The other reason for the fallow period.

To continue merrily on from last time, there's a great reason Mike spends the next year buying Lawrence's bullshit about how Martha was playing games with the both of them that isn't "Michael isn't smart enough to realize that Lawrence has never been his friend or actually much liked him"; said reason is that Mike has to be available to spread the bullshit around when Gordon throws himself at Allyson this autumn and be a different sort of lousy friend: the friend who's sort of right for all the wrong reasons.

This is because he's probably supposed to be a stand-in for the jaded washouts and social outcasts who warned Lindy that the person she stood no chance with wasn't that into her. This allows him to be a leafy green background of idiot cynicism to the foul-smelling bloom of Gordon's repellent entitlement. A real friend would tell Gordon that no one is going to like those appalling and vulgar spastic fits he throws; a Mike says dames is poison because someone out to get him told him a lie and he's too desperate and stupid to ask the right questions.