The post-collegiate boneheads in “Workaholics,” Comedy Central’s newest scripted series, are the answer to that burning question of the ages: What if Seth Rogen’s dopey roommates from “Knocked Up” wandered into an alternate reality that resembled “Office Space”?
Debuting at 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, the ironically titled show is the work of a little-known group of Los Angeles-based sketch performers called Mail Order Comedy. The four-man group, which includes Evanston native Anders Holm, is suddenly on the receiving end of a very big break.
Holm and his pals are both the show’s creators and its stars, playing characters that Holm describes as exaggerated riffs on their own personalities. (They also go by their real first names on the show.) “We’re not smart, we’re not cool, we’re not really going anywhere,” Holm said from Los Angeles last week. “We’re more relatable than you might think.”
If that’s true and the show connects with audiences, Holm and company will be in line to pick up the mantle from Judd Apatow and his band of lovable losers. Comedy Central is confident enough in the show’s appeal that it has already ordered scripts for a second season.
Take a good look, America, because the man-child archetype is alive and well, embodied by Holm and his co-stars Adam Devine and Blake Anderson (the one with all the hair). The fourth member of the group, Kyle Newacheck, works behind the camera as director. Holm is 29; the rest are 26.
“The sad thing is none of us has moved on; we’re still in that limbo period,” said Holm. “We’ve all got friends back home who are like, ‘Hey, man, I just had my third baby, and I’m moving out of the condo and getting a house.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m living in a one-bedroom apartment and still have that old Volvo.'”
In the first episode, the guys do keg stands in their cubicle and munch on ceiling tiles in an attempt to throw the results of a drug test. After a hard day slacking off at the office, they unwind on the roof of their bachelor pad with beers and a blunt. In an episode slated to run April 20, they camp out at work while their house is being fumigated, a night that morphs into a homage to “Die Hard” after they ingest hallucinogenic mushrooms that taste, as Holm observes on the show, “like what I think Rumpelstiltskin would taste like.”
Comedy Central is used to pushing a few boundaries and was mostly hands-off, Holm said, with a few exceptions from the legal department. “We can’t show somebody inhaling, I guess, but we can show them exhaling,” is how Holm put it. “Mom doesn’t love that, but hey, I’m on TV!”
The youngest of three boys, Holm started writing and performing at Evanston Township High School as part of the school’s annual revue. He was also on the swim team, and swam for the University of Wisconsin, where he was a history major. After graduating in 2003 he moved to LA. (His parents still live in Evanston.)
“I was like, why don’t I come out to LA and make a go of it as a writer? But once you’re here, it’s hard to meet people, as far as networking. You’ve got to be in writing groups and go to coffee shops and have strangers tell you, ‘I didn’t like your script.’ That just didn’t seem like my cup of tea.”
Instead, he enrolled at the Second City training center in Los Angeles, where he met Devine (who was already friends with the other members of the group). At the time, Holm was a production assistant on the Fox procedural “Bones.” He would later work on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher” in the same capacity.
“You’re buying doughnuts; you’re getting lunch. You can spin your wheels and go nowhere,” Holm said. During a two-week vacation, he came home and took an intensive course at Second City in Chicago.
“While I was there I saw the mainstage show, and there was one girl in the cast that was really funny,” he recalled. “And I was like, wow, how is this girl not famous?” Guess who walked in the door last year when Holm and Co. were looking for actors for the show? “We’re casting for the part of our boss, and that same girl, Maribeth Monroe, comes in the door to read, and I was like, ‘It’s her! Done. She’s hired.’ It was totally random.”
Apatovian in type and raunchy verbal acuity, Mail Order Comedy has made about 80 videos since 2005, some of which you can find on College Humor. The videos never got much traction, but the exposure led to a modest gig with the “party lifestyle” website 5thyear.com, which commissioned a Web series that became the inspiration for “Workaholics.”
5thyear co-founder Dominic Russo said the premise was based on the idea that “going from having class two days a week in college to working 40-plus hours is not an easy transition for most guys.” A Web series about that precise experience was a way to “remind people that just because you’re a graduate doesn’t mean you’re dead to the social world of stupid and ridiculous parties.”
Though the Web series didn’t turn viral, someone in program development at Comedy Central noticed it, and “Workaholics” now is set to air in the plum time slot following “South Park,” a proven winner for a channel that has had uneven success with sitcoms (recently with the middling response to “Big Lake”).
“‘South Park’ delivers a lot of eyeballs to the network,” said Kent Alterman, Comedy Central’s head of original programming, “so it’s a good launching pad for other series.” The pairing makes sense: Alterman describes Comedy Central’s audience as “fairly young and fairly male,” and both shows play to that demographic with a high-energy sensibility and a carefully thought-out immersion in juvenilia and pop culture.
“I think what’s unique about these guys is that their show exists in that netherworld between being post-college and yet not being fully functioning members of the workplace,” Alterman said. “They’re three guys who live, work and party together — and they don’t really distinguish between any of it.”
The party house in Van Nuys, Calif., where the guys live on the show is the actual house they lived in until just recently (minus Holm, who shares an apartment with his girlfriend). “We scouted for houses, but they just didn’t have the same authenticity as the dank Van Nuys dungeon,” said Holm. “It doesn’t smell great. Three guys living together, there’s always dishes piled up high.
“The guys loved it. They got their rent paid for, so they didn’t really care. And they got to sleep in. They would literally just have some crew member knock on the door and say, ‘Boys, time to get up; we gotta get some lights in there,’ and they’d roll out to craft services and have breakfast. It was a good deal.”