Long ramble where I ponder what the Workaholics Movie could have been + Adam, Blake, and Ders's conclusions/future ahead
I think one of the things that gets to me the most about the Workaholics Movie being cancelled (aside from losing the triple kiss between my OT3 that we're never gonna get now) is the fact that we're never gonna know how Adam, Blake, and Ders's story ends. Yeah, I know Workaholics wasn't really a show that paid attention to much of a story/character development/emotions/whatnot since it's a comedy first and foremost and the characters are meant to be "loser protagonists" who don't grow. Party Gawds was a good final episode to send them off with as well. But I feel like with the (non)existence of a movie, they were trying to set up something more for them beyond that point.
We know from various episodes of the This Is Important podcast (121 being one of them) that the plot they'd settled on for the movie before it got scrapped was likely going to be a parody of The Fugitive where something happens that puts Karl in a coma and the DudeHusbands go to jail, so they have to break out and get back home to save Karl. Sounds like it could have made for an engaging movie, but it leaves me wondering: Where do Adam, Blake, and Ders stand at Telamericorp while all this is going on? Do they still work there? Do they not? Does this movie take place after a timeskip that takes place after they stop working there (as hinted by Blake Anderson wanting to include a running gag about Henderson trying to do "dad saves", which implies they might have started families)? It's weird that we basically know nothing about what role Telamericorp would have played in this draft of the movie when it was such an integral setting to the series. Though in ep 29 of TII, Anderson brought up another idea he had for a Workaholics movie about a softball game happening between the Telamericorp employees, which implies that the trio could possibly still be working there.
There's also the original plotline from 2021, which according to press releases was going to be about the DudeHusbands working in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This plot seemed to have been scrapped/retooled because the guys didn't mention anything about this in the TII episode featuring all the details about the latest draft (likely because 2023 was three years past the lockdown when this movie was initially set, and the movie would have actually come out years after that), but there's something huge that often gets overlooked from this press release. The Workaholics Movie was meant not only to bring back Workaholics as a movie, but to set it up to have a sequel series. What especially sticks out to me is this bit right here, which I found in an Entertainment Weekly article about the movie getting cancelled:
"You may begin to see the seeding of a next generation of cast for what a new Workaholics could look like."
Now, I'll be honest, when I first read that sentence I groaned. I'm not a fan of the concept of a Workaholics series without the Workaholics. The series already did one episode where the DudeHusbands are barely in it, and it really wasn't good. At. All. So I sat for a while, thinking we actually dodged a bullet when this sequel series never came to pass. But then I came to a realization:
What if the DudeHusbands were going to move up and run the Rancho Cucamonga branch of Telamericorp?
When I read about the proposed concept for a sequel series, it made me wonder why they planned to focus on brand new characters. While the most obvious answer would probably be "the DudeHusbands stop working at Telamericorp", what if they were instead going to set up a major shake up to the status quo by having Adam, Blake, and Ders get promoted? It would be a satisfying and happy ending to the original series by having the trio finally accomplish something, while also tying into the concept for the sequel series by having them supervise new employees who would take their places in the cubicle.
If Paramount had their sights set on having a hypothetical Workaholics sequel series focus on new characters, I think this would have been the best way to do it. Have the main plots focus on the new characters and their exploits, while the subplots focus on Adam, Blake, and Ders trying to adjust to managing the Rancho branch of Telamericorp. It'd bring in new characters and hone in on them without completely removing the characters everyone knows and loves, while giving said familiar characters something fresh and new to do. As someone who's a hardcore fan of the show because I love the trio so much, I think it'd be interesting to see them in new roles (they're in charge now! And unlike the time Ders got a promotion in canon, they'd all be working together). The only thing is, when you take into account that the characters are a bunch of lazy slackers in canon, I don't know how they could feasibly get promoted at Telamericorp unless they Bigheaded their way to the top and got extremely lucky (if anyone reading this is familiar with HBO's Silicon Valley).
This is where the movie could have come in. Movies based on TV shows often have higher stakes than the shows they're based on, so what if there was some conflict that Telamericorp was involved in that Adam, Blake, and Ders ended up resolving somehow, leading to them getting promoted? Alas, the world may never know. Even if the movie never comes to fruition, I'm dying to know where Adam, Blake, and Ders would hypothetically be now. Maybe it's just because I'm so attached to these three, but I'm crushed that we may never get an answer.
