True to his promise of a discrete coupled getaway, Ned concocts a plan to evade suspicion of his relationship with Mare from the rest of the staff–Ned visiting a doctor to diagnose a rare medical condition, and Mare visiting her aunt before attending a mountain hiking reunion with her military group. Nicole becomes suspicious of Mare’s actual plans as she identifies that Mare is wearing scented body butter and light makeup, an unusual combination for her work bestie.
Mare leaves Adam and Adelola in charge of monitoring election runoff results and dragging a simple image file of whichever winning candidate into the copy of the already finalized article. Adelola mentions her mom will come from Nigeria to visit her, but this subplot largely goes nowhere and does nothing to develop her character.
According to Ned, the team admired his chipper “weekend Ned” version of himself.
The camera crew sets up a food delivery robot to watch the couple. Eventually, Ned becomes increasingly paranoid that the robot is following him and Mare as it conveniently shows up to each of their romantic excursions.
Esmeralda devises a fake relationship with Ken to not only out-do another mom on her son’s soccer team, but also to get her sidelined son out on the field.
Mare and Ned attend a Zoom call to help out Adam and Adeolola, who apparently did not fully grasp Mare’s instructions, but since Ned and Mare are feet away from each other, their audio causes a game of muting, and echoing in a hilarity of confusion. To their relief, no one suspected that Ned and Mare were together.
At dinner, Ned admits he does not want “weekend versions of ourselves,” but notices the food delivery robot, which he chases down and dumps it over a hill, breaking it.
Just as the staff tries to reach a breakthrough to send out the municipal election runoff, Oscar makes an entrance. However, he had just taken sleep medication, and helped them marginally before he went down to take a nap.
The staff does not have to struggle long before Mare and Ned return to the office. Nicole asks how Mare’s trip went with her aunt, and begrudgingly catches her in yet another lie.
A soccer mom catches Esmeralda and Ken in a sham relationship, foiling Esmeralda’s plan of getting her son Mateo out on the field. Ken otherwise delusionally enjoyed the validation from and proximity to his boss.
As Ned heads out of the office, Mare tells the camera crew that there is no business to see while she closes up. Ned comes back up, hoping the camera crew had left–but they catch the salacious glory…right beside Oscar, who is fast asleep on the ground.
It is hard not to compare Ned and Mare with their star-crossed predecessors, Pam and Jim. Mare falls flat in affect at times, while Ned’s occasional tomfoolery make them a hard pair to match.
Rating: 6/10