Ryan Howard

*- Ryan's most famous reoccurring quote.*

*- Ryan's infamous quote from the episode "The Secret".*

## Evil-Doer

Escape his unhealthy relationship with Kelly Kapoor. (Succeeded for a good while; Later Failed)
Become an important executive for Dunder Mifflin. (Briefly Succeeded; Later Failed; Presumably Ongoing)
Get away with committing fraud.
Get revenge on Jim Halpert.
(Both Failed)
Manipulate Michael Scott into supporting his startup business. (Partially Succeeded; Presumably Ongoing)

### Hobby:

Writing poems.
Taking photographs.
Manipulating people to do what he wants.
Do whatever he wants whenever he wants.
Watching TV.
Doing paperwork.
Planning.
Scheming.
Bowling.

### Crimes:

Fraud
Battery
Scamming
Harassment
Corruption
Sabotage
Stalking (Implied)
Theft
Conspiracy
Arson (Unintentionally)
Public Endangerment (Unintentionally)
Child Abandonment

### Type of Villain:

Arrogant Manipulative Businessman

**Ryan Bailey Howard**, also occasionally known as **Fire Guy** or **Temp**, is one of the few main anti-villainous protagonists of the American comedy-sitcom *The Office*.

He is an arrogant, toxic, insecure, manipulative, sociopathic, chaotic, tentful, threatful and hostile salesman, former receptionist, and convicted fraudster who works at Dunder Mifflin. He was a temporary employee until he is promoted as Vice President of Sales. However, David Wallace demotes him when the Michael Scott Paper Company is acquired by Dunder Mifflin. He also worked at the Michael Scott Paper Company until the acquisition. Ryan was convicted of fraud for misleading the shareholders of Dunder Mifflin, and was arrested. However, he was released and required to do community service.

He was portrayed by B.J. Novak.

## Biography:

Little is known about Ryan's early life, but it is revealed in a deleted scene from "Diversity Day" that he grew up in Scranton and attended Penn State University. In the webisode "The Story of Subtle Sexuality", Ryan mentions that his parents live in separate houses. At the beginning of the series, Ryan is a temporary employee at the Scranton branch of the fictitious paper distributor Dunder Mifflin who joined the staff in the first episode, earning him the nickname "The Temp".

## Personality:

From what is seen throughout the series, Ryan is a interesting character to dive through. Through most of the first seasons in the series, Ryan is a pretty insecure and occasional toxic, yet still well meaning person just frightened at his crazy and whacky boss with his antics. He showed some exceptional great care towards others through seasons 1-6 while staying a well mannered person. Though later one through the series, around seasons 6-9, Ryan becomes a more manipulative, toxic, rude, arrogant, egotistical, salty and all around horrible person, while still having some care for his friends outside of work, and presumably some care for his parents, Ryan is mostly shown only caring about himself. Even committing Public Endangerment and Fraud just to save his own skin, he is shown being incredibly selfish and hateful towards others who do not agree with his ways or happen to be very different from him, and constantly gossips about how he is better then most other people, even having a "list" to mark down who he will get revenge on after being fired from company vice president. In one of the episodes of season 7, while working under Michael Scott's personal company, Ryan would occasionally manipulate Michael to do what he wanted, usually lying it was something else entirely, he also would do this very often when working under David Wallace as Dunder Mifflin's Vice President, manipulating others who happen to either be less smart or more gullible than him. In the end, Ryan was still a chaotic, crazed and criminally terrible person. He, later around season 9, learns from most of his mistakes but not much of them, while still portrayed as a arrogant anti-hero, he still contains some oh his villainous behaviour. Aside from fraud, and every now and then harassment, Ryan did not get much punishment from his immoral acts in the series final and still accompanied his terrible behaviour.

Ryan has an on-again, off-again relationship with office chatterbox Kelly Kapoor, starting from season 4. The relationship has been troubled from the outset, for Ryan desires a very casual relationship, whereas the overbearing Kelly wants to get married and have children as soon as possible. The two "hooked up" on the eve of Valentine's Day, although Ryan was brusque with her the following day. Things seemed to be starting up between the two again during the office "Casino Night". Ryan and Kelly are later seen dating in "The Convention". Ryan met Kelly's parents during Diwali, but they were not impressed by his low income, desire to travel, and saving up money to buy an Xbox, rather than start a family. Ryan has more than once tried unsuccessfully to break up with Kelly, with one of the more notable occurrences after "The Merger" episode.

Even though Ryan and Kelly continue to bicker, he is sweet to her in the episode "Safety Training". B. J. Novak has stated that Ryan and Kelly are going strong, well into the third season: "I think Ryan and Kelly is a relationship that everyone has been in. It's a puzzle as to why they're still together, but I think Ryan loves being loved-- even though he won't admit it. He lost Michael's love so he has to take in more love from Kelly."

After accepting a promotion to Corporate by telephone in "The Job", an elated Ryan immediately breaks up with Kelly, telling her "You and I are done," with a smile.

In "Nepotism", Ryan advertises his website WUPHF in the Lip Dub the Scranton Branch is making. In "The Sting", he helps Jim and Dwight spy on Danny. When they try to hatch a plan, Jim tells Ryan he is a "hot new executive" and Ryan tells them he wants to work at Google. In "Costume Contest", he dresses as Justin Bieber in hopes of winning the Scranton book of savings worth $15,000 in savings. In "Christening", he makes fun of the Youth Group pastor. In "WUPHF.com", Ryan tries to get people to invest in his company. When he reveals he will be broke in nine days, Kelly comes in and tries to invest. Then Ryan tells them that he has an offer from the Washington University Public Health Fund (WUPHF), only for Darryl to realize that they are only interested because of the domain name. Ryan tries to weasel more money from Michael, but is caught by surprise when Michael tells all the other investors that while he will not agree to divest their WUPHF holdings (they need Michael's assent because he holds more than 50% of the shares) he does think Ryan is shallow and a bad friend, and Ryan looks horrified when Michael says he has those nine days to make things right. At the end of the episode, Ryan tells everybody he has sold WUPHF.com.

Ryan shows more immoral traits in "Garage Sale", when he sells jars of his mother's homemade Pesto sauce, which she intended to just be for family, for his own profits. Ryan is also in the group that helps Michael think of a good way to propose to Holly. When Michael does propose to Holly, he has some employees jokingly ask Holly to marry them. He states that Ryan was the only one he was concerned about.

In "Michael's Last Dundies", he is shown to be hurt that Danny Cordray broke his streak of winning the "Hottest in the Office" award, although he tries to hide it. Ryan's contribution to the office workers' version of "Seasons of Love" is that Michael helped him get off drugs. In "Goodbye, Michael", Michael gives Ryan his St. Pauli Girl beer sign, but only after making sure he is not prone to seizures. Ryan seems to genuinely appreciate the gift. In "The Inner Circle", Ryan lies to Deangelo about his job at the Scranton Branch. While Kelly is angry, she goes along with it in exchange for Ryan being a dutiful boyfriend. However, Kelly soon exposes Ryan as a fraud after reprimanding her severely about her paycheck in front of Deangelo. However, because Deangelo prefers Ryan over Kelly, he appoints him as her official supervisor.

In "Dwight K. Schrute, (Acting) Manager", after Dwight accidentally misfires a gun in the office and as Toby is filling out the gun violence accident form, the HR rep asks the staff if they felt like this was a terrorist incident. Ryan, who is clearly enjoying Dwight's situation, openly says that he felt terrorized. In "Search Committee", Ryan reveals to the camera that he believes Angela's boyfriend Robert is gay, because he "liked" Ryan's Facebook photos at 3:00 am. During a staff debate over who should be hired for the manager position, Ryan states he wants an outsider. While Jim thinks he is referring to the applicants outside of the office, Ryan says he meant an "outsider" as someone who is on the margins of society, and suggests a homeless person. Ryan laments that he got away with everything while Michael was his boss, and it was not good for him. He says he wants guidance and leadership, but does not want the new manager to boss him around.

## Storyline:

In early episodes, he is shown to be uncomfortable with his professional relationship with his boss, Michael Scott. Michael often forces Ryan to carry out menial tasks for him while at the same time, becoming obsessed with Ryan's personal life as well as gaining Ryan's friendship. As the series progresses, Ryan begins to display a great deal of contempt and disdain for both his coworkers and his job. This becomes more apparent when Ryan is promoted in "The Job" to work at Dunder Mifflin's corporate office in New York. This leads to Ryan becoming an egotistical braggart despite lackluster sales skills. In the season 4 finale "Goodbye, Toby", Ryan is arrested for committing fraud. He is eventually released and required to work community service.

In the season 5 premiere, Ryan returns to the Scranton branch after Michael arranges for him to work Pam's job. However, his malevolent aspirations to climb back to the top of the corporate ladder are revealed when he adds Jim and Kevin to a list of people who "will be sorry" when he returns to the top. In a deleted scene, he would add Dunder Mifflin CFO David Wallace to that list after Wallace called and became irate upon learning of Ryan's return to the Scranton branch.

Ryan was a member of a fraternity in college and holds an MBA from the University of Scranton's Kania School of Management, which he earned during the second and third seasons. His dream is to one day own his own business.

Throughout the series, Ryan changes his persona every year beginning with the third season. When offered a job for Corporate in the season 3 finale, Ryan relocates to New York City and adopts a nouveau riche persona: becoming extroverted, growing a beard, wearing nice suits, and getting $200 haircuts. But he subsequently ends up partying hard and getting addicted to drugs and alcohol. His downfall culminates in misleading Dunder-Mifflin's shareholders via his website's sales numbers, effectively committing fraud as Oscar Martinez later claims.

In season 5, he returns with blonde highlights and a "work hard, plays hard" attitude. He works for Michael at the Paper Company and still tries to keep his work ethic and strive to do good.

In seasons 6–8, Ryan seems to be devoid of many of his former morals and ambitions. He does not care to work, reads poetry, and initiates various creative projects. He switches clothing, from wearing fanciful scarves, fake glasses, suspenders, bow ties, trench coats, etc. and tries to create an "unsolvable attitude". He stays at Dunder Mifflin, but his position is unspecified; Michael mentions that he works there full-time in "WUPHF.com". Many of the staff, most notably Jim and Pam, note Ryan's ineptitude as an employee and that he sponges off his parents by living with them and driving his mom's car.

## Trivia:

* B. J. Novak's continued inclusion in the opening credits was sometimes questioned in the later years of the series, as the role of Ryan Howard had been significantly downplayed since season 5, and was now considered to be no more significant than other characters whose actors were not given an opening credit. Novak officially left the opening credits in the Season 9 premiere and was credited as a guest star in the two episodes he appears in.

* Ryan appears in nearly every episode with only 9 exceptions, with him being absent in only seasons 4, 5, & 9.

* B. J. Novak was absent from twelve episodes from "The Surplus" through "Two Weeks", making his return in "Dream Team". During this absence, actor B. J. Novak was actually filming *Inglourious Basterds* with Quentin Tarantino.

## Gallery:

Ryan's hipster wannabe costume.Ryan mortified about dating Kelly (She asked him out, and he didn't like her).Jim looking at Ryan, and his receptionist spot.Ryan getting yelled at by Stanley for flirting with his teenage daughter."Stanley yelled at me today, that was one of the most freighting experiences of my life."Ryan dumping Kelly, as well as getting a promoted call from David Wallace as he's promoted to Dunder Mifflin's Vice President.Ryan getting arrested, as it shows online, him in cuffs by the Pennsylvania state police.Ryan's list, as he explains to the camera crew that once he get's back on top in the paper business he'll get revenge on those who wronged him.Ryan and Dwight manipulating/threatening the IT guy Nick to do their bidding.Ryan upset that he accidentally caused a fire in the Dunder Mifflin office.Ryan upset after he get's furiously yelled at by David Wallace, for committing fraud.Vice President Ryan beside Michael as the Dunder Mifflin workers argue about "Whomever" in sentences.