Dave on Demand: Boss leaves 'The Office' without a goodbye

Farewell, Michael Scott. We will not see your like again. At least, we hope not.

The Office put the capstone this week on one of TV's most ingenious performances: Steven Carell as Scott, the middling manager of Dunder Mifflin's Scranton outpost.

The show minted a new genre: the cringecom, shaped in large part by Carell's uncanny ability to convey the chronic discomfort Michael felt in his own skin.

We've all had bosses like this guy: someone who is spectacularly unsuited to supervising others, but who is convinced he is masterful at it.

This week's episode could have been titled "Death of a Salesman." Michael was always selling. Not paper products, but his inflated vision of himself.

Television has showcased funny horrors in the workplace before (for instance, Dabney Coleman in just about every show he ever did).

But there never has been a character as transparently phony and conflicted as Michael. All his flaws were on display in his valedictory episode.

There were the presents he solemnly gave each member of the staff as if he were the Wizard of Oz, bestowing personalized miracles. Except it was all junk that saved him the bother of wheeling in a garbage bin to clean up his workplace.

There was his decision to leave for his new life in Colorado the day before he had told everyone he was departing, thus sparing them the emotional trauma of saying goodbye to the most important man in their dreary lives.

It was one of Michael's patented acts of warped magnanimity. He was always big on noble gestures, but only if he received abundant credit and gratitude for them.

That led to his woeful, teary exit from the office as he realized he had out-weaseled himself by eliminating the very thing he wanted most: a dramatic and sentimental send-off.

Finally, there was what looked like a genuinely heartfelt last moment with Pam at the airport. We couldn't hear Michael's parting words, but Pam reported back that what he hoped for most was that the airline would upgrade him.

That was Michael Scott in a nutshell: a guy who paid coach fare but expected first-class treatment.

Cupid, lay down your bow. In the same way it uses smoke machines on stage, American Idol is trying hard to put love in the air. No matter how uncooperative the finalists are.

For weeks the show has been striving, Noah-like, to pair up the singers. Notice how often they threw together Scotty and Lauren? Hey, they both have Southern accents; they're halfway to the altar.

Except they discovered that Scotty has chemistry only with a mirror. So this week, they had Lauren pull, seemingly at random, a handsome young audience member out of his aisle seat to flirt with while she sang "Where You Lead."

People who were in the amphitheater say it became abundantly obvious that Lauren's stage beau was a plant, an actor who ducked out right after the song.

Idol has really been pushing romance for Casey and Haley. First it was Ryan Seacrest's naughty little insinuations; after this week's duet, Steven Tyler said to Casey: "Hey, weird beard! How much in love with Haley are you? Come on, it showed, man, it showed."

You're lucky you got booted early, Pia. Because they'd have had you making goo-goo eyes at Jacob.

This isn't a singing competition; it's a dating service.

Ad nauseam. During Entertainment Tonight's coverage of the middle-of-the-night rehearsal of the royal wedding processional (hey, pomp and circumstance don't happen by themselves), correspondent Nancy O'Dell informed us this would be a perfect time for her to capture footage of the Cavalry Guard with her incredible new BlackBerry tablet.

As the camera lingered in extreme closeup on the gadget in O'Dell's hands, we got a breathless voice-over from anchor Mary Hart, extolling the tablet's unprecedented power and convenience.

Between them, O'Dell and Hart mentioned the name of the device seven times in 30 seconds.

Congrats, E.T., you have brought the medium to a new low in hucksterism.

I'll take "Crushes" for $100, Alex. Best line of the week was ditzy Laurie (Busy Philipps) on Cougar Town explaining her surprising dominance on the bar's trivia machine.

"I used to watch Jeopardy! every day," she said. "Because I had a major lady rod for Alex Trebek. Then I found out he was Canadian. Gross!"