Men At Work ‘Devil’s Threesome’: The Berduda Triangle

For the first few minutes, it really appeared like ‘Devil’s Threesome’ was going to be an interesting look at deconstructing masculinity. But whatever hopes I had were dashed by the same pointless misogynistic tendencies we saw in the pilot, slowly losing speed as the episode continues until the ending, where the plot and anything that happened to its characters was thrown out the window for a string of cheap, laughless jokes.

It all begins rather innocently; Neal is trying to get some free time from Amy – to clean out his DVR, which everyone universally recognizes as lame – and Tyler is trying to write an article about a woman’t thoughts. Problem is, the only thing he can muster is up is a bunch of sentences about yogurts and pirates. So Neal sends Amy off with Tyler to learn about boring girl stuff while he sits at home and watches Iron Chef and Hoarders. Of course, Tyler goes way too far with getting in touch with his sensitive side, something we’re shown in the fashion of him complaining about his mom to random women and trying to get his friends to cross their legs and drink wine… and to top if off, it’s all written off at the end of the episode when he dismisses woman’s activities as being super boring and pointless.

The problems really begin with Amy, whose presence is void of personality. She only exists as a device to certain plot lines: Neal can’t dirty talk to her, Neal can’t impress her father, Tyler wants to learn about girl stuff. There’s nothing more to her than a few pieces of dialogue, and that cardboard nature doesn’t bode when she’s trying to interact with the other characters on the show – or trying to teach them anything useful. What do we know about her outsides of a few sexual quirks and typical annoying girlfriend-y behavior.

But this doesn’t just pertain to Amy; every female on the show gets the same treatment (at least its fair, right?). The titular plot line of the episode has Gibbs and Milo involved in an awkward man-woman-man threesome (HAHAHAHAHA penis jokes) with a woman who literally only has two lines in the entire episode, and that’s how she can only have sex with two men at once. Now I’m not asking for her life story, or to get some advanced sort of understanding from a one-off character (and one with the acting pedigree of being a WWE girl… I’m not joking), but it’s part of a disturbing trend of mindless females who are nothing but opportunities for tired sexual humor.

There was a chance the show would avoid it when Gibbs fails to participate (reducing it to a boring, unfunny twosome): I nearly screamed at the screen for Tyler to use his powers of female feelings and provide Gibbs for someone to listen to. But the writers apparently thought it would be funnier to have Gibbs and Milo GO BACK for ANOTHER threesome (more two guys banging the same girl jokes!!!!) and continue Tyler’s cliched tirade of female behavior jokes… none of which really inspire any laughs.

In other words, it appears Men at Work is quickly showing it has no idea wheat to do when it comes to writing good comedic scripts, outside of the most basic A leads to B leads to C storyline…. and without some kind of pathos to make it relatable outside of “I have male friends” and “girls talk with their faces and have sexholes”, it just feels like the show has nothing to say at all about modern males, and simply exists to drop some Netflix references and a string of one-night stand stories.

Grade: D

Other thoughts/observations:

– I love the credit sequence at the beginning of the show… but it doesn’t fit with the show’s tone. Every image is of a laborer – which these four are not, being writers and editors…. it would’ve been just as good if they used guys standing around printing presses and looking at ancient pieces of parchment, or standing in front of some old-fashioned bar scene… and would’ve made more sense.

– with a fairly inexperienced writing team, I expect some sort of familiar tone to storylines and the most basic of comedic structures. But there’s a difference between a fun interpretation of a formula, and a completely mindless imitiation of stories we’ve seen done better elsewhere (and in most cases, twenty years ago).

– Not a good sign when your first joke of the episode is your best: the Bell Biv Davoe joke was pretty funny.

– Gibbs… lose the fucking hat.

– last week, it was Milo in an Ithaca shirt (which I STILL demand an explanation for), this week it’s Neal rocking a Columbia tee. We need some origin stories.

What did you think of ‘Devil’s Threesome’? Feel free to leave a comment, and stop back next week, when we try once again to figure out what this show is trying to be about (or make fun of it for failing! Everybody wins!)