The Injury

"The Injury" is the twelfth episode of the second season of the American comedy television series The Office and the show's eighteenth episode overall. The episode was written by Mindy Kaling, who also acts in the show as Kelly Kapoor, and directed by Bryan Gordon. "The Injury" first aired in the United States on January 12, 2006, on NBC. The episode guest starred Marcus York as Billy Merchant.

The series depicts the everyday lives of office employees in the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. In the episode, Michael Scott (Steve Carell) accidentally burns his foot on his George Foreman Grill, but insists on coming to work anyway. When none of his employees, except for Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson), help him, Michael feels under-appreciated. Meanwhile, Dwight starts acting strangely nice to everyone, especially Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer).

"The Injury" was originally conceived by Greg Daniels to be a humorous follow-up to the previous episode, "Booze Cruise". According to B. J. Novak, the episode started out as an idea in the writing room that just "spun out of control". The episode was originally going to be called "My Grilled Foot", but it was later changed when the writers decided the name was "too weird". "The Injury" received widespread acclaim from critics and is widely regarded by critics as one of the show's greatest episodes. The episode earned a Nielsen rating of 5.1 in the 18–49 demographic and was viewed by 10.3 million viewers, making it, at the time, the highest-rated episode of the series.