Workaholics: a bad trip to the bathroom

It’s like a stoner’s version of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia- just not as smart or funny. That’s Workaholics (Wednesdays, 10:30pm), Comedy Central’s newest offering. Like Sunny there are three males saying outrageous stuff, a female co-worker who throws in some barbs and crude antics. I mean, when your pilot is titled “Piss and Shit,” you’re not really pulling any punches with what’s about to come.

Workaholics stars three fresh faces, Anders Holm, Blake Anderson and Adam DeVine, who are also the executive producers. This is their show and the three actors’ characters go by their first names. Anders, Blake and Adam are straight out of college and entering the monotony of the work world but not giving up old habits. They’re smoking blunts, drinking 40s and throwing ‘poop dollars’ from the roof on a Sunday afternoon.

The show’s first scene sets its type of humor from the onset. The word ‘dick’ is thrown around more than you’d even hear in a college dorm, as Anders snaps a shot of his in the bathroom to ‘sext’ it to a girl. But dear friend Adam makes sure everyone at the party gets a text of this too. 

The references to private parts continue with the guys spitting gems such as ‘Dickembe Mutombo.’ Actually, the whole pilot does live up to its name. The central plot revolves around a drug test the guys forget about and are obviously not prepared for. Well, except Anders, who has clean urine samples in his desk drawer. These workaholics are very prepared for the rigors of the post-grad work world.

Except they mess that up and then begin a quest for clean urine that continues on for the rest of the episode. It’s like a stoner’s version of Odysseus’ journey that takes them far and wide, from a drugie’s house to a middle school. Take notice that you will actually see urine splashing around and if that makes you a little queasy this is certainly not the show for you. Frankly if you don’t like vulgarity, stay far away.

Workaholics is like the kid in high school that tries way too hard to be like the cool kids and fails. The three main actors, Holm, Anderson and DeVine all suffer from this terrible comedic plight of overacting. Holm is the most redeemable just because he doesn’t force the comedy quite as much as his counterparts Anderson and Devine. The most objectionable is Anderson, who long, scraggly hair and all plays a milque-toast version of the burnout stereotype.

You can’t blame the cast too much though. There’s only so much you can do when half the dialogue involves a piece of potty humor that you stop thinking is clever once you get your own locker in school. It’s nothing new.

A couple bright spots do shine through outside of the main characters. Jillian, played by Jillian Bell, is a deer in the headlights with a deadpan delivery of which the other actors should take note. Bell’s the most natural of any of them. Brian Huskey’s not a regular but has good comedic timing as the doctor who’s giving the drug test.

For the show to succeed, the guys will need foils to facilitate their antics, so guests could be important. There should be plenty of storylines to sustain the concept for a while but it won’t get a chance to if the writing doesn’t move past the three Ps: poop, pee and penis. It was starting to get old in the pilot and is going to get stale real quick.

If you like Arrested Development or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the sophomoric humor of Workaholics probably is not going to be your thing. It’s more down the line of MTV’s The Hard Times of RJ Berger. Workaholics is not one I would make a point to go back to week in and week out. But I’m curious to see where they go with it, so I’d check it out online again after a few more episodes to see if the characters become more fleshed out and the writing improves.  

Cynics hide your heads

Osama bin Laden is dead. It’s a headline Americans have been waiting to hear for nearly a decade, since that September morning when Al Qaeda wreaked sheer havoc on American soil.

Then, I was in seventh grade, sitting in math class unsure of what was going on. Not believing a kid who said planes had hit the Twin Towers. Later that day it became more clear- watching the horrific images on TV, the smell of stale smoke in the air as I walked home from the bus stop, watching fighter jets fly over my house before dinner. It was all too real.

The deaths were all too real for people in my community and those around me.

Now, I sit as a college senior, well older, watching a display of patriotism unseen since the days after 9/11/01 unfold; people screaming “U-S-A,” a kid riding a bike with an American flag in hand and American music blasting out of car windows and bars.

But while most celebrate and enjoy this moment where the U.S. conquered a symbol of death and devastation, others try to kill the excitement. These cynics spout how this means nothing, wondering why people are celebrating when the war is not over and gas prices and the unemployment rate are still high.

Yes, we all know these facts. But it has been awhile since the U.S. has done something this tangibly positive. That we can all agree upon as good. It’s no longer the Cold War era of politics where there’s one bad guy. There always seems to be a grey area, an enemy undefined. Bin Laden was a throwback, a central figure of evil and symbol for extremism.

Americans are not as naïve as some analysts are making them out to be. I don’t think they have some preconception that now war is over, that we are inherently safe from any further violence. Last night was like the end of a movie where the bad guy is killed and the whole movie theater cheers because the good guys took him out.

Except this is real.

Bin Laden orchestrated the death of thousands of people, tore families apart. For those loved ones of the lost, this moment is one they have been awaiting for years. Bin Laden was the prototypical arch-villain. This was not a celebration of death but catharsis.

Those cynics say students celebrating on college campuses are having “a frat party,” that we were too young to understand the scope of that day’s events. Again, they are judging what they don’t know. I may have just been a kid but I will never forget the fear of that September morning, not knowing what was next. I still don’t forget the different world we now live in because of that. My generation has grown up in a political world scoped by the word ‘TERROR.’ I’ve never known anything but strict security at the airport; don’t bat an eye at getting a pat down.

And as kids who maybe couldn’t process the complex gravitas of the attack at its time, we came to know bin Laden as the perpetrator of evil, a murderer of innocent Americans.

So cynics, go hide your heads. We know there are plenty of other problems to tackle. The President of the United States knows that.  No one thinks this is the end of adversity. But it is a victory. In sports, a regular season win is still a win, even if it’s not a championship. If you don’t get enough of those wins that some call “meaningless,” well, you don’t get a shot at the ultimate payoff.

A line from Mark Twain says it well: "I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."

Bin Laden and his minions didn’t just wish death. They carried it out. Now Americans revel in his obituary being written. One evil in a world of many is dead. There’s nothing wrong with celebrating that.