only one purpose, and that’s to evoke Johnny Boy in relation to Christopher via a kind of symbolic math. If Kelly = Jackie Kennedy, then Chris = JFK = Johnny Boy since JFK was the explicit parallel figure for Johnny in In Camelot, the first episode of the series depicting cracks in the foundation of Tony’s paternal hero worship. When that foundation completely crumbles inside Tony’s subconscious a season and a half later, it’s entirely fitting that the JFK/Johnny parallel is renewed.
As for the name “Heidi”, most folks around these parts felt it was meant to evoke the idea of “orphan” because of the famous Swiss orphan tale of the same name and because Kaitlyn (and Paulie) both lost parents in the episode. That’s an entirely plausible analysis that requires no expansion, although I’m inclined to think there’s more to it than that, starting with the analogy of Tony himself to “Heidi”. No, Tony was never technically orphaned, though he arguably suffered more as the son of Johnny and Livia than if he had been. He was certainly deprived of real parental love and guidance, on both sides, and that roughly equates to the definition of “orphan”.
Before discussing this episode for the first time, I never knew that Heidi was the story of an orphan, only that it was some kind of tale for children. And I knew that only because of the epic 1968 football game between Joe Namath’s Jets and the Oakland Raiders, the climactic ending of which (an improbable comeback by the Raiders) was cut off abruptly for television viewers at the end of its scheduled broadcast slot so that a movie version of Heidi could begin airing on time. I was only four at the time of this debacle but recall my parents talking about it – and the considerable chaos it caused at NBC and at telephone switchboards around the country – for years afterwards. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi_Game
It wouldn’t become clear until the end of Made In America, but there’s an obvious parallel to the Heidi phenomenon in the wind-up of The Sopranos. Consider that, like the Heidi Game broadcast, Made in America featured an abrupt, unexpected termination of excruciatingly tense action at a penultimate moment, pre-empting audience experience of what appeared to be an imminent and momentous climax. The Sopranos ending may not have disabled an entire telephone network, but it certainly generated an enormous amount of controversy that, for better or worse, persists to this day.
Beyond that, there were enough other football references in the final Sopranos episodes, and especially Jets references, to warrant further consideration of this football connotation for “Heidi”. In Remember When, Tony’s betting losses on Jets football games prompt his call to Hesh for a bridge loan. Later that same episode, Paulie annoys Tony and company with yet another old tale, this one relating how, after witnessing Joe Namath stagger drunk into a bar the night before a game, he bet a load of cash the following day on the Jets’ opponent. In Chasing It, Tony gets inside information on a Jets football game and is irate when Carmela refuses to bet money on it. The episode features a closeup of a large newspaper headline, “Jets Bomb Chargers”.
In Blue Comet, then-current coach of the Jets, Eric Mangini, makes a cameo appearance in Vesuvio, with Artie informing a suitably-impressed Tony so the two can go over and shake hands. News articles at the time clarified that the cameo wasn’t Mangini’s idea but the idea of Sopranos producers, who contacted him months in advance and made accommodations in the shooting schedule around his availability. So this seemed more than a casual desire to have some generic celebrity show up.
That especially seems true considering Mangini was given no dialog and that his meeting with Tony and Artie was only depicted in the silent background of a conversation between Charmaine and Carmela. Mangini’s only purpose on set was apparently to show his face briefly and to have the fact of his identity (Tony has to tell a bewildered Carm that Mangini is the head coach of the Jets) permeate the minds of the audience and the subtext of the scene, which is ultimately about chickens coming home to roost on Tony and Carmela because of the lives they chose.
As alter egos for Tony and Carmela throughout the series, folks who took the proverbial “other path” in life, Artie and (especially) Charmaine engage in subtle gloating in the scene. Football coaching was firmly established as Tony’s “road not taken” in Test Dream, so having an actual football coach present in the episode where the unsavory and downright deadly consequences of his chosen vocation are crashing in all around him provides dramatic ballast. All the better to have the coach in the scene be the coach of the team involved in the Heidi game in view of the ending planned for the following episode.
And speaking again of that ending, the wall behind Tony in Holsten’s is consumed with four large murals specifically brought in by the production crew for the shoot. The largest and most centered depicts a huge, light-colored building with lots of windows, somewhat reminiscent of the Inn at the Oaks in Tony’s coma dream. It’s apparently a high school, however, as it is flanked on either side by images of football players in full uniform with what appear to be names and year of graduation engraved at the bottom. To the side and extreme left is a mural of a tiger and the caption “Class of 1973” at the bottom. The tiger is presumably the mascot for the team and school represented in the other murals. So there is a strong symbolic presence of “football” in the last scene of the series, particularly of high school football from roughly the era when Tony would have entered high school.
Finally, though it may be completely insignificant, when Tony tells Carm about the accident from his hospital stretcher in Kennedy and Heidi, he mentions that he re-injured his knee, “the one from high school.” That certainly sounds like a reference to an old high school football injury.
If these loose strands from multiple episodes are indeed intended to connote football in relation to the name “Heidi”, what does that actually mean in the context of the episode Kennedy and Heidi? What does football have to do with Tony killing Chris or, more precisely, with him killing his father in the guise of Chris?
The linchpin in that symbolism, it seems to me, is Tony’s old high school football coach, the guy who would have been his coach when he originally injured his knee, the guy Tony dreamt repeatedly of trying to silence or kill, the guy whose puzzling duality in Test Dream suddenly makes sense when he’s viewed as a classic, Freudian composite of opposites, specifically a composite of Tony’s opposing father figures with Johnny dressed in the physiognomy of Coach Molinaro by Tony’s subconscious in order to render acceptable imagery of his latent, patricidal feelings.
If you further allow, as I do, that the Johnny look-alike shooting at Tony with a scoped rifle (ala Oswald/”Kennedy”) in that same dream is yet another Freudian “reversal into the opposite” by Tony’s subconscious to disguise his repressed paternal rage, then the Kennedy/Heidi connection is pretty clear. The names are presented proximate to the crash to connote that, in killing Chris, Tony has finally acted out the Test Dream imagery that haunted him for years: he has (symbolically) killed his father, the “Kennedy” and “Heidi” of his dream.

“He’s Dead”

In my judgment, this explains Tony’s otherwise puzzling, peyote-induced insight when he proclaims, “He’s dead,” after winning at roulette on 3 successive spins, prompting him to fall to the floor in spectacular and uncontrollable laughter. What other, real death could have inspired such a euphoric and epiphanic reaction? What real death could Tony only have appreciated while in a drug-induced, altered state of consciousness?
Many felt the line referred to Christopher because he’d just died, obviously, and because Tony’s gambling luck suddenly changed afterward. That analysis never made sense to me.
First, Tony plays roulette at the casino while sober when he first arrives in Vegas and loses every round. Chris was already dead at that time, as Tony well knew and accepted. Indeed, Tony was never in any state of denial about Christopher’s death (or about having killed him.) He embraced it, both consciously and in his dream therapy session with Melfi after the crash.
The “he’s dead” insight occurs only after Tony takes peyote and notices a sudden and complete about-face in gambling luck. Why would he need psychedelic drugs to suddenly realize what he already knew and accepted about Chris? And why would Christopher’s death be tied in his mind to his own gambling luck anyway? No prior connection between those two things had ever been suggested.
On the other hand, Tony’s sudden escalation in gambling, which coincided with the agitation and intensification of his latent rage towards his father(s), could easily be seen as a subconscious rebellion against the stern, anti-gambling lecture Johnny imparted the night Tony witnessed the cleaver incident. To the extent that the rebellion results in huge financial losses and self destruction, it obviously fails. His father retains ultimate power and authority. To the extent the rebellion results in huge winnings, it succeeds, and Tony vanquishes his father.
That conquest was the ineffable and elusive “high” that Tony was subconsciously pursuing in Chasing It but which he could not articulate to Melfi. Thus the sudden change in gambling fortune on his Vegas trip is easily tied in Tony’s drug-altered psyche to a euphoric realization that he has conquered or symbolically killed his father, none of which Tony could appreciate without a vastly altered state of consciousness.
And that leads to why he went to Vegas in the first place. He asks that question out loud to the Vegas prostitute, Sonia, immediately before admitting that Christopher once mentioned taking peyote with her. Tony then confesses to having always wanted to try the drug.
Clearly, then, he didn’t just happen to pick Vegas and didn’t just happen to make contact with this girl. His subconscious was pushing him to that venue because he craved the enlightenment of a peyote experience. So while Tony’s real motives for the murder, and for his otherwise inexplicable jubilance afterward, were completely closed off to his conscious mind, somehow he sensed their existence and yearned to unlock and understand them. However his peyote revelations didn’t stop with simply understanding why he killed Chris.

“I Get It. I Get It!”

Tony’s desert epiphany is a bookend to his near-death coma experience and, I believe, can only be fully understood in relation to it. Yet exploring that relationship is a journey all unto itself, calling not only for consideration of the coma episodes and Kennedy and Heidi but the meaning of the cut to black that ends the series. While exploring the religious and spiritual underpinnings of those episodes is of even more weight and interest to me personally than the issue of Tony’s motives in killing Christopher, it deserves and demands its own, dedicated discussion. For now, I’d simply like to posit what I strongly believe Tony’s epiphany to have been with only minimal argumentation as to why I hold that belief.
The epiphany is presaged when Tony enters the casino on his peyote trip and notes that the roulette wheel is built on the same principle as the solar system. The ball spins round and round the center or “sun” of the wheel because of two delicately-balanced but largely opposing phenomena: the momentum of the ball (which, without the wheel, would carry the ball away in a straight line) and the centripetal force of the wheel (applied by the rim, which continuously pulls the ball towards the center even as the ball’s momentum continuously pulls it on a path perpendicular to the centripetal force.) The antagonism (or cooperation, if you prefer) of the forces gives rise to a unified system: an orbit.
If this sounds a bit like the Bell Labs scientist’s explanation of how two tornadoes are in fact just facets of one, unified system of wind, it’s likely no mere coincidence. As Hal Holbrook’s character argued, separateness is a mirage. The universe, and everything in it, is one big soup of molecules interacting in cause/effect fashion according to laws, making it one whole, not a bunch of discrete parts. “Everything is everything,” as the black rapper reduced it.
That was the philosophy that really made an impression on Tony in the days and weeks following his coma. The principles of quantum physics articulated by Holbrook’s character are likely as close as you can get to a scientific codification of Bhuddism and therefore reinforced much of what the Bhuddist monks conveyed to Tony in his coma. The monks laughed when Tony claimed he wasn’t Finnerty and explained that there really is no “you” and “me, that death would bring an obliteration of individuality. Separate consciousness – and the consciousness of separateness – is an illusion of the living.
So all this laid the philosophical groundwork for Tony’s Las Vegas trip. In that trip, Tony seeks out a girl with whom Chris had slept, then sleeps with her himself. He mentions having refrained from a longstanding desire to try peyote because he always felt the weight of his responsibilities, an implied contrast to Christopher, who always indulged in drugs despite his responsibilities. The idea that Tony was seeking to almost live life in Christopher’s skin in the Las Vegas portion of the episode was something several posters mentioned in first discussions after Kennedy and Heidi aired. Even the girl, Sonia, remarks how similar Tony and Chris are, a somewhat dubious observation that somehow offends Tony but which also helps define his impending epiphany.
That epiphany is spurred when the rising sun flares at him over the desert mountain vista. This recalls Tony’s earlier comparison of the roulette wheel to the solar system. It also resonates completely with the fact that Kevin Finnerty was a solar heating salesman from Kingman, Arizona, a town which, not coincidentally, lies 95 miles southeast of Las Vegas and shares the same desert landscape. Also not coincidental, IMO, is the fact that in the prior episode, Christopher spoke of the perks of joining witness protection and of “living large” in Arizona.
So I believe that, in that desert sunrise on the cusp of Arizona, in fulfillment of his identity as Kevin Finnerty, solar heating salesman, Tony saw his “son” – Christopher – “rise” and realized that, in murdering him days before, he (Tony) was really “rising” as a “son” against Johnny Boy. And in that linkage, he suddenly realized that “everything is [indeed] everything.” He is both Chris and Johnny Boy, both abused and misguided son and abusing, misguiding father. He is murdering uncle and would-be murdered nephew. He is both the mother that sees suffocation as mercy killing and the son who is suffocated. Christopher is both his son and his father. Johnny Boy is Coach Molinaro. “Kennedy” is “Heidi”. Opposites are really two sides of the same coin. In that fleeting moment of insight, Tony was truly feeling “one” with the universe.

The Second Coming

The episode following Kennedy and Heidi is titled The Second Coming after the Yeats poem that grips AJ in the English lit class he’s auditing. While the poem speaks to the bleakness of his depression and outlook on life at that particular time, there’s little doubt that – like everything of substantial weight in the Sopranos universe – it ultimately relates, first and foremost, to Tony. First referenced in the Cold Cuts therapy session dealing with pent-up rage where Tony’s deep shame from the cleaver incident is finally revealed, the poem seems the veritable inspiration for the storyline (as interpreted in this article) that culminates in Christopher’s murder:
The Second Coming By William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight; somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The widening gyre, the orbit that breaks down when the center can no longer hold, is clearly a parallel to the decompensation of which Melfi warned, the point at which Tony’s defenses after Junior’s second murder attempt could no longer hold and the underlying pathological rage at his fathers would take over. True to the poem, a “blood-dimmed tide was loosed”, inspired by a perverse compassion for the “innocent”. While “the best” all mourned Christopher and thought his death a tragedy, Tony, “the worst”, was full of passionate intensity and could not understand why no one else saw the greater good in Christopher’s death.
The “revelation” occurs in a “waste of desert sand”, imagery easily compatible with Tony’s “I get it” moment in the Nevada/Arizona desert. The uniquely depraved look on his face as he suffocated Christopher is evoked by the line describing a “gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun”. “Twenty years of stony sleep” refers to the decades of denial Tony maintained, the defense mechanisms that kept him all his life from confronting and admitting that, in some very real ways, he hated his father. It’s a figurative sleep that was suggested literally in the noted fact that so many episodes in season 6B started with Tony in a deep sleep. Somnolence was suggested even in the choice of the song “Comfortably Numb” as soundtrack in the moments immediately preceding the crash, the moments right before the hour of the “rough beast” finally arrived. Even the incidentals are perfect allusions, as with the image of “stony sleep” being turned into a nightmare by a “rocking cradle”, or, in this case, by a car seat with a branch sticking through it.
I’m intrigued by the line describing the emerging beast as having “lion body”. It may mean absolutely nothing. But among the story points worth considering in relation to it are the tiger on the wall in Holsten’s and the enigmatic cat in Made In America.
More obscure is the fact that in Remember When, the single episode most explicitly dealing with the violent release of stifled paternal rage, Carter Chong described his grandfather as a “lion” and noted that his father owned “Grumman” stock. (Grumman manufactured a number of high-profile fighter military aircraft, most of them named for some kind of cat, e.g., Panther, Jaguar, Tomcat, Tigercat.) Carter was reviewing these facts to himself in the scene immediately preceding his vicious attack on Junior, suggesting that, in acting out on his stifled paternal hatred, he was adopting the predatory, aggressive characteristics of a wild cat. Notably, when Junior, the paternal surrogate who modeled this kind of aggressive behavior to Carter, was seen at the end of that episode bruised and literally defanged, his sunken mouth void of false teeth, he was stroking a harmless little housecat on his lap. Once a lion, the former mob boss was a lion no more.

Asbestos Dumping as a Metaphor for Tony’s Toxic Spill of Rage

Kennedy and Heidi opens with a controversy between Tony and Phil Leotardo over asbestos disposal. One of Tony’s contractors was removing asbestos from old buildings, while following none of the strict (and expensive) asbestos-handling laws regulating worker and public safety, and was seeking to dump completely uncontained truck-fulls at waste stations controlled by Phil. Phil’s guys were denying the trucks the right to dump. As a consequence, huge, openly-smoking asbestos mounds were building up at job sites.
After Christopher’s death, Tony was doing little to find a solution, skipping town to gamble, get laid, and get high and leaving the contractor high and dry. Finally, near the very end of the episode, the contractor dumps heaps of asbestos at dawn in an open marsh area resembling the New Jersey Meadowlands.
Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral that gained widespread use in the 19th and 20th centuries as an ingredient in various building industry materials – including wall compounds, insulation, and roofing materials – primarily because of its extreme insulative properties and resistance to heat and fire. In the last 40 years, it’s become better-known for its cancer-causing and toxic effects on those mining and working with it in manufacturing, demolition/remodeling, or other “raw” environments.
Both the heat resistance and toxicity of asbestos make the shoddy removal/dumping storyline a compelling metaphor for Tony’s equally shoddy “dumping” in Kennedy and Heidi. The smoldering heat and flames from his hatred towards his father and uncle were contained beneath his consciousness by an insulating firewall of denial and repression. In essence, this denial and repression was Tony’s psychological asbestos, and it (more or less) contained the heat and fire within him for 47 years.
But it finally broke down, allowing the flames to rage and do damage and necessitating a messy disposal. Unfortunately the breakdown didn’t happen where it should have, in his therapist’s office as the result of honest introspection and dialog about little things like his uncle trying to kill him twice and his father indoctrinating him to murder at 22. That would have been the equivalent of careful, legally-compliant asbestos removal. Instead the breakdown occurred in a roadside ravine and the resulting “waste [in the] desert sand” was every bit as toxic as the smoking piles illegally dumped in the Meadowlands immediately before the desert epiphany and which we saw reprised in the very first shot of the following episode.
Think about that for a moment. Tony’s “I get it” moment was literally sandwiched between shots of noxious mounds of asbestos blowing in the New Jersey wind, a significant clue that some other kind of perversely cathartic disposal was in the middle of that sandwich.

The Orbit of the ‘Blue Comet’: Long Journey to Nowhere

It’s fair to ask: if the broad strokes of my interpretation are valid, what impact did the epiphany have on Tony going forward? After the drugs wore off, did he actually retain any specific understanding of his subconscious motives for killing Chris? Was he left only with the impression that he had enjoyed a very brief moment of enlightenment but without intellectual distillation of the enlightenment itself?
Because the insight was founded upon the secret that he had murdered Chris, even if Tony had retained it, he couldn’t overtly share it with anyone. Still, I lean toward the interpretation that the specifics (at least the ones I proffered) were lost to him when the altered state of consciousness ceased. When he tried to describe the magic of what he experienced in the desert to his crew, he could only come up with the most mundane, inadequate words: “The sun . . . came up.” They all looked at him like he was half retarded.
He was slightly more specific with Melfi, offering that he saw “for pretty certain” that this reality is not all there is. He couldn’t define the alternative but was still convinced there was “something else”.
He did speak in therapy of appreciating a balance and unity in opposites that he hadn’t appreciated before, a “ying” [sic] and “yang”. And he offered that “mothers are like buses . . . the vehicle that gets us here,” but that, once here, we are all on our own, individual journeys (mothers included.) So, to the extent his epiphany comported with what he revealed in therapy, it seems to have had little to do with fathers and with Christopher’s murder and more to do with letting go (finally) of some of his issues with his mother.
But perhaps the best clue to his residual state of understanding came when he indicated that some of what he thought he had grasped in the desert now eluded him. “You think you know, you think you learn something . . . like when I got shot,” he begins. Then, speaking specifically about the peyote experience, he reports that the insight gained is “kinda hard to describe. . . . You know, you have these thoughts, and you almost grab it . . . and then . . . ftt.” He flicks his fingers away from his chin as if to indicate “nothing”. So, to paraphrase Edna St. Vincent Millay, a fragment of what he knew remains, but, apparently, the best is lost.
It wouldn’t take long for all of it to be lost. By the time Tony sits with AJ’s female therapist in Made In America, “going about in pity” for himself because of who his mother was, he has come full circle, essentially back to where he was to start the series. Like a “blue comet”, his orbit was highly elliptical, if not erratic, and carried with it the potential of veering off into deep space or crashing into the sun. But despite killing his own nephew, having a near-death experience himself, and saving his son from an act of suicide, the orbit held. The sober breakthrough never came. The repudiation of his father and of his way of life never took hold in his consciousness. And so, by series’ end, we, like Tony, were exhausted from a long journey that ultimately took us nowhere.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Below I’ve listed every law that was broken in The Office (from destruction of property and battery to homicide and kidnapping) whether legal action was taken or not, as well as ideas that people had that were illegal; I’m not a legal expert, I just have a lot of much free time (I labeled the episodes the same way that Netflix does.)
S1E3: Dwight claims that multiple people in the office forged medical forms for their health insurance plans
S1E6: Michael claims that Dunder Mifflin employees in the 80’s constantly used cocaine
S2E1: Pam, Kelly, and Phyllis reveal that there is something written on the women’s bathroom wall, later Pam reveals to Jim that she was the one who wrote it; people throw food at Michael (would fall under battery)
S2E2: Packer reveals that he’s been convicted of a DUI
S2E3: Dwight reveals that sometimes teenagers use his farm for sex (depending on their ages, this may be illegal as the Pennsylvania age of consent is sixteen)
S2E6: Dwight punches Michael in the stomach twice with considerable force (Michael does bait him into doing it though)
S2E8: Jim punctures a hole in Dwight’s “fitness orb” with a pair of scissors; it is implied that a former accountant killed himself; Dwight reveals that he made a copy of Michael’s key to the office
S2E10: Meredith flashes Michael in his office
S2E11: Michael tells everyone on the cruise that the ship is sinking when there’s no danger (creating a false panic is illegal in most cases)
S2E12: Dwight crashes his car into a telephone pole outside of the office and leaves his bumper in the street
S2E14: Michael says that Packer once held a man’s head into a toilet; it is also implied that Packer was the one who defecated in Michael’s office
S2E15: Michael causes lots of damage in the warehouse by improperly using the lift (he also doesn’t have a license to operate it)
S2E16: Michael jaywalks (technically illegal though typically not enforced); Michael comments that someone was pooping in a cardboard box in the subway
S2E17: Dwight tackles Ryan, Creed, and Stanley to the ground
S2E19: Michael finds out that he’s involved in a pyramid scheme
S2E20: Dwight finds a joint in the parking lot (Pennsylvania didn’t make steps to decriminalize marijuana until 2014); Michael believes he unknowingly smoked marijuana at a concert; Dwight gives Michael some of his urine so that he can pass a drug test
S2E21: Creed faces sideways after his company photo is taken, implying that he’s been arrested in the past
S2E22: Creed steals casino chips and also admits to stealing things all of the time; Dwight kisses Angela and she hits him in response (though it seems like both parties were okay with the outcome)
S3E1: Roy reveals that he was arrested for drunk driving
S3E4: Creed reveals that the reason Ed Truck got decapitated was because he was driving drunk (though this was never confirmed and Creed tends to lie); the bird funeral is lit on fire (probably illegal as they did not have a permit and it was mainly paper and not wood)
S3E5: Ryan and Dwight egg the front of Axelrod Ltd’s building
S3E6: Jim rides his bike drunk (believe it or not, this is actually illegal)
S3E7: Creed sells office equipment
S3E8: Andy steals a computer from the Stamford office; after poking holes in everyone’s tires, Michael claims it was Vance Refrigeration workers that did it
S3E9: It is revealed that Martin went to jail for insider trading; Kevin admits that insider trading sounds a lot like what he does as well
S3E10: Creed removes a present from the charity box (removing uncollected items from charity drives is theft); Pam reveals that she has been sending fake letters from the CIA to Dwight, Jim later gets involved (illegal to pass yourself off as a CIA agent)
S3E13: Andy punches a hole through the wall
S3E16: Michael reveals that his eighth grade teacher hooked up with at least thirteen students; Dwight reveals that he hunted a werewolf as a child, but it’s more likely that he killed his neighbor’s dog; Dwight traps a bat in a bag over Meredith’s head
S3E17: Creed reveals that he has a side business where he makes fake IDs for teens; Creed also reveals that he stole a laminating machine from the sheriff’s station; Dwight accidentally damages David’s roof while inspecting the chimney; Roy and his brother destroy multiple objects in a bar including a mirror, a chair, and multiple glasses (Roy’s brother later reveals that he paid off the bar owner to not call the cops on them)
S3E18: Roy attempts to assault Jim in the office after finding out he kissed Pam; Dwight uses pepper spray on Roy when he attempts to assault Jim (this was done defense of Jim however); Jim reveals that Dwight has weapons such as nunchucks and throwing stars hidden in the office; Dwight uses pepper spray against Andy; Dwight is found to have more weapons hidden in his desk such as brass knuckles, a police baton, and a taser
S3E19: Darryl reveals that Michael once kicked a ladder out from under him and caused him to break his ankle; Michael accidentally smashes a watermelon on the roof of someone’s car; Michael tries to convince the office that he’s going to commit suicide
S3E20: A former Dunder Mifflin employee from the paper mill put a watermark of two cartoon animals having sex on about five-hundred boxes-worth of paper; Creed frames Debbie Brown from the paper mill for not catching the watermark on the paper, which results in her termination; it was revealed that Andy was unknowingly dating a high schooler (only illegal if they had sexual contact); Andy reveals that he and his high school girlfriend knocked over a mailbox with her friends
S3E21: Phyllis claims that she was flashed by a man in the parking lot; when Jim calls the police to report the flasher, he says that the police have already gotten three calls; Creed implies that he has flashed people in the past; Jan offers Michael money in return for him driving to New York and having sex (it is illegal to accept or pay money for sex, even if the other person is not a prostitute); Meredith throws her trash out of her car window onto the street while also driving recklessly; while parking her car, Meredith scrapes another car; Creed reveals that he uses the women’s bathroom for bowel movements and has “paid dearly” for it in the past; Dwight and Andy put up barbed wire on the parking lot fence of the office (using barbed wire is typically illegal if the fence is adjacent to a public street)
S3E22: Michael lights a bonfire on the beach (he likely did not have a fire permit)
S3E23: Jim and Karen sneak into a theater to see the second half of Spamalot (would technically burglary, believe it or not, since they snuck in with the intent of stealing services); Jan claims that the reason she is being fired from Dunder Mifflin is because of her breast implants (though David says it is because of her work ethic)
S4E1: Michael hits Meredith with his car and fractures her pelvis; Dwight attempts to mercy kill Angela’s cat by trapping it in her freezer
S4E2: Michael claims that when he was a child, he had a foreign exchange student living with him that stole all of his blue jeans when he went back to his home country; Kelly tells Ryan that she is pregnant with his child in an attempt to get him to go on a date with her (this could fall under intentional infliction of emotional distress)
S4E3: Michael and Dwight detain the pizza deliveryman in the office conference room; Dwight reveals that the pizza deliveryman steals hemp from his farm; Andy reveals that he stole the ice sculpture he brought to the party; Michael and Dwight steal a tray of sushi and some accessories from a restaurant
S4E4: Dwight admits that the permits on the bed and breakfast side of Schrute Farms are still pending even though he is actively taking customers; Creed reveals that he has a second identity that he transfers his debt to; Michael and Jan are likely trespassing while they are sitting on the stationed train
S4E6: Dwight attempts to create molotov cocktails to throw in the Utica office; Michael drives recklessly on the highway; while stealing the Utica branch’s industrial copier, Michael and Dwight break it; Dwight reveals more weapons that he has in the office, including a pack of knives, a pair of sai, a sword, and a blowdart (having these weapons in the open is not illegal, but concealing them is)
S4E8: Michael purgers himself during Jan’s deposition
S4E9: Jan throws a Dundie at Michael’s TV and breaks it
S4E10: It is revealed that the model from Micahel’s chair catalog died in a car accident (Dwight says that she was stoned at the time and crashed into the side of an airplane hanger)
S4E11: Ryan states that the Dunder Mifflin website was infiltrated by sexual predators (only illegal if they used it to transmit child pornography or arrange meetings with minors with the intent of sexual contact); it is heavily implied that Ryan and his friend Troy are under the influence of cocaine
S4E12: Michael places his face in wet cement outside of the office (would be considered destruction of property)
S4E13: Andy drives a golf cart recklessly and ends up destroying its roof (and potentially the cart as well)
S4E14: Jim sets up Dwight’s cell and work phones to go to his Bluetooth and pretends to be him when clients call (could fall under criminal impersonation); Ryan commits fraud by having people re-record sales and is arrested for it; Dwight, Meredith, and Mose release a raccoon into Holly’s car (only illegal if it does damage to her car)
S5E1: Phyllis blackmails Angela by threatening to reveal Angela and Dwight’s affair unless she lets Phyllis run the Party Planning Committee
S5E3: Kelly reveals that she downloads pirated music onto her work computer, to which Michael responds, “who hasn’t”; Meredith reveals that she’s been sleeping with a supplier in exchange for discounts on supplies and Outback Steakhouse gift certificates (could fall under the scope of prostitution); Michael threatens to kill everyone if they don’t go to the conference room
S5E4: Dwight tries to destroy Jan’s $1,200 stroller
S5E5: The office is robbed after Michael and Holly forget to lock the office’s front door; Creed implies that he made the last person who stole from him disappear, and that he stole the identity Creed Bratton from them
S5E7: Kelly falsifies customer surveys regarding Jim and Dwight
S5E9: Michael attempts to purchase marijuana from two Vance Refrigeration workers, and they trick him into buying a salad in a bag rather than drugs (intent to purchase illegal drugs is illegal, and so is selling counterfeit drugs); Michael and Dwight attempt to frame Toby with drug trafficking and possession of marijuana; when the cops arrive, Creed becomes incredibly worried that he’ll be arrested, implying that he either has drugs in the office, or is a drug dealer
S5E10: Dwight tricks Angela into marrying him (this would be considered fraudulently inducing someone into marriage)
S5E11: Creed is seen smoking out of a pipe likely containing kif, which has cannabis in it; Creed says that he can get fire permits very quickly, implying that they are possibly fake; Michael forces Meredith into going to a rehab facility (technically falls under the definition of kidnapping)
S5E12: Jim uncovers more weapons that Dwight has hidden throughout the office; Andy pins Dwight against a fence with his car, Dwight dents Andy’s car
S5E13: Jim connects a red wire to Dwight’s computer which leads outside to the top of the power pole (would qualify as vandalism to the pole); Michael and Dwight attempt to learn information about a competitor under the guise of a potential customer and potential employee (could be considered corporate espionage, but I couldn’t find any specifics)
S5E14: Dwight induces panic law by simulating a fire in the office, he additionally damages multiple doors and cuts the phone wires; during the fire drill, multiple office employees damage items in the office including ceiling tiles, the copier machine, and the vending machine; Dwight reveals that he is planning a bomb scare; Dwight is shown to have a hunting knife strapped to his ankle, and he uses this knife to cut apart the CPR dummy (though corporate payed for the damages to the dummy); Andy, Jim, and Pam watch a pirated film
S5E15: Dwight buys cookies from Toby in exchange for him signing a form (quid pro quo on this is illegal); Dwight attempts to have his coworkers sign his form under the guise of it being a sign-in sheet; Michael throws full slices of bread on the ground to feed pigeons (it was winter and there were no birds, so this could be considered littering)
S5E16: Jim cuts the cord that connects Michael’s phone to the office’s PA system; Dwight finds out that Kelly went to juvenile detention when she was younger; Creed gives Jim a $3 bill (counterfeit money is illegal)
S5E17: Creed says he knows where to buy a kid for $7,000; it’s revealed that the reason Kelly was in juvenile detention was because she stole her boyfriend’s father’s boat; Michael cuts off a sleeve from Holly’s sweater; Michael also takes a file off of Holly’s computer (would be classified as unauthorized computer access)
S5E18: Phyllis and Bob have sex in a restaurant bathroom (this is technically public sex which is a misdemeanor); Creed steals a bag of blood from the blood drive
S5E19: Dwight slaps Michael; Jim slaps Dwight
S5E20: Dwight pretends to have kidnapped David’s son
S5E21: Michael sneaks back into the office after being asked to leave (technically trespassing as it is private property and he was escorted out of the building)
S5E22: Michael breaks his condominium agreement by having the Michael Scott Paper Company located within his condo (though the owner only sent a warning that he needed to stop); Ryan steals three pairs of bowling shoes before he quits the bowling alley; Michael asks Billy to sell him a ‘secret office space’ off of the books within the Scranton Business Park
S5E23: Dwight claims that a woman named Haddie McGonagle was murdered in the Dunder Mifflin office space in 1816 (though he probably made this up)
S5E24: Dwight steals supplies and files from the Michael Scott Paper Company’s office
S5E26: While fixing her dress, Meredith accidentally reveals one of her breasts, as well as her crotch and her backside (was accidental, but could be considered public indecency)
S5E27: Dwight cuts open the back of Phyllis’ blouse so he can give her a massage; Creed reveals that he doesn’t have any mirrors in his car that let him see behind the car (in Pennsylvania, it is illegal to drive without at least one mirror that lets you see behind the car)
S5E28: Dwight’s friend Rolph once inquired about shoes that increased speed and didn’t leave any tracks, implying that he was going to commit a crime
S6E1: Stanley wrecks Michael’s car with a tire iron
S6E2: Dwight and Toby accidentally crash into a few trash cans outside Darryl’s house; Dwight uncovers that the real cause of Darryl’s injury was from misuse of company equipment
S6E4: Michael ties full beer cans to the back of his car which left debris all over the road; Dwight implies that Mose is going to be castrating horses (only legal if Mose has a veterinary license, which is unlikely); Dwight also claims that he has a device which can make hamburgers out of horse meat without killing the horse (likely animal cruelty)
S6E5: The Niagara Falls hotel staff incinerated Kevin’s shoes (they claim they did it because it was a safety issue); Dwight gifts a turtle to Jim and Pam for their wedding and appears to not have made any holes in the box (likely animal cruelty); Dwight accidentally kicks Isabel in the face while dancing
S6E6: While answering Jim’s phone, Kevin pretends to be Jim and accidentally cancels his credit cards
S6E7: Dwight secretly records the conversations in Jim’s office (Pennsylvania has a two-party consent law which means that all parties in the conversations must consent to being recorded); Andy talks about a 60 Minutes segment that went into working conditions of a paper mill in Peru (the 60 Minutes segment likely went into illegal conditions within the mill)
S6E8: Meredith reveals that she has had sex with a known terrorist; while writing down things that people don’t want to be made fun of for, Creed says that if he writes his down, he cannot be charged for it; a custodian reveals that when Michael fell into the koi pond, he accidentally killed one of the fish
S6E9: Ryan shows Erin a topless photo of Kelly in the office (could be considered indecent exposure since it was in a public space within the office); Creed implies that a shipping order was never supposed to reach it’s location, possibly indicating that he stole a shipment
S6E10: Creed flees the office when Michael tells him that there was a murder and that he was a suspect, implying that he may be involved in a murder
S6E12: Dwight secretly records a phone call between Jim and David
S6E13: As part of Secret Santa, Andy gives Erin the Twelve Days of Christmas, inadvertently resulting in physical injury to her and potentially her home and car; Creed implies that he’s done “evil” things; Michael says that he has often claimed to be David’s childrens’ pediatrician to get him on the phone
S6E16: Andy accidentally gives Meredith a large paper cut on her throat; Ryan implies to Dwight that they should torture Jim
S6E17: While escorting Jim and Pam to the hospital, Dwight puts a police light on the top of his car; Michael uses his phone to text and make a call while driving; when being pulled over, Dwight throws multiple large weapons out his window; Michael parks in an ambulance-only parking spot
S6E18: Dwight breaks a window to enter Jim and Pam’s home; after breaking in, Dwight discovers mold in their home and destroys walls and cabinets with a crew of workers so he can refurbish their kitchen; Jim comments that he had five parking tickets on his windshield
S6E20: Creed tries to act casual when Michael announces that the lost and found has gone missing, implying he may have stolen it; Andy aggressively tries to take a pen from Darryl (could be considered battery); Dwight strangles Kevin in an attempt to get information from him; Michael and Dwight, and then later Andy and Erin, walk around the Scranton dump (would be considered trespassing); Michael and Dwight throw large pieces of garbage at each other; Michael and Dwight take two chairs from the dump
S6E21: Phyllis claims she likes getting men to flirt with her so that Bob will beat them up; Michael accidentally damages multiple objects while being reckless at the bar; Dwight breaks his contract with Angela (unsure as to whether a lawyer was involved with the first contract, but Angela served Dwight with a summons for breaking it, leading me to believe it was legitimate); Hide admits that he killed a Yakuza boss on purpose and then came to America illegally
S6E22: Meredith steals and uses Pam’s breast pump
S6E24: Michael hires Dwight to follow Donna around to see if she’s cheating on him (following someone isn’t illega, but it could be considered stalking or harassment); Creed implies that he’s committed crimes for low levels of reward; Michael says he’s going to kill the guy who’s kissing Donna in her Facebook photo (though he immediately takes it back)
S6E25: Michael keeps throwing out radon kits that Toby put around the office; Michael once again claims that he would kill Toby; Dwight claims that his money is buried underneath someone (though we don’t know if this is a grave or a buried corpse); Dwight and Angela’s lawyer comments that their sex contract is dangerously close to prostitution and illegal
S7E1: Dwight tears the head off of Phyllis’ teddy bear and pulls a knife on Jim; Meredith breaks into Michael’s nephew’s car; Michael spanks his nephew
S7E2: Dwight attempts to open a daycare center that is absolutely not up to safety codes; Toby allows Michael to forge his counseling paperwork
S7E4: Dwight is shown attempting to pick up what would appear to be illegal immigrants for day labour and then instead of paying them, has Mose pretend to be an INS agent, kidnaps the workers, and then drops them off in Harrisburg; Holly claims that multiple people died in a traffic accident (though it’s incredibly likely that she was kidding); Michael takes an incredibly quick turn without his turn signal on
S7E5: Michael, Dwight, and Jim secretly watch Danny’s meeting with Meredith through hidden cameras (only illegal if they are recording the footage)
S7E7: Angela steals all of the scones from Cece’s christening (though they were for public consumption so it probably wouldn’t constitute as theft)
S7E8: The Scranton Strangler leads police on a high speed pursuit; Michael tells Pam that he has a loaded gun hidden in his desk at the office; Michael cuts the cable going to Gabe’s apartment
S7E10: Erin floats the idea of hiring a new employee, killing them, and then cashing in on the life insurance policy; Dwight and Phyllis float the idea of bombing China; Pam accuses Dwight of breaking property code laws
S7E11: Dwight and Jim keep throwing snowballs at each other with force, and some that contained pebbles (snowball fights themselves aren’t illegal, but it’s illegal in most places to throw objects which could be considered missiles, and Jim is also shown with what appears to be blood on his clothes afterwards); Dwight asks Toby is he’s on the jury for the middle school teacher who tried to turn a foreign exchange student into a sex slave; Meredith asks Toby if it’s the case with the postman who rubbed his genitals on deliveries; Michael throws out supplies and food meant for the Christmas party; Dwight is shown dragging the Christmas tree out of the office to throw it out; one of the snowballs that Jim lobs at Dwight breaks a window; Michael throws Holly’s Woody doll into the trash and pours coffee on it
S7E12: Jim stabs a few snowmen with his umbrella hoping that Dwight is hiding in one of them
S7E13: Michael claims that regardless if Holly gets engaged or not, he will probably either attack people in rage or burn the building down in happiness
S7E15: Michael leaves without paying at the Chinese restaurant; Creed is also listed on the wall of diners who did not pay for their meal
S7E17: Michael most likely did not have permits to film in some of the locations featured in Threat Level Midnight; multiple characters in Michael’s film are seen using guns (you do not need a permit to have a gun in your home or business place in Pennsylvania, but multiple characters concealed their weapons during the film, though the guns are likely fake); a mannequin of Toby is blown up during Michael’s film (depending on the type of explosive used, certification may be required); during the hockey scene of the film, Michael comments that it was filmed during an actual Scranton High hockey game (could be seen as defiant trespassing and/or disorderly conduct)
S7E18: Packer humps Michael and Dwight while they’re underneath a desk; Dwight throws away Holly’s zen garden; Dwight offers Packer a hot chocolate laced with many laxatives (depending on the amount, it could be considered assault or even homicide since extreme dehydration could kill someone); Andy purposely does damage to his computer’s keyboard and hard drive; Andy and Pam slightly damage Andy’s new computer; Jim and Dwight pretend to be Sabre employees and tell Packer he can jump the gate at Jo’s house
S7E19: Ryan uses Phyllis and Oscar’s faces on his mom’s pesto and salsa recipes (would fall under right of publicity laws); Ryan adds a Kosher certification onto his mom’s pesto recipe (against FDA regulations); Michael pours gasoline all over the parking lot; Michael wants to steal a corpse from a medical school to use in his proposal to Holly
S7E20: Michael eggs Toby’s house; Kevin colors on a restaurant tablecloth with crayons; Ryan admits to have done drugs in the past
S7E21: Gabe confronts Andy and threatens him to stay away from Erin (could be considered criminal threatening); Deangelo claims that he caught the person who stole one of Jo’s dogs
S7E24: Dwight accidentally fires his gun through the floor; Meredith claims that during the shooting she lost her necklace, a ring, and a painting and will be reporting it to the insurance company; Ryan claims that Dwight’s accident felt like an act of terrorism; Pam claims that Dwight has hidden more weapons in the office
S7E25: Creed parks his car in the middle of the parking lot
S7E26: Dwight admits that he would have created a fake identity for his character of Jacques Souvenier if Jo had hired him as manager
S8E1: Dwight uses a fire extinguisher to knock Meredith off of the top of a bathroom stall, drops a ream of paper on a warehouse employee’s head to get him off a table, and flips a table over to get Toby off of it; Dwight throws Jim’s phone against the wall with force and a shatter is heard; Dwight instigates a fight between nearly everyone in the office
S8E2: Andy says he will streak across the parking lot if the office accrues enough points
S8E3: Dwight pours his drink on the inside of someone’s car; Oscar smashes the car’s window and brake light with a crowbar; Dwight drives the baler through the warehouse wall; Erin and Kevin spread grease all over the warehouse floor; Dwight, Jim, Erin, and Kevin damage multiple boxes of paper
S8E4: Dunder Mifflin billboards across town are shown to be vandalized; Mose crashes Toby’s car into a corn field; Mose very tightly lines up everyone’s cars so that he can run across the roofs (he likely made scratches and dents while planning and executing this plan)
S8E5: Dwight is shown to have brought many weapons into the office in the past as part of Halloween costumes and threatened to kill Toby with them (though the weapons were never concealed and Toby usually confiscated them before he entered the office
S8E6: Oscar stated in an email that he believes that Robert has strangled at least one stripper; Kelly states in an email that they should kill Robert; Dwight’s accountability booster is dangerously close to a form of blackmail; Gabe says that he is going to go to a cemetery and drink (it’s actually illegal to drink in most cemeteries); Pam stops Kevin from hitting Dwight over the head with a frying pan; Jim takes Robert’s phone and attempts to deletes an email (technically illegal to use someone’s phone without their permission)
S8E7: Dwight repeatedly grabs Jim’s crotch
S8E8: A Civil War informational video reveals that the soldiers from Schrute Farm were soldiers that went AWOL
S8E9: When Dwight suggests that everyone in the office is in a suicide cult, Creed strongly denies it, implying that he probably is in one; Jim leaves his car running and unattended in the middle of the parking lot
S8E10: Dwight punches Jim in the arm; Erin asks Andy for Jessica to die; Meredith threatens to drive drunk if Andy doesn’t drive her home; Meredith rides in the back of her van without a seatbelt on
S8E11: Andy asks Oscar to add $800 to their quarterly sales, implying it could be seen as a rounding error; Kevin offers to make that rounding error for Andy
S8E12: Jim drives over Robert’s lawn and breaks his mailbox
S8E15: Jim creates a fake murder scene in his hotel room for Dwight which involved stained towels, knocked over and possibly broken furniture, a writing on the door; Dwight threatens to light Jim’s face on fire; Dwight leaves the hospital with his IV solution bag, which implies he likely didn’t pay for his visit before leaving
S8E16: Gabe sprays an inhaler into Packer’s drink; Dwight damages his hotel room keycard; Dwight sprays a compound of chemicals in Jim’s hotel room creating what he claims is a biohazard
S8E17: Multiple homeless people are sleeping on the sidewalk outside the Sabre store (it’s usually only illegal for homeless individuals to sleep on the sidewalk if a shelter is available); Dwight tells Packer that he should act like a sexual predator when talking to the female teenage customers; a group of children throw pinecones at Andy and Pam, and one of them punches Andy in the face resulting in a black eye; Creed strikes the back of Meredith’s head; Ryan calls his uncle to get a prescription for Ritalin; Kelly attacks Toby and then accidentally elbows Andy in the face
S8E18: Dwight leaves a treasure chest in the office which fires a poisoned dart upwards at whomever opens it; Jim and Dwight tackle and punch each other; Kevin forcibly kisses Meredith
S8E19: Darryl drags Dwight out of his office by his hair; Andy tosses a container of eggplant parmesan onto the street; Andy leaves his car unattended in the middle of an intersection
S8E20: Dwight offers to hit Nellie with a candlestick; Jessica’s friends throw food at Andy’s car
S8E21: Andy smashes the frame holding a picture of Nellie; Andy punches another hole into the wall
S8E22: Andy loiters at the office parking lot
S8E23: Dwight and Jim create a fake identity to work around the commission cap (Dwight even admits that it’s extremely similar to embezzlement or fraud); Harry threatens to choke out Toby; Dwight tells Jim he should dent the hood of Harry’s car or slash the tires; Dwight attempts to activate the elevator’s seismic failsafes to stop the elevator; Pam steals Nellie’s phone and deletes all of her voicemails (technically illegal to use someone’s phone without their permission); Andy tells Robert if he doesn’t hire him back, he will give Prestige Direct Mail Solutions’ business to a competitor (technically blackmail)
S8E24: Kevin and Robert accidentally head butt each other; Andy mops the carpets, likely damaging them; Dwight steals Philip’s used diaper so he can have a paternity test done (this is called gene theft); Angela and Dwight both speed and drive recklessly; Angela hits Mose multiple times; Dwight and Mose both leave their cars unattended in the middle of the street; Robert forcibly kisses Andy; Dwight forces himself on Angela (though seconds later she is a willing participant)
S9E1: Andy threatens to make up a reason to fire Nellie (since Toby is aware of this, if Nellie were to sue Andy, Toby would have to testify against him); Andy purposely pushes Nellie off of the slack-lining rope; Dwight deconstructs Dunder Mifflin equipment to create his trapeze set; Dwight gets stuck on the slack-line and the fire department has to come to get him down; Andy places all of the recycling bins near Nellie and has people throw their trash at her
S9E2: While the building’s janitor is on vacation, the building becomes incredibly dirty to the point where rats can be seen (likely against multiple health codes); Nellie forces Dwight into a situation where he has to chop off her hand (though he doesn’t go through with it)
S9E3: Nellie drives recklessly; Nellie uses her phone while driving
S9E4: Dwight and Toby find EMF hotspots in the office which could imply that there’s poor wiring in the building (depending on how bad the wiring actually is, this could actually break laws); Stanley threatens to spank Clark; Dwight drives the work bus (depending on the type of bus it was, Dwight would need a certain license to drive it); Phyllis asks someone to just start driving the bus while Dwight is on the roof; Dwight drops himself through the rooftop emergency exit on the bus onto Jim; Dwight drives the bus recklessly
S9E5: Creed comes into the office with blood stains all over his clothes (it likely was not his blood, so he may have harmed someone); Andy reveals he had sex with a snowman while at Cornell (would fall under public indecency); Dwight catches Meredith in a net and causes her to fall to the floor
S9E6: Kevin leaves his car in the middle of the parking lot so he can run to the bathroom; Oscar forges documents to make it looks like Kevin has been taking money from Dunder Mifflin; Nellie, Jim, Pam, and Darryl create a situation where Dwight believes that police have surrounded David’s house; Pete’s friend Flipper once drunkenly flipped a table over at a bar
S9E7: Dwight claims he used to have a barber who fought dogs and made dogs fight each other; Clark is used as leverage by Dwight to get Jan’s business (this trade would be dangerously close to prostitution)
S9E8: Dwight reveals that Trevor has had numerous guns stolen from him; Angela hires Trevor to murder Oscar; Dwight claims he has left poop in a paper bag on people’s porches (would be classified as vandalism); Trevor claims that people have left poop in a bag on his porch multiple times; Angela asks Trevor to break Oscar’s kneecaps instead; Trevor brings a concealed weapon into the office; Phyllis taps a stranger on the back with the sharp end of a knife; Phyllis forcibly removes a decorative wine bottle from its base; Angela kicks Oscar in the shin
S9E9: Dwight hits Oscar and Jim with a stick; Darryl collapses on a table and breaks it in half
S9E10: Dwight throws his coffee cup up in the air, likely staining the carpet; Dwight sprays a disinfectant in Erin, Pam, Angela, and Meredith’s faces; Erin tackles Stanley; Meredith reveals that one of her exes keyed a bunch of people’s cars; Meredith also reveals that she pooped into an office shredder; Dwight accidentally sets off an insecticidal grenade (I don’t believe there is a real insecticidal grenade but I’m sure there’s some law against either setting one off or doing so with people nearby); Angela hits Oscar in the head with a coffee pot; Kevin misuses one of the warehouse machines and causes it to break; Dwight accidentally sets off another insecticidal grenade in his car (he most likely still drove his car after while experiencing hallucinogenic side effects)
S9E11: Jim is seen driving a motorcycle (Jim likely did not have a motorcycle license); Dwight suggests that Jim should drive 240 miles per hour so he can get to the office faster; Creed steals Phyllis’ ring; Kevin forcibly lifts Angela up multiple times; Darryl misses a basketball hoop and accidentally breaks a wall lamp and electrocutes a fish tank (though Darryl agreed to pay for the damage); multiple people in the office tear up the carpet flooring
S9E12: Dwight rips open a couch cushion with a knife; Dwight drives one of the delivery trucks (he likely does not have a license to drive the truck); Dwight throws a milkshake through the drive-thru window at an employee; a customer in the drive-thru throws a milkshake at Dwight
S9E13: Dwight reveals that Rolf uses hand grenades to fish; Mose is seen running in the middle of the street (could be considered jaywalking); Dwight reveals that when he was a child, he went to a school that was run by a conman; one of Dwight’s friends reveals that the school used the students as labor; Melvina reveals that she’s been double parked for about two hours; Dwight gives the sales rep applicants Jim’s home address so they can toilet paper it; Rolf tells Dwight to be weary of any suspicious packages he may get, implying that he’ll be sending him potentially dangerous packages; Dwight attempts to suffocate Clarke
S9E14: Frank vandalizes Pam’s warehouse mural; Angela hits Oscar; Dwight and Pam vandalize Frank’s truck; Frank rushes at Pam with the intent to hit her; Brian hits Frank in the face with his boom mic
S9E15: Meredith suggests that everyone in the office should try cocaine
S9E16: Dwight’s Aunt Shirley slaps Angela; Andy snoops through Erin’s phone; Andy kicks Toby; Angela accidentally sets off the hose on Dwight (the hose likely has the same pressure as a firehose, which is about 150 PSI, so this could be considered assault); Toby leaves the prison wearing a neck brace after visiting the Scranton Stranger, implying the Strangler attempted to strangled him;
S9E17: Dwight throws dirt in the faces of Erin, Phyllis, Kevin, Oscar, Meredith, Angela, Stanley, Pam and Jim; Dwight’s brother Jeb drives his car into Aunt Shirley’s grave; Packer reveals he’s in Narcotics Anonymous, implying he used to use drugs; Dwight reveals that his family members have accidentally buried family members who were thought to be dead but were actually in deep sleep; Dwight unloads a shotgun into his aunt’s corpse; Jeb reveals that he owns a worm farm in California (medical marijuana was not legalized in California until 2018); Packer reveals that the cupcakes he gave out to everyone in the office, as well as to Jim and Darryl were laced with drugs, some legal and some not; Packer is seen having parked his car halfway between a handicapped spot and a do-not-park zone; Clarke reveals that while drugged, he defected in some bushes
S9E18: Dwight dumps a bucket of water onto Phyllis, and is likely the same person who dumped a bucket of water onto Andy as well (technically would be classified as assault); Meredith exposes her breasts in the office; Angela slaps Oscar
S9E19: Dwight shoots Stanley with three tranquilizers meant for a bull (horse tranquilizers can cause serious harm to humans, and a bull tranquilizer likely has a higher dosage); Meredith squirts some of the bull tranquilizer into her drink (probably not illegal since she put it into her own drink, but it would be classified as placing a foreign object into an edible, which is actually a felony); Dwight and Clarke accidentally slam Stanley’s unconscious body into two walls; while sliding down a flight of stairs, Stanley’s unconscious body makes a dent in the wall; Andy kicks over an empty trash can; a man at the talent agency claims that through his dog-cat-mouse act, he goes through a lot of mice (allowing your pet to eat live animals can be considered animal cruelty); Stanley tranquilizes himself so that he doesn’t have to climb the stairs
S9E20: Creed smashes a melon on the warehouse floor; Pam accidentally hits Toby in the eye with a paper airplane; Erin reveals that when she was in the orphanage, she once ripped Susan’s pigtails off of her head; Erin crushes a box of packing peanuts; Clarke asks Pam and Jim to share the drugs he think they’re high on; Angela is seen taking rolls of toilet paper from the office
S9E21: Lackawanna County takes away “two sacks” worth of Angela’s cats because she is violating her apartment complex’s pet rules; Dwight throws his briefcase and hits multiple items; Dwight nearly kicks and punches multiple in the office; Andy asks Toby to falsify files; Andy attempts to grope Toby; Andy dedicates on David’s car (this would be classified as vandalism and public indecency);
S9E22: Dwight reveals that his grandmother was shot by Adolph Coors; Dwight throws the summoning bag against the back of Jim’s head; Casey Dean jumps on the back of the a cappella show host; Meredith spanks Darryl; Dwight is seen driving with his police light on his car; Dwight drives recklessly
S9E23: Dwight reveals that Creed faked his own death; Dwight also reveals that the police are looking for Creed as he sold drugs, trafficked endangered animal meat, and stole weapons-grade LSD from the military; Oscar reveals that Kevin used to make up numbers to balance the books; Mose kidnaps Angela and locks her in his trunk for three hours; Creed changes his identity; Ryan reveals that his partner abandoned him and their child; Ryan purposely gives his son an allergic reaction; Kelly and Ryan abandon his son with Ravi; Nellie takes Ryan’s son as her own child (she didn’t legally adopt him so this would be considered child abduction); Pam attempts to sell their home without Jim’s knowledge (since Jim bought the house as a surprise, his name is likely on the deed as well and Pam wouldn’t be able to sell it without him); Kevin spills alcohol all over a cabinet while filling up glasses

Okay, I've been making blogs for awhile and this is my review for Spectre. If you want to read the review on the blog it's here. If you want to visit the blog, it's here. Here's the review:
This week I took a stroll into one of Belfast’s cinemas. I won’t say it’s name for legal reasons so we shall call it Nodeon.
A small popcorn and coke set me back £3.20 and the popcorn tasted like recyled cardboard. On the brightside, the staff were friendly and the comfy seats were a pleasure for the anus.
We had to walk through a crowd of viewers for the previous Spectre screening, all wearing black ties. I would make some joke about their pomposity but the ties probably signalled they were out to raise money for charities which makes them pretty much immune to ridicule.
Finally I got to watch everyone’s favourite STD laden spy return and boy was it average.
The movie opens with the Day of the Dead festival. Bond promptly seduces a women before stepping out her bedroom window and creating an international shitstorm. He runs in through the floats and displays (probably getting photographed a million times) before jumping into a helicopter to fight some baddies. Bond, in a showing of true idiocy attacks both the pilot and the passenger. Only luck saves the lives of Bond and the defenceless crowd from helicopter rotor based decapitation and possibly death. I found myself wondering how many hits on youtube Bond was getting and if his enemies ever paid attention to viral videos.
I’m usually a fan of Bond’s opening credits but Spectre’s tentacle porn display backed by Sam Smith’s subpar track left me less than inspired.
Q (Ben Whishaw), Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) and M(Ralph Fiennes) return from Bond’s previous outings along with a brief cameo from Judi Dench’s M.
Andrew Scott arrives to play the role of C, a rival to M. C believes the double 00 program to be an anachronism in an age of information wars. He intends to win this war by sharing the information on UK citizens with the rest of the world. C comes across as a clear villain from the minute he steps onto screen. His plans are played off as something big that requires legislation to facilitate it but the GCHQ has been sharing UK data with international spy agencies for rather a long time in real life.
New femme-fatales bolster Spectre’s lineup.
Lea Seydoux takes on the role of Madeleine Swann, daughter to Mr White, who appeared in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.
Monica Belluci (the new oldest bond girl) has approximately 2 minutes of screen time. She talked about being a “bond lady” rather than a “bond girl” which is awkward because essentially all she does is get saved by Bond. Then he pushes her against a surprisingly robust mirror where she promptly strips and gives him another clue in the treasure hunt. He rewards her with the sex. Belluci’s characters begs Bond for help but he just leaves her with a telephone number for an American embassy. Good thing for her, the organisation out to kill her doesn’t have a wide reach or anything…
Dave Baptista turns up as the muscle man baddie that Bond has to beat this time round but doesn’t really give us any memorable action set pieces.
If you are starting to get a feeling that this Bond movie is sticking heavily to the classic script then you’d be dead right. Every standard Bond scenario is included. Every scene feels meticulously planned in all the wrong ways. It feels like spontaneity is dead. No moments stand out as individually interesting. It uncludes the Bond standards; the sponsored car, the effervescent horny women, the Evil McEvil villain. When Casino Royale came into town it felt dark and intriguing, now it’s like the lights have been turned on and we can see that nothing has changed from the Brosnan days.
In Spectre, Bond continuously overcomes odds which he stacks against himself through stupidity and the hunger to be a lone wolf. The real life M15 even commented on how Bond is unlike their real life agents:
they are perhaps more ordinary than perhaps is described in fiction Bond displays an almost fanatical lack of self preservation, strolling into obvious traps throughout the movie. At one point the movie’s villain, Franz (acted by Christoph Waltz) even comments on this. Bond soon finds himself in a new torture chair. The scene lacks the grit of the ropey, testical slapping antics of Casino Royale. As a side note, whoever has been creating the hand restraints for torture devices in the bond universe needs to be fired.
The eponymous villain organisation, Spectre takes the stage for the first time in the Daniel Craig Bond movies although Franz would have you believe Spectre has had a part in all of the previous Craig movies. Franz boasts that he is the author of all of Bond’s pain but the link to Bond’s history feels forced at best, downright cliched at worst.
References to characters from the previous movies are shoehorned in to try and back up Spectre’s supposed scope but that just opens up plotholes. Raol Silva was part of the Spectre plot? What? Why? How? It makes no sense at all. In fairness little of Skyfall’s plot makes sense if you stop to think about it but the slick pacing distracts you. Spectre sputters between action sequences and boring exposition so you notice every little plothole.
Craig’s Bond followed the path shown by Bourne. Audiences wanted a more visceral realistic Bond and the studios were more than happy to provide. More and more of the modern action movies are action-comedies and Bond directors don’t seem to know whether to follow suit or not. Worse still the dark realistic violence of the reborn Bond universe has to be kept separate from the comedy scenes lest it fall into the region of dark humour, so abhorred by mainstream audiences. Spectre feels trapped in the swirling trends of modern cinema and in an odd way, the characters and their actors feel lost at sea too.
Bond has overcome being the “old dog” in Skyfall only to have to fight the same fight in the new movie. If Craig stays presumably this will be a theme in the next one.
Lea Seydoux, is a fine actress and when they give her the space to build the character of Madeleine Swann she does with aplomb. This doesn’t last long however. Soon they need her dish out some needed plot points and fall in line with the pre-destined Bond-girl role. It’s painful to watch. She is wasted on this role.
The Bond B team with Q, Moneypenny and M running around London seems odd. Doesn’t M have any loyal agents? 009 is mentioned, can’t M bring him in on this?
Andrew Scott’s C and Christophe Waltz’s Franz end up feeling like inferior simulacra of the villains they played on other mediums.
At this point in the review it probably seems like I’m railing on the movie and that’s unfair. The movie never really becomes bad, it’s just inferior.
The building collapse scene wasn’t as good as Casino Royale. The car chase isn’t as good as Quantum of Solice. And the train fight isn’t as good as Skyfall. Spectre is easily the most mediocre of Craig’s movies. The action scenes and plot points feel like they are placed there to fill out the Bond checklist rather than because they belong organically to the movie. Whilst Spectre is a perfectly watchable action movie don’t expect it to be memorable, because it isn’t.