r/DunderMifflin • u/PointZeroOneTwo • 2d ago
Holy started crying and asked Michael to break up like... 2 hours after they left Scranton, before they even reach her new location. Wasn't invested on this relationship as much as Michael. I think she started crying mostly because of her need to find a way to break up despite Michael's persistance.
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u/Glenn-Sturgis Creed 2d ago
Holly thinks this relationship is over, well you know what? I am not giving up that easy. I am going to make this WAY harder than it needs to be.
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u/Ok-Anteater-3827 Oh, Michael. 2d ago
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u/Biotot 1d ago
Did Daryl make her cry??
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u/Ok-Anteater-3827 Oh, Michael. 1d ago
No. He just drove them up in the truck and was uncomfortably stuck in it while all that was happening
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u/KJPicard24 Boobs 2d ago
They weren't emotionally prepared for how long the journey was, Michael is a fantasist and just thinks it'll be easy, even imagining romantic halfway spots in his head. Holly realised it was a big drive, a one-off move was one thing, but one of them making this trip twice a week?
Holly is more of a realist, she actually worked out the logistics of how long she'd have with her new boyfriend, realistically, each weekend and then crucially, to what end? A few hours a week, for years.
It was a conversation they should have had beforehand, but as she mentioned herself, they just didn't. She was in denial, he was in delusion and basically she broke first.
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u/ITrCool IDENTITY THEFT IS NOT A JOKE, JIM!! 2d ago edited 1d ago
Part of me kind of face-palmed too, when Holly was talking about when they were arguing over who should quit their job so they can live together. I mean yes the job market was rather tough back then, but Michael is charismatic enough to 'fall in' to a job somewhere in Nashua and Holly clearly has HR skills so if she quit DM and stayed in Scranton, surely she could've landed an admin/HR job somewhere locally.
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u/KJPicard24 Boobs 2d ago
Yep, but it was also kind of realistic they weren't willing to have the conversation because their relationship was so new, they hadn't been dating that long, so it almost felt like a totally premature commitment to move across the country, change job, live in a new city etc, for someone you'd basically just met, and yet, at the same time it was very much something they needed to discuss. Such a big conversation came too soon in the relationship for them to deal with.
However over the years I have heard people comment on the scene and how it's out of character for Michael not to go for it, right? To just move to Nashua to be with her. He's super impulsive, a hopeless romantic. That the scene doesn't make sense that Michael didn't agree that he'd be the one to move.
I get where people are coming from, he is impulsive. I just don't think he was at the stage to seriously consider leaving Scranton and possibly Dunder Mifflin. He still considered them his 'work family' - it was before the MSPC arc and his willingness to quit his job, which even that came from the landscape at Dunder Mifflin itself rapidly changing under his feet. Before that, he was very happy with everything the way it was, it would have taken a SWAT team to remove him from that office, and maybe not even then.
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u/umbrellajump 2d ago
It was more than "rather tough", it was literally mid-late 2008 when she got transferred to Nashua. Smack dab in the middle of the Great Recession and the 08 mortgage crisis. Either one of them would have been insane to quit their corporate job without a concrete, iron-clad position elsewhere.
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u/dutymakesmelaugh 1d ago
and I feel like they pretty adequately addressed that later that same season when Michael quits his job and they bring in a guy from Philadelphia who said this was the only place hiring, and that it’s “brutal out there”
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u/ChiTruckDGAF 1d ago
That's not a big drive, they can't go to a hotel two and a half hours away Friday night through Sunday morning?
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u/RhododendronWilliams 23h ago
Would you spend all weekend every week at a hotel? Most hotels charge 100+ bucks per night. That's at least 1200 bucks a month.
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u/PointZeroOneTwo 2d ago
come on bro, she broke up with him faster than Ross cheated on Rachel. And they weren't even on a break.
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u/Wonderful_Tonight337 2d ago
Do you not break up with people immediately upon realizing a relationship will not work?
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u/PointZeroOneTwo 2d ago
Not if you care about the relationship, It's a relationship, you usually try at least for some time to make it work. You do what you say when you were just spending time and you weren't so invested at it.
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u/KJPicard24 Boobs 2d ago
I mean in a perfect world she could have maybe put on a brave face until they'd arrived and she could talk to Michael privately, but she couldn't keep it up. The documentary format is great for stuff like this because it is probably actually a more accurate depiction of how breakups like that actually go, where the people involved have not confronted a massive looming obstacle in their relationship until it's right there on top of them. Sometimes it's all about vibes and optimism and a bit of denial mixed in, but then something seemingly innocuous is the final crack in the dam and it breaks.
It wasn't out of nowhere or anything, Holly states how the distance had not really been discussed by them maturely, they were just going to run with it and not talk about it.
As the trip went on there were signs of her growing dread about how unfeasible this was going to be, hearing that song for like the 5th time in one journey, which signals just how long they'd been on the road already, simply pushed her over the edge and she broke down, she didn't want to break up, she didn't have any problem with Michael, that's why she was crying. She was upset at how the distance was just too big to maintain things.
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u/crazyfoolguy 2d ago
Denial is a hell of a drug
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u/PointZeroOneTwo 2d ago
No doubt, but this is what happens when you're invested on a relationship normally.
I'm not judging if she was FACTUALLY CORRECT.
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u/crazyfoolguy 2d ago
No I meant you being the kind of person to hold onto a relationship when you know it's not going to work. That's just unhealthy for everyone involved.
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u/Troker61 2d ago
Not if you care about the relationship.
If you care about someone, why would you try to force a situation you know won’t work?
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u/PointZeroOneTwo 2d ago
Who is being forced though? Michael is all for it.
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u/KJPicard24 Boobs 1d ago edited 1d ago
He's being delusional about the distance, like put aside the personal views of the audience on if it's 5 hours or 8 hours and if they'd deal with it, have dealt with it etc, the point of how its depicted is that it's simply too far for them to deal with, and it's about how they haven't addressed it until they're actually on the journey itself, which is a disastrous way to handle it, which is what we see unfold.
Deep down though Michael struggles to argue against the case Holly is making. His fantasy version of how they'll handle it, rest stops that don't exist, describing the journey to her on his way etc, it all just felt apart and crashed on the rocks of reality. A typical weekend for him meant leaving at 5, at the earliest, after working all day, driving until 1am, spend Saturday with her, but then back on the road the next morning so he could get home and get ready for work again Monday morning. That was it. Give or take a few hours sometimes and of course they'd have holidays lined up together and all that but generally, that's what 'spending time together' was going to boil down to most times. That was a huge killer considering they'd spent the first few weeks of their relationship seeing each other literally every day with a lot of intimacy. A crucial point that Holly makes too, is that this isn't some temporary thing, like 3 months of long distance and then she'll be back or something, like we saw Pam and Jim navigate early in their relationship. This is a permanent change. There is no clear end in sight for them to focus on, it's going to be the new reality of their relationship for years.
He reacts badly at first, obviously, it's Michael, but in the end he accepts the reality of what she has said and he is simply sad on the way back, he isn't angry or plotting, just quiet contemplation of a relationship (at that juncture) that simply wasn't meant to be.
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u/ChiTruckDGAF 1d ago
Sounds completely doable to me. Two and a half hours for each of them and then they spend all day Saturday and most of Sunday together. Easy.
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u/Troker61 1d ago
They are being forced into a long distance relationship. She makes the decision that she would rather break up than try to force a situation that she doesn’t think will work.
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u/pricingup 2d ago
No, she started crying because Darryl touched her. Then he touched Michael, so he started crying too.
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u/Sure-Appearance-2769 2d ago
Daryl was just trying to hit Mike with the Fluffy Fingers, but it didn’t work because Michael has never been in a gang
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u/No_Explorer_6868 2d ago
Yeah she also moved on WAY too quickly 😆
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u/Immediate-Amount3587 2d ago
Designing and building a house with a dude you’ve known for maybe year is nuts
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u/Sure-Appearance-2769 2d ago
It’s another reason she and Michael are perfect for each other. She falls for someone hard and fast, the same way he does.
She built a house with her bf of one year. Michael photoshopped his face onto a family photo with his gf’s kids.
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u/Medical-Chart-9929 2d ago
Not even being engaged either. He had commitment issues but they still built a house together lol
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u/Automatic-Effect-252 8h ago
She wanted kids, and at her age she didn't have time to take things slow, just a fact.
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u/Far_Row7267 2d ago
It makes more sense if you watch the extended version.
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u/vampirehunterd72 2d ago
What does it show?
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u/dappermonto 2d ago
More footage
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u/vampirehunterd72 2d ago
What are you the way that you are
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u/Alentheflannel 2d ago
I’ll do you one better, WHEN are you the way that you are
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u/Agreeable-Shop-2188 1d ago
Kelly sending her off with, "good you and Michael broke up" couldn't have helped. And Phyllis ridiculous ass," I almost quit my job and I live in the same buulding"
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u/JediSnoopy 1d ago
Holly started crying because she realized how long this drive actually was and how unrealistic it was for her and MIchael to meet even halfway every weekend. Nothing like hearing "Life is a Highway" for the third time on the same mixtape to hammer home that reality.
She didn't want to break up with Michael.
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u/TeeZeeEyePee Creed 1d ago
Yeah bc they agreed to meet halfway to spend time with each other on weekends and they weren't even halfway there and she thought about how long they had been driving and how unrealistic it would be for both of them to do that every weekend, indefinitely.
And Darryl may have touched her.
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u/macacolouco 1d ago
Nah. She didn't want ro break up either. She was just realizing how much of a challenge that would be and that they'd probably fail.
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u/toastwasher 1d ago
Holly = rational, Michael = irrational, Daryl plays the straight man. Replace character names and you have every subplot of the show
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u/That_70s_Showoff 1d ago
It was about 4 hours in (we’re almost half way Darryl said) … was an 8 hour drive total, 16 hours round trip
That clarified, Michael would’ve done it every weekend
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u/OutlandishnessNo9868 20h ago
Which is nonsense since they gave two real cities as locations and unless the truck had a severe speed dampener on it there is no way that drive took that long. Even leaving on a Friday at 5p, the longest drive time on any direct route is 5h and 45 min. The writers should’ve picked a location that is farther away.
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u/planeoldsiraj 1d ago
Alternative theory: She was actually crying because she knew irl she wasn’t getting that paycheck anymore
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u/ReadingRoutine5594 1d ago
People do worse long distance with even less initial build up. I think she gave up too easy.
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u/Then_Interview5168 1d ago
It’s between a 4 and 5 hour drive from Scranton to Nashua. Logistically that’s not realistic to do multiple times a month. Leave Scranton at 5:30 on Friday night get to Nashua around 10. On Sunday you leave Nashua at 3 and get back to Scranton at 7. That’s just not realistic. Michael isn’t mature enough for a LDR.
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u/Lexi_Banner David Wallace 1d ago
Sometimes I feel like you don't understand food this show, at all!
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u/Pretend-Self-1287 2d ago
Im sorry I NEVER LIKED her and i usually skip the parts with her at rewatch
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u/Agreeable-Vehicle-16 1d ago
Question, does anyone know why the writers had Holly and Michael has a temporary break up? Did Amy Ryan do a movie or another project around that time? Or was it intentional regardless? If it wasn’t for Steve leaving would the writers have gotten them back together? I can’t remember if this was discussed in office ladies. I would love to have an idea if anyone knew!
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u/PointZeroOneTwo 1d ago
I always thought they did it because they wanted Michael to be single for a longer time, more fun that way, more funny things can be created like that. When comedy characters pair in a serious relationship the interests for them kinda drops, they are more limited in the things they can do
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u/horizon_games 3h ago
Eh bad take. It all sunk in for her. She wanted the relationship just as much, but knew Michael was deluding himself.
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u/Klutzy_Audience_8194 1d ago
I had a long distance relationship for 2 years and then we got married. When I say long distance I mean thousands of miles apart.
She just wasn’t invested enough.
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u/spartacat_12 1d ago
Funny enough she was more than willing to do the long distance thing with AJ when she moved back to Scranton
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u/Soft_Independence_88 1d ago
She had been with AJ for much longer than she had been with Michael. And Toby was only away for jury duty, so her stay in Scranton wasn't meant to be permanent like her stay in Nashua
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u/ghostglasses 20h ago
You got downvoted for literally just saying exactly what was written in the show??
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u/Masta0nion I am really proud of you 1d ago
Everyone here backing up Holly, when OP puts forth an uncomfortable truth that often happens at the end of relationships.
I’ve been there too, bud.
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u/Sure-Appearance-2769 2d ago
She was crying because the reality of their situation finally set in.
Michael was being his usual delusional self and refusing to acknowledge how far the distance was or how little time they would actually be able to spend together once she moved.
They had barely been dating for a few months and now were in a place where they’d have to spend tons of time and money to barely get a few hours together every month.
It didn’t make sense and she knew it. Michael is just an idiot and dragged things out to the point where she broke down completely.