The Office Fans Found This Dwight One-Liner Oddly Genuine
"The Office" delighted viewers for nine seasons and remains one of the hottest streaming properties around more than nine years after the finale aired. Perhaps no character had more perplexing quirks than top salesman and beet farmer Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson), and it's hard to imagine the show being quite the same without Dwight's social awkwardness, single-minded pursuit of the manager's job, and testosterone-fueled boastings.
Wilson also brought depth and charm to the character, and Dwight eventually got a happy ending, marrying his soulmate Angela Martin (Angela Kinsey) and inheriting his family's substantial farm as the series ended. The domesticated fate definitely offset some of Dwight's weirder moments, including when he observed that "The eyes are the groin of the head," "There's too many people on this earth. We need a new plague," and "You couldn't handle my undivided attention." But there was one utterance that came during a rare moment of restraint and offered a glimpse into the deeper Dwight that lived beneath the bragging and strutting.
Dwight tries in his strange way to help Ryan become a better salesman
In Season 3, Episode 5, "Initiation," temp Ryan Howard (B.J. Novak) asks Dwight if he can join him on a sales call. This is an opportunity Dwight seizes to devise a gauntlet of odd farm-related challenges for Ryan. Despite planting a beet seed and walking the Long Lonely Walk of Loneliness, Ryan's sales pitch to Axelrod Ltd is soundly rejected. As they walk out of the client's building, Ryan asks what he did wrong and Dwight responds, "Not everything's a lesson, Ryan, sometimes you just fail." It's a sincere, gentle moment, and might be the first time we see Dwight drop his blustery persona for anyone other than Angela. The line is fatalistic and hopeful at the same time, guiding Ryan to a place where he can compartmentalize this one failure and move on. This wasn't lost on the likes of CinemaBlend, which praised "Initiation" as the best episode in nine seasons of "The Office."
Redditor u/steikul recently posted a meme highlighting the exchange, writing, "Despite Dwight's weird 'training,' this one sentence is a [bit of] really genuine, useful advice for Ryan and us." Rejection is a key part of sales, and commenter u/Ho2Me9 noted that "Even the best hear 'No' more often than they hear 'Yes.'" Despite his huge ego, Dwight is genuinely trying to help Ryan as best as he is able. It's his skewed sense of self-importance that makes it bizarre, but he manages to quickly set that aside when Ryan comes to him in a honest moment of vulnerability.