‘Workaholics’ And ‘The League’ — A Race Of Stupidity
by Frank Martin
Some shows just love to revel in stupidity. Their goal isn’t necessarily to make compelling character arcs or some profound plot that causes audiences to think and be moved. Their goal is to just be as dumb as possible while inciting laughs along the way. That can either come from physical slapstick comedy or ridiculous premises that cause the characters just to make one stupid decision after another. Two shows that handle this extremely well are Workaholics and The League.
Both shows are more or less designed as situational comedies. Starring Adam Devine, Workaholics is about a couple of young twenty-somethings who are roommates while working at a telemarketing agency. Starring Nick Kroll, The League is about a group of friends in a fantasy football league that they take way too seriously. Although the concepts of the shows are completely different, the similarities can be seen in how each of them handles a funeral. In The League, when a member of the league dies, the others find a way to sneak into the funeral home before the funeral and conduct a fantasy draft with the body. In Workaholics, one of the main characters steals his grandfather’s corpse because he was unhappy with the boring way in which his family members were going to send him off.
Watching both of these shows simultaneously can certainly have a factor on one’s intelligence. They go out of their way and work tremendously hard to create pure chaos through stupidity and dumb decisions. It’s almost as if both shows are in a race to see which can be as stupid as possible. Workaholics probably wins that battle, though. In The League, characters at least have jobs, children, and lives that they somehow maintain. In Workaholics, the characters barely have functioning lives. Still, it’s interesting to see how stupidity is used so successfully in comedy.
Workaholics and The League are both streaming on Hulu.
