Workaholics: “Trivia Pursuit”

Season five has seen the Workaholics actors writing themselves surprisingly emotional star vehicles. Anders Holm wrote “Speedo Racer,” which plumbed the depths of Ders’ self delusion about his past glories in the pool to moving (if gory) effect. And Blake Anderson’s “Menergy Crisis,” with its ridiculous (yet equally moving) solidarity anthem “Best Friends,” similarly found a theretofore unequaled balance of the heartfelt and the deeply, deeply silly. (It’s one of my favorite episode of Workaholics ever, honestly.) The show hasn’t abandoned its sloppy bro-comedy roots, but there have been flashes this season that the creators are looking to stretch themselves a bit. Tonight’s “Trivia Pursuit,” written by Holm, continues the trend—again, just a little—and Ders’ subplot and subsequent mini-breakdown finds another way into one of the guys’ heads, even as the episode speeds around in customary, yapping circles.
Never the most consistently crafted show, Workaholics splits the guys off from each other as each plot demands, but Ders’ separation from Adam and Blake has always been predicated on his pretensions to respectability (and the fact that he’s slightly older). Tonight is another instance of Ders attempting to set himself apart from his—as he sees them—less mature comrades, but, as has been the case most of the season, there’s a sweetness to his admittedly badly-conceived plan that’s based on his desire to hang out with his friends and do as much stupid shit as possible.
And stupid shit, they do do, with “Trivia Pursuit” seeing the guys engage in the following: parking lot roller hockey, bar trivia, extreme automobile modification, two scams, a touch of street racing, a training montage set to Wang Chung, and a last-minute plan to deceive Alice and cover their asses (set to “Walking On Sunshine”). It’ a lot for a 20-minute episode, and “Trivia Pursuit” suffers from some busyness, but it’s also reliably fun, with Ders’ big reveal that he’s secretly applied for a TelAmeriCorp sales director job at a nearby branch emerging in a moment of crisis:
Everything doesn’t have to be a scam, okay? The whole reason I want this job is so I’ll just have money. It’ll be in my pockets, and I’ll give it to you if you want!