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Workaholics: Season 5 (TV)
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Paramount Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (8th July 2015). |
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The Film
 The toxically self-affirming friendship of college dropouts turned TelAmeriCorps office slackers narcissistic to the point of delusion Adam (Adam DeVine), sensible yet insecure Ders (Anders Holm), and micro-penised stoner Blake (Blake Anderson) takes some new turns in the fifth season of the Comedy Central sitcom Workaholics even as they try to stave off adulthood with endless partying, drugs, and schemes that seem to be more about having fun than getting rich quick. Comparable in some ways to It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia with the principals also serving as writers along with regular appearances from co-creator Kyle Newacheck as drug dealer Karl characters acting in their own self-interest seeming to be organic to their friendship, revenge schemes that almost never succeed (although the trio have a way of deceiving themselves into believing they have) or are anticlimactic, or seeming opportunities for personal growth that somehow lead back to the status quo of the trio's friendship. Of course the jokes are juvenile, but the series proves most successful at eliciting laughs not from the surprise sight gags and throwaway jokes but from the obvious setting up of the episodes final set-pieces (from the "Blood Drive" bloodbath to the "Dorm Daze" porn shoot raid). Returning regulars include "office funny guy" Montez (Erik Griffin), sad sack Bill (Billy Stevenson), "mole rat" Waymond(Waymond Lee), foulmouthed, ill-tempered boss Alice (Maribeth Monroe) and her long-suffering PA Jillian (Jillian Bell). Season Five Episode Breakdown: 5.1: "Dorm Daze" Ders, Adam, and Blake head to college to recruit for TelAmeriCorps where Ders goes to war with the Coast Guard, Blake's acting juices get flowing and he is coerced and exploited by adult filmmakers, and Adam is forced to examine his fascination with pornography in a female sexuality class ("Porn stars make little boys ham sammiches too"). 5.2: "Front Yard Wrestling" The guys attempt to raise the rent money with a cable access "Rentlemania" front yard wrestling show, but Adam and Blake (in the offensively racist persona of "Eskimofo") may actually kill each other if they are not evicted first by landlord Del (Ben Stiller). 5.3: "Speedo Racer" Ders "unleashes the Ders" on his high school swim team rival (Alan Ritchson) to win the respect of his unrequited first love (Analeis Lorig), attempting to swim with a Viagara-induced erection and a penetrating trauma by trophy while Adam and Blake vie for the interest of a Filipino/black ("a Pinot Noir") alumnus (Chyna Layne) whose yearbook photo inspired many a "crank" session. 5.4: "Menergy Crisis" When Adam and Ders kick Blake out of the titular group before their first performance at the TelAmericaCorps end of the year surplus office party, he not-so-cleverly masterminds a campaign of sabotage. 5.5: "Gayborhood" Eager to win a trip from an upcoming trust-building retreat, Adam, Blake, and Ders try so hard to get to get to know each other on a more profound level that they wind up inside each other at a neighborhood Pride Party. Jerry O'Connell guest stars. 5.6: "Ditch Day" Fed up with their boss Alice's harsh treatment, the guys organize the staff "Ditch Day" party to end all parties thanks to the money neighborhood drug dealer Karl is paying them to safeguard a mysterious package (prompting repeated iterations of 's murderously bad line-reading of "What's in the box?!" from Se7en) 5.7: "Gramps DeMamp is Dead" When his grandfather dies, Adam and his immature father (Jack Black) steal his corpse from his gold-digging wife (Amy Yasbeck) who parlayed his savings into a multi-million dollar pizza chain that employs most of the family to give him a proper DeMamp send-off (cremation via pizza oven). Steve Howey also guests as "The Blue Knight". 5.8: "Blood Drive" The TelAmeriCorps blood drive becomes a bloodbath when Adam is willing to drain himself dry to win an appearance from Dolph Lundgren, hemophobic Ders looks for a substitute donor, and weed-addled Blake teams up with Jillian to discover what an actor with a genius IQ may really be doing with blood (it involves the movie Universal Soldier). 5.9: "Wedding Thrashers" It may not be wedding bells for Adam, but he wants Blake and Ders to help him realize his bachelor party bucket list before accompanying socialite Hilary (Ashley Hinshaw) to her sister's wedding ("A rich person's wedding! Come on, man. They probably serve, like, tiger meat or something cool!"). 5.10: "Trivia Pursuits" Eighties movie buff Ders skips out on Adam's and Blake's trivia scam when he is called into work, bring down upon them the wrath of eighties Asian greasers who want their Neverending Story Falcor Fal-car ("How can I be Bastian when I can barely read?"). 5.11: "The Slump" After losing his position as top salesman when the impressions he uses on calls are determined offensive, Adam loses all confidence in himself and his friends fear the return of "Saddam Crymamp" (Remember what happened when Entourage went off the air.). 5.12: "Peyote It Forward" The guys are tasked with looking after the eight year old son of a buyer, but Adam has "Bill Cosby'd" them by spiking their smoothies with peyote ("We Seth Rogen ourselves all the time. This is different. I was trying to Joe Rogan us"). 5.13: "Tac in the Day" After a co-worker is traumatized by eating a pot cookie found in the guys' cubicle, they must remind Alice of just how she got to be the boss to keep from losing their jobs with a 2008 flashback when they dropped out to work at TeleAmeriCorp ("It's Steve Jobs, not Steve College!"). Tom Arnold and Sugar Ray's Mark McGrath guest.
Video
The MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen presentations of these high definition-lensed episodes look as slick as expected for a sitcom that seems meticulously produced than written.
Audio
Audio options include Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo downmix tracks. The surrounds are used mainly for music and gags with much of the mix being front-oriented. Optional English SDH subtitles are also included.
Extras
Extras start off with a blooper reel (6:08) that consists mainly of the actors getting tongue-tied or accidentally addressing one another with their real names (the gaffes that appear during the end credits of a couple of the episodes are funnier). The deleted scenes (6:07) offer an extended "walk of shame" from "Gayborhood" and a capper to "Dorm Daze" in which Adam admits that the internet may have warped him. The Dolph Lundgren Tribute (0:26) and DeMamp Camp Vol. 2 (1:06) are the full versions of videos that appear during "Blood Drive", while #FreetheButtCheeks (0:35) is a highlight reel of Adam, Blake, Ders, and the crew mooning each other during "Menergy Crisis". The Season 5 Trailer (2:06) - excerpted heavily on the discs' main menus - is an amusing pastiche of action movie cliches that have absolutely nothing to do with the actual show. Behind the Scenes of the Season 5 Trailer (3:19) finds the cast gushing over the all of the action movie cliches they were able to indulge in for the trailer. Drugs on Seasons 5 (0:43) and Acting vs. Writing (1:55) were shot during the trailer's production but pertain to what viewers will be seeing on the actual series.
Overall
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