Last night’s episode of Men at Work was an exceptionally frustrating half-hour of what’s been (to this point) a comedy that’s completely fine with being lazy and pointless. I guess I should be expecting this by now – especially when the words ‘Written By Breckin Meyer’ come across the screen – but ‘Heterotextual Male’ drove me nuts in particular, because the structure for a hilarious episode of comedy was there. Problem is, it was completely wasted on a string of unrelated jokes and unfunny sex-related bits, relying on tired cliches and a continued misogyny that is really becoming off-putting.

‘Heterotextual Male’ is – in some barely connectable way – is about the four guys of the group learning about their male identities a little bit. Milo’s no good at being the single guy, Gibbs & Tyler think they’re the Kings of Sex, and Neal is trying to balance his relationship and his confidence. And to the show’s credit, they manage to explore this by barely leaving the office sets for the entire episode except on bookend scenes, which really contained the stories and should’ve allowed them to bounce off each other throughout the show. Structurally, it was more like the earlier episodes of Seinfeld (a small amount of rotating sets through the episode with many long conversational scenes) than earlier episodes, which felt more like a How I Met Your Mother/2 Broke Girls mash-up than an original creation.

But the real issue lies in the plot structures, which are all over the place, dropping in random jokes and avoiding any sort of pathos to the story. There’s no explanation of Milo and why he’s struggling to maintain confidence with his first real date after the break-up: instead, we’re supposed to believe he doesn’t know how to text on the iPhone he’s had (and been using) since the pilot episode. Yes, many comedies rely on contrivances to provide comedic situations or punchlines, but all Milo is used for is so the show can sound hip by saying things like “SMH, dude” or everybody’s favorite joke: the ‘oops, I didn’t mean to say the word cunt’ joke, which I’ve never really found all that amusing.

Tyler and Gibbs are no better, thrown into this absolutely ludicrous story about a sex blogger who bangs everybody on a whim just to prove points. They both have sex with her, feel super amazing afterwards… and that’s it. There’s nothing learned about these guys, there’s not even any point to the whole story. They didn’t even try to make either of the guys like her in any capacity outside of sexual revelry, and their only interactions with each other about her involve two things: “wow, she’s old” and “wow, she’s great at sex.”

Oh, and there’s Neal, who takes off a hat his girlfriend wanted him to wear, gets made fun of for wearing it the whole episode, and then tells Amy he took it off at the end. She didn’t care…. and anything Neal did in this episode is rendered useless. But his arc in ‘Heterotextual Male’ is a microcosm of the series: nobody on this show gives a fuck about anything except being absolutely mediocre, and last night’s half-hour of nonsense was a clear example of what its going to be: mimicing the formats of great multi-camera sitcoms, and injecting them with the most bland personality and played out jokes that require no thought or structure whatsoever.

Grade: F

Other thoughts/observations:

I’m going to give this show one more week, but I’m thinking next Friday is going to be my last week doing regular coverage on Men at Work. It leaves Fridays a bit empty until Louie & Wilfred return at the end of the month (along with the debut of Anger Management we’ll be covering), but I’ll fill the spots with Party Down (which I didn’t get to on Thursday, my apologies) and Final Thoughts on many of the shows we’ve finished.

– does anybody have a feel for Milo’s character? I just feel like he has no defined personality outside of “I’m newly single.” But I guess that works for everyone; Neal: “My girlfriend is hot and I’m nerdy”…. Gibbs: “I’m black and bang everyone”…. and Tyler: “I’m hot.”

I’ll end with a quick sidebar: the 1st Annual Processed Media Awards are coming up this month as well, so keep your eyes peeled on Facebook and Twitter for the release of the nominees! If you have any thoughts on last night’s mindless episode, feel free to leave them below!

What did you think?