“It’s almost as if the award’s night never happened,” Mare said.

Reigning victorious fresh off the events of the season 1 finale, where the team behind the Toledo Truth Teller, including Oscar Martinez (played by Oscar Nuñez who reprised his role from the show’s successful predecessor, The Office (U.S.)), swept the floor with accolades at the Ohio Journalism Awards, the death of colleague Bill Patterson foils the staff’s much anticipated celebratory plans.

Marv Putnam, the CEO Esmeralda cajoles throughout the show, assigns the staff to uncover details of Bill’s life to write a meaningful obituary by the evening so they could present it at a memorial in front of Bill’s family at the venue where they planned on celebrating their awards. 

Ned (Domhnall Gleeson), who ostensibly does not remember Bill, let alone know his role, dodges Mare with overcompensated professionalism, following their passionate kiss at the end of season 1. Mare, still reeling from the aftermath of their confirmed romance, finds it disheartening that Ned neither acknowledges the kiss nor reciprocates her attempts at public display of affection.  

The team visits the morgue and Bill’s ash-stricken apartment, where they come to find that Bill, was in fact, not among “the best of us,” as Esmeralda stated (mostly to appeal to Putnam). Not only was he a toilet paper salesman by day, but also a sex offender and drug dealer–both on the clock and off. 

By the memorial, Ned decides that there is no endearing way to commemorate Bill’s life. Adelola volunteers Esmeralda to eulogize Bill as Esmeralda had put up a front that she adored Bill, oblivious to what the staff had uncovered.

By the end of the episode, Ned surreptitiously pulls in Mare to kiss in the staircase. She confronts him that while he was caught up feigning nonchalance and amnesia about their office affair, she was not privy to that plan. He did not realize, so he promises they go on a weekend getaway. They embrace. The two think they are being discrete but the angle at which the camera peers from top down suggests that someone in the office now knows about the affair.

Excellent display of journalism in this episode–from witness accounts to tracing Bill’s digital footprint. That is rare to show, let alone in a half-hour sitcom. This show has nothing on Lou Grant. The particularly British situational comedy sideplot was enjoyable as we followed Ken singularly filling Bill’s shoes (both literally and figuratively), uncovering by the end credits that Bill’s immaculate “sales,” in fact, had less to do with toilet paper sales and more to do with sales of the metric kind. By the end, viewers will share  the team’s dejected conclusion that their accolades were subjected to a sidebar headline rather than a frontpage news story.