By Rick Ingebritson Sabre CEO Jo Bennett meets with the staff of Dunder Mifflin. The Winter Olympics couldn’t have come at a better time for NBC and for “The Office.” The network gets the chance to distance itself from Lenogate while displaying the world’s greatest athletes in picturesque Canada  over the next 16 days. Fans of “The Office,” meanwhile, get a break from a show that, for whatever reason, hasn’t been very funny of late. Thursday’s “Manager and Salesman” continued a disappointing trend for the show – a skimply premise with very few amusing jokes sprinkled in here and there. The show opens with an advertisement for the Vancouver Games in a scene featuring Michael and Dwight that goes absolutely nowhere. Jo Bennett, the CEO of the company that bought out Dunder Mifflin,  makes her first visit to Scranton and Kathy Bates chews up the scenery as a tough ol’ broad from Tallahassee who really could care less about the staff she inherited. She quickly sizes up Michael and Jim – “Two guys doing one job. We’re going to have to do something about that.” Michael explains that things are different in Scranton compared to what she is used to in the “colorful, lawless swamp” that is Florida. OK, I gotta admit, I did laugh at that line … But then Michael continued with his attempt at southern folksiness – “Where I come from, there are two types of

folks. Those who ain’t and those who are knee-high on a grasshopper.” Once again, the writers are making Michael too stupid. He’s funny as a half-wit, not so much as a no-wit. With Jim taking over as sole manager, Dwight and Ryan team up to continue their diabolical plot against Jim. Dwight, however, tires of Ryan’s obsession with “Saw” and his utter unfamiliarity with Tolkien’s work. “I might start a diabolical plot against him after this one,” a visibly frustrated “Dragon” says of “Bobcat.” That was the second, and last, time I laughed out loud during “Manager and Salesman.” Andy and Erin, meanwhile, continue their tiresome non-relationship. Ed Helms does his best while being physically assaulted by the CEO’s dogs and sexually harrassed by both Kelly and, yuck, Meredith. Erin, meanwhile, continues to get more clueless by the week. Rumor is that we’ll learn her backstory in coming weeks, which may shed some light on why she believes a man who wears bow ties and “Roger Federer for Men” is a playboy. Maybe we’ll even learn why she is completely unfamiliar with the work of Charles Schulze. The episode ends with Michael and Jim back in their old jobs, back in their comfort zones. Here’s hoping that, after the Olympics, “The Office” return to its comfort zone as one of the best shows on television.

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Olympics provide break from “The Office”