This must be quite the exciting time for Adam, Anders and Blake, considering about a third of the country has legalized weed. Right now, these three should be living the high life, no pun intended. “Best Buds” has the trio and Karl living in a post-legalization world, which may or may not be a good thing for these guys.
Thanks to legalization, Karl no longer has to be the creepy dealer selling out of his dirty van. Now he can go legit, going so far as to open his own dispensary. He even gets the guys cards to buy weed, which they think that if they can buy weed, they can also smoke it wherever. Like in the office. Alice says they can either put out the joints or find a new job, and for what feels like the millionth time, the guys lose their jobs. Thankfully, their buddy Karl has just opened up a dispensary/burrito restaurant that they can go work at.
The impact of the three new employees is immediately seen, as they come up with the “Burweedo,” which as you might be able to guess, is a burrito stuffed with weed. However with Karl and Ders in the front of the store and Anders and Blake relegated to the kitchen to make the burritos and follow orders, a rivalry quickly grows between the two teams.
Throughout this season, I’ve had three basic problems with Workaholics, and each of these problems is present in “Best Buds”; nonetheless, the episode still works very well. First, the levels of intelligence between these three is constantly in flux. I can understand Adam and Blake not being that bright, but Anders seems like he should be the voice of reason, yet lately hasn’t been. For example, these guys should absolutely know if they smoke in their office, it’s not going to be cool with their boss. Also, their new enterprise is a booming success, yet they aren’t smart enough to stop their own sabotage. But their cluelessness and downfall is hard to not enjoy.
Their self-destruction is caused by another one of this season’s basic problems: this season is pretty damn gross. When a food critic comes to their new job, Adam and Blake sabotage the restaurant by serving the critic a burrito make of roadkill skunk meat, filled with maggots. It’s probably the most disgusting thing this season has done—and that’s saying something. But the lengths to which Adam and Blake go here are so extreme and crazy, going too far actually makes this work.
Thirdly, and the biggest problem for Workaholics in general—there isn’t any character growth. Like some modern day The Three Stooges, nothing really changes and everything sort of resets at the end of each half hour. So when stakes are set to an interesting level, it’s known that by the end of the episode, none of it will actually matter next week. However in “Best Buds,” you don’t want events here to become canon. By the end, Karl goes back to dealing illegally, the shop understandably shuts down, and the guys get their jobs back. Everything goes back to the status quo, and for this week at least, that’s a good thing.
Somehow “Best Buds” takes Workaholics’ weaknesses and makes them work to its advantage. Adam, Blake, Anders and Karl can be stupid, disgusting and never grow, and sometimes that’s just what an episode needs to succeed.
Ross Bonaime is a D.C.-based freelance writer and regular contributor to Paste. You can follow him on Twitter.