Men At Work ‘Pilot/Milo Full of Grace’: Cutting And Pasting

Generic premises are both the bane and the beauty of sitcom pilots. They provide both a familiar platform to draw viewers in on a weekly basis, and an opportunity to take archetypes and mold them into unique characters as the show progresses. Men At Work is certainly one of those comedies – essentially its about four guys hanging out and working – but after a terrible pilot, and shrug-worthy second episode, it still remains to be seen whether the creative team has the abilities to do anything original with the leads on the show.

We really won’t know until we see an episode that’s written by someone other than creator Breckin Meyer (yes, of Road Trip and Franklin and Bash); neither of his two opening scripts do a good job nailing down any details about the four main characters. There’s Milo, who gets dumped in the opening scene by his girlfriend (Amy Smart, in a cameo); Neil, the guy with glasses; Gibbs, the black guy who bangs everyone; and Tyler, who has pretty hair.

The pilot is really just awfully written. There are the standard three plot lines, all of which go nowhere, ending as lazily as they began. Milo gets dumped, drunk and tries unsuccessfully to have rebound sex (that he’s encouraged by everyone else to do), Gibbs bang’s Tyler’s maid, and Neil’s girlfriend wants him to talk dirty. None of them reveal anything about them that we wouldn’t have already guessed (oh the nerdy guy is self-conscious in bed? WOW!), and they don’t ever really reach any kind of funny confusion.

The Tyler/Gibbs argument is a great example. Gibbs doesn’t sleep with his roommate until almost halfway through the episode, and Tyler yells during the bar scene for a minute or so, and then Gibbs just goes “I’m sorry” and they move on. It leaves one wondering what the hell the point of wasting five minutes of film on – although considering the string of unfunny jokes (most of which were references played out in 2002 like Sixth Sense jokes) and super-predictable outcomes certainly don’t suggest they had anything else to do with their 21.5 minutes.

‘Milo Full of Grace’ is at least funnier in spots than the pilot: Gibbs’s inability to function without coffee, as well as him having a caring, magnetic personality that isn’t completely misogynistic was enjoyable to watch, as was the first half of Milo’s experiment in ‘diving in’ to writing a feature about drug trafficking. Again, we don’t learn a whole lot about the characters – like Neil, who just seems to be afraid of his girlfriend and her family – but at least there are some genuine attempts at some workplace humor that don’t completely fall flat.

‘Grace’ eventually tails off into asshole jokes and bad ‘man’ humor in the last few scenes, but it wasn’t as offensively thoughtless at the pilot was. Men at Work will be probably be just a mediocre workplace show with a lot of old jokes and plots, that finds a niche between Family Guy and Big Bang Theory reruns. But there’s some chemistry between the main cast that most shows don’t figure out for four or five episodes and with some writing tweaks, Men at Work could quickly grow into a better, more evolved version of itself. Probably a pipe dream, but it’s always good to hold out a little hope, right?

‘Pilot’: F

‘Milo Full of Grace’: C-

other thoughts/observations:

– as a graduate of Ithaca College with a writing degree, I demand to know the story behind Milo wearing the Ithaca t-shirt at the end of the pilot, since his character is also a writer (if it’s just a lazy Road Trip reference, I’ll be pissed).

– JK Simmons is the go-to fast-talking asshole these days on television. Love it.

– I think half the reason I liked the second episode better was because it moved far away from Milo being a sad, dumped guy being cheered up by his friends. It’s too bad there’s probably going to be a lot of skirt-chasing and broad fratboy jokes, because the material without that crap was the strongest of the first two episodes.

what did you think of Men at Work‘s premiere? I’m going to give this at least a few weeks of viewing to see what happens when we get some different writers and storylines going, so this will be part of the Friday summer coverage for now. I’ll have a full article next week with all the Processed Media summer coverage, so stop by and check it out!