There’s a kind of vicarious freedom that comes from enjoying your favorite slacker sitcom. The good-for-nothing antics of their ensemble casts, who often fail to complete even the menial tasks, offer relief from your daily hustle. Watching deadbeat characters goof off in dead-end jobs while somehow managing to outdo their laziness makes for both hilarious and wishful viewing.
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Often defined by minimal plot developments aside from their characters being opposed to real work, slacker sitcoms are rife with comedic potential. For these characters, work is the enemy, and the time outside the 9-5 is devoted to well-refined hedonism or sloppiness. Whether their characters avoid termination from a menial desk job or have simply never held an office job at all, these slacker sitcoms make a convincing case for early retirement.
‘Two and a Half Men’
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The life of a jingle writer is blissfully simple, as is the case for beach house owner and perpetual freelancer Charlie Harper (Charlie Sheen) of Two and a Half Men. Much of the sitcom’s plot revolves around the eldest Harper brother avoiding his younger half Alan (Jon Cryer), who is himself the picture of ineptitude.
Rounding out the slacker trio is Alan’s son Jake (Angus T. Jones), a high-school student far more interested in his uncle’s carefree escapades than in passing his exams. Alan’s series-long inability to pay alimony and Charlie’s endeavors to skate through life unencumbered by work present all the makings of slackerdom, with Jake’s extra half for good measure.
‘My Name is Earl’
While most slacker sitcoms needn’t give their characters anything other than a goofy misadventure, 20th Century Fox’s My Name is Earl asks what happens when a slacker is presented with a moral dilemma. When Jason Lee’s titular petty criminal and ne'er-do-well wins the lottery, he’s forced to confront the idleness of his life with hilarity in the interim.
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Earl’s associates, who range from a dim-witted brother (Ethan Suplee) to stubborn ex-wife (Jaime Pressly), hold a mirror to his wrongdoings and spur him to right the wrongs of his slackerdom and tick-off his 'Karma List'.
‘The Inbetweeners’
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Four British nerds attempt to navigate high school. The broader premise? Sleep with as many people as possible. It might seem too reductive of a synopsis, but the true concerns of the characters of The Inbetweeners are hilariously simplistic.
Between gross-out misadventures and awkward meet-cutes, the central quartet does very little aside from ditching school, drinking copious levels of alcohol, and fretting over exams. The Inbetweeners’ particular brand of comedy was successful enough to spawn a feature-length franchise; the two films prove that a slacker never changes its spots even when holidaying in faraway countries.
‘The Simpsons’
Homer Simpson (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) is not just the patriarch of his Springfield-bound family but slackers the world over. Blissfully stagnant in his job at the city’s chemical plant, whole episodes in The Simpsons’ 33-season run (including the recently-renewed upcoming season) have been devoted to Homer’s apathy toward anything other than Duff beer and Moe’s tavern.
So integral is Homer’s laziness that his character is masterfully summed up in the catchphrase, "D'oh" — regularly applied whenever his work-averse antics catch up with him. No one quite reaches the heights of goofing-off like Homer does, a trait Bart (voiced by Nancy Cartwright) inherited in spades.
‘Workaholics’
Don’t be fooled by its title; Workaholics is a complete misnomer. The entire premise of the Comedy Central show revolves around a trio of work/roommates who attempt, and regularly fail, to hold their jobs as telemarketers of an unknown product. The show has been referred to as the spiritual cousin ofOffice Space on drugs, which remains a pitch-perfect descriptor.
Anders (Anders Holm), Blake (Blake Anderson), and Adam’s (Adam DeVine) complete disinterest in work makes for some hilarious office politics, particularly when they clash with their brutal boss Alice (Alice Murphy). Outside work, the boys struggle to leave behind college life, befriending their weed dealer and often consuming to the point of failing workplace drug tests or commuting to the office wildly hungover. Talk of a movie reboot of the series could only spell a feature-length worth of the trio's misadventures.
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‘Mr. Bean’
It’s not so much that Mr. Bean - the titular character from the British sitcom of the same name — avoids work, but more so that he’s wholly incapable of completing it. Each episode begins by presenting an otherwise banal task for the socially inept protagonist to achieve, only to have him gawk and bumble his way into troublesome hijinks. This assessment was reiterated by Atkinson himself, who, in a 2018 interview with Collider, described Mr. Bean as "a child trapped in a man’s body."
Masterfully inhabited by Rowan Atkinson and impressively sparse on dialogue, Mr. Bean coasted on pure slapstick alone, spawning an animated series and two feature-length adaptations in 1997 and 2007, respectively. Fans of the show can catch similar Atkinson-isms in the just-released Netflix series, Man Vs. Bee.
‘Regular Show’
Who said slackers had to be human? In Cartoon Network’s animated series, Regular Show, the comedy trope is zoomorphized as a blue jay (voiced by J. G. Quintel), and raccoon (voiced by William Salyers) find themselves in surreal misadventures while avoiding work as park groundskeepers. A child-friendly addition to the slacker canon, Regular Show still manages to squeeze in the adult humor for which the genre is known.
In a way reminiscent of a fable, Regular Show presents the pitfalls of slacking off, as the central duo often end up in supernatural antics due to their aversion to real work. Naturally, gumball machine-turned groundskeeper manager Benson (voiced by Sam Marin) is the pair’s worthy foil.
‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’
On its surface, a show about five friends owning and operating an Irish bar should bring an ambitious cast of go-getters, but this is not the case inIt’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. In fact, the rottenness of Paddy’s Pub owners is only outdone by the bar itself, which bears the residual signs of Charlie (Charlie Day), Mac (Rob McElhenney), and Dennis’ (Glenn Howerton) inability to upkeep the demands of business life.
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The 20-something trio is unlikeable to the point of infinite rewatachability, often spending entire episodes fulfilling their self-interests while their bar remains unmanned. Across the series’ 15 seasons, the gang’s aversion to work led them from door-to-door gasoline sales to faked deaths, ensuring their watering hole wouldn't completely dry up.
‘Peep Show’
Perhaps it comes with the territory of being a twenty-something, but the manchildren who comprise the cast ofChannel 4’s Peep Show struggle to reach even the maturity of a teenager. Centering around a pair of mismatched roommates, the show’s true slackerdom comes from the would-be musician Jeremy (Robert Webb).
Squatting in his flatmate Mark's (David Mitchell) spare room, Jeremy spends much of the Peep Show's nine seasons unemployed but often wrangles enough willpower for the odd songwriting session. The opposites-attract chemistry of the show's leads has earned Peep Show a deserved cult following.
‘Broad City'
A refreshing female-driven twist on the genre, Broad City, finds its slackers in the perpetually down-on-their-luck friends Abbi (Abbi Jacobson) and Ilana (Ilana Glazer). Between Ilana’s neverending resume of odd jobs (dog walking among them) and Abbi’s series-long failure to be promoted beyond janitor status at local gym Solstice, the pair smoke a harvest farm’s worth of weed.
While Abbi and Illana’s struggle to graduate to adulthood is Broad City’s main plot driver (often leading them on various hijinks across New York City), the show itself seems to mature by its series finale. Leaving five seasons of drug-fuelled misadventures behind them, the pair ultimately disband, no longer relying on Illana’s parents for tax return paperwork.
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