Adam, Blake, and Ders — the raunchy, yet hysterical man-children of Workaholics — are back for Season 5 of the Comedy Central show on Jan. 14 at 10 pm. And the fact that Workaholics taught a feminist lesson to Adam in the Season 5 premiere was simply mind-boggling (seriously — it happened). The Season 5 trailer of Workaholics irritated me (why, oh why, must I constantly see gratuitous shots of boobs?), but I am aware that's part of their brand of humor. The trailer also showed outrageous violence and drug use that's not in the show (well, the abundant drug use is), but the guys are consistently over-the-top to be funny. Sometimes it can be offensive, but pretty much most of the time, I'm laughing along with their antics. So the fact that the Season 5 premiere blended porn, a dog tossing Ders's salad, and feminism — all in a way that I thought was hilarious — is pretty amazing.
The episode "Dorm Daze" started with the guys (I just can't in full faith call them "men") watching the AVN Awards Show, which honors the best in adult entertainment (so, they are just porn awards). Thanks to Adam's "pornographic memory," he accurately guessed the winners for all the categories (including Best Dongumentary — won by 12 Inches a Slave — obviously). And his pornographic memory came in handy when TelAmeriCorp sent them to North Rancho College to get 100 signatures of students interested in working at TCA. When Adam realizes North Rancho is the college campus where they filmed tons of his favorite college pornos (24 out of 36 to be exact), he goes on a CSI-like mission to pay homage to find the room where the gang-bang sequences were filmed on campus.
In his pursuit of porn, he ends up in a Female Sexuality class. The professor of the class tells him that woman in porn are exploited and are actually victims. Blake is used as a metaphor during this explanation (since he has been bullied into starring in a porn on campus — he just wants to act!). When Adam realizes that some women in porns may also be mothers, he has a swift change of heart about the industry he loves and goes to seek out the porn room on campus to stop any filming going down.
The end of the episode has Adam busting into the dorm room (see what I did there?) that Blake is filming the porn in. Adam wants to fight the director to defend the honor of the female star of the porn, but she surprises him when she says, "You know I'm a producer on this — I own 40 percent of the company. Plus, I love to squirt on film. It's kind of my thing." A completely befuddled Adam follows with, "So you're telling me that some girls do like doing pornog?"
The fact that some women may be manipulated to do pornography, while others actually like to do porn was incomprehensible to Adam. The professor of Female Sexuality stepped in again to say, "That's right, Adam. No man has a right to tell a woman what to do with her body — even if she's being sexually exploited."
That's — uh, that's pretty right, Workaholics. I mean, no one has any right to tell anyone what to do with their bodies (and if someone is being taken advantage of, you should try to help them), but women and men should not judge what consenting adults want to do with their own bods.
Pornography is a tricky subject and anyone who loves porn as much as Adam on Workaholics does needs some serious intervention. Of course, he's not really going to take this lesson to heart (it's Workaholics after all and Adam loves his porn), but the fact that one of the funniest (and ridiculous) shows on television is also smart, is just icing on the cake. Baby steps, feminists. Baby steps.
Images: Adam Newacheck/Comedy Central; workaholics (3)/Tumblr
