That box is the Special File in New York

June 2, 2011 1:39 PM

What are the reference points for the final scene of the Office (US) Season 2 Episode 21, "Conflict Resolution?"

(For those who haven't seen it, I am sorry I am not tech savvy enough to find and link the clip)

At the end of the episode in question Toby takes a file folder box full of complaints and puts it on a shelf filled with rows and rows of boxes that look exactly the same. This is my favorite scene of the US office because, to me, it represents the mundanity of office work specifically, and life in general.

Recently I saw a movie that ended the same way, with someone pushing a crate into a warehouse full of crates that looked exactly the same. What movie is this?

i am interested to know about similar instances in TV/Film/Literature. The end of "Spartacus" comes to mind.

posted by holdkris99 to society & culture (9 answers total)

That's from the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark
posted by 2bucksplus at 1:40 PM on June 2, 2011 [4 favorites]

You can read a description of that scene on Wikipedia under "Plot".
posted by 2bucksplus at 1:41 PM on June 2, 2011

Here's a low quality youtube clip of that scene.
posted by jourman2 at 1:44 PM on June 2, 2011

The scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark is meant to me much more ominous than the haha-office-work-is-boring-and-repetitive scene in the office, in case you're trying to draw thematic comparisons.
posted by phunniemee at 1:45 PM on June 2, 2011

Ha, someone actually did a mashup of this already.
posted by jourman2 at 1:46 PM on June 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

That also shows up in the first and last episodes of the first season of the X-Files, as a closing scene.
posted by rossination at 1:50 PM on June 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

OK, Cool. "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

The scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark is meant to me much more ominous than the haha-office-work-is-boring-and-repetitive scene in the office

Maybe, maybe. I don't know. That scene in the Office always fills me with dread and gives me that kind of empty feeling.
posted by holdkris99 at 1:50 PM on June 2, 2011

The Office scene is meant to invoke the mundane, meaningless, never-changing world that Toby lives in.

The Raiders scene is meant to be an ironic twist that works on several different levels at once.

* The Ark is literally a divine artifact, and it's being stored in a dim, faceless warehouse.
* Indy tells Marion that the Army doesn't know what they're dealing with. Not only do they not know, they don't care to know. It's enough for them that Hitler's plan has been foiled.
* About the mid-point of the movie, Belloq, the villain, makes a speech about artifacts -- he contrasts how his cheap watch is worthless today, but if you bury it in the sand for a thousand years, it will become priceless. On the other hand, the Ark is priceless right now, but it's going to be buried anyway.
* The Army official says they have "top men" working on the problem. Umm, yeah.
* After all the adventure and peril, the Ark is once again lost, but in different circumstances.
* The shot of the warehouse visually evokes the "map room" of the lost city of Tanis. Men created a puzzle to hide the Ark, and now the Ark is hidden within another puzzle that sorta-kinda looks similar.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:52 PM on June 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

In South Park episode 88:

The episode ends with a view of an old man placing the original prints inside a box, which he then places inside a warehouse named "Red Cross 9/11 Relief Funds, a parody of Raiders of the Lost Ark itself, where at the end of said movie the Ark is hidden in a sealed wooden crate in a huge government warehouse.
posted by herbplarfegan at 4:42 PM on June 2, 2011