Traveling Salesmen

"Traveling Salesmen" is the thirteenth episode of the third season of the American version of The Office and the show's 41st overall. The episode was written by Michael Schur, Lee Eisenberg, and Gene Stupnitsky, and it was directed by series creator and executive producer Greg Daniels. It first aired on January 11, 2007 in the United States on NBC.

The series depicts the everyday lives of office employees in the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. In this episode, the sales team goes out on sales calls, with Michael Scott (Steve Carell) and Andy Bernard (Ed Helms), Stanley Hudson (Leslie David Baker) and Ryan Howard (B. J. Novak), Phyllis Lapin (Phyllis Smith) and Karen Filippelli (Rashida Jones), and Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) and Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) pairing up. Andy tries to show Dwight in a bad light to Michael, Karen learns of Jim's previous crush on Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer), and Angela Martin (Angela Kinsey) forgets to hand in some important documents to New York, so her secret boyfriend Dwight does it for her.

Krasinski believed "Traveling Salesmen" was the first episode to give a real glimpse into Dwight and Angela's relationship, and much of the plot centered on the two. It aired to an estimated 10.2 million viewers according to Nielsen Media Research. It was positively received by television critics. Along with "The Return", NBC later re-broadcast "Traveling Salesmen" as a combined hour-long episode as part of their sweeps week. As a result, both episodes underwent editing which included the addition of four minutes of previously unseen footage.