“Get a Job” doesn’t jive with the series’s first three episodes, as if you could watch this one without having seen the others.. It’s a little ruder and its sense of (its own) logic is off. Bruce hogs the show. Even when the supporting cast gets a sneeze of screen time, it’s his poor mood we focus on. He’s been jobless, but now he’s moneyless. This is the first leap. His money’s vanished. The second leap is his response: harassment. This isn’t the Bruce we’ve seen. Emma and the rest of the Wiiks can’t balance him out. They’re more of a sly thumbing: What’s with this guy? Even the delightful Hassan and Albasim’s dime-turning tenors aren’t enough to prevent this from being all about Bruce.
A café turns him and his declined card away. Food service workers fear these moments because of reactions like the one Bruce gives. He borderline causes a scene, demanding re-swipes and tab policies. “I come here every day,” he whines through pastry cream. He owes pocket change. If the title credits don’t come when they do, someone in the restaurant surely would’ve done every other set of ears a favor and thrown some mercy crowns at him. Reliving the injustice later for Hassan, he concedes he needs to find work. Hassan tells him about a local temp service and a cousin of his who cleans toilets. Bruce is a fan of the former. “You shouldn’t do any job,” he tells Hassan. “What did your cousin do in Iraq?” Hassan doesn’t see the conflict: “He was a toilet cleaner.”
“Get a Job” isn’t Poehler’s first foray into Americanism. Hassan was the counterweight for the first go too—he and his limbless children. This time, there’s less vitriol. Bruce name-drops NYU, his alma mater, and Hassan recoils as if he just walked through Bruce’s fart cloud. Bruce crop dusts him with entitlement. How could such a thankless job satisfy Hassan’s cousin? Where’s the purpose? Bruce was a New York accountant and a beneficiary of all that the profession brings. Moreover, he was a celebrity accountant. Pop culture has consequential pull, but its trans fattier brand-name cousin, fame, leaves more craving. He’s used to being sought after. It takes him the entire episode to realize people seek out toilet cleaners too.