They may be stupid, disgusting, rude and childish, but if there’s one thing the Workaholics guys aren’t, it’s prejudiced. They’re a trio of all-inclusive stoners, that is, unless you’re being an ass. In “DeputyDong,” the guys take on the carelessness of hate speech and in doing so, may have done some actual good for once.
The guys are tired of constantly being called “faggots” while playing Sniper Shot: Munich by an offensive player known as “DeputyDong.” However in the two minutes of the episode they spend doing work, they call a man who just happens to be DepDong himself and decide to teach him a lesson about dropping F bombs. Thankfully, Dong isn’t that far away, just a short nine-hour drive to Arizona, and they’re outside his house, wearing all black, looking like they’re about to Seal Team Six this gamer in the real world.
What they didn’t expect is for DeputyDong to be an actual deputy, who is returning home with a bunch of his cop friends after a coworkers’ wake. Yet they have a man on the inside of the house, Blake (aka ChaMilitary Man. You know, like Chamillionaire), and he’s found an ally in DeputyDong’s son. Together, they try to delete DeputyDong’s account so he’ll quit offending gamers and give his son more attention.
Meanwhile, Adam and Ders have convinced the cops that they were in black ops academy with the dead cop and are invited in by DeputyDong himself, played by Broken Lizard’s Kevin Heffernan. Somehow, Adam and Anders have fallen into a group of the dumbest cops in Arizona, who allow themselves to be distracted by their Irish drinking songs and never really question that they might not know their fallen comrade.
All three of the guys end up in Dong’s man cave, causing the cops to finally figure out that hey, these random guys in black that were hanging out outside my house, maybe they aren’t who they say they are. But in the end, Adam, Blake and Ders convince the father and son to compromise. The son says he’ll spend less time with his sewing machine for design school and Dong will spend less time with his video game and more time with his son. In a pretty obvious twist, Blake tries to get the son, Nate, to admit that he’s gay, you know since he’s going to design school and has shaved his pubes into flames, yet it turns out he isn’t gay. And thus, everyone learns something about assumptions and the effect words can have. Except when they get back home, the guys play a nice game of video game tennis, only once again to be called “faggots” by someone else. Well, you can’t just change the world one home invasion at a time, I guess.
It’s sort of nice to see the Workaholics guys to go on a mission that isn’t totally self-serving and actually attempt to do something good for once. It’s easy to get caught up with snack heists or races to get a massage chair and not realize just how selfish most of these episodes are. Yet “DeputyDong” doesn’t necessarily take the strongest approach to rectify these tendencies, or even deal much with the assumptions they also make. “DeputyDong” is a fun, half-hour that allows them to do something not for themselves, yet it still could have been stronger.
Ross Bonaime is a D.C.-based freelance writer and regular contributor to Paste. You can follow him on Twitter.