Monsters At Work: A Workcom That Actually Feels Like Work

3:19 PM · Jun 30, 2021 "..."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Skipping ahead nearly 15 years from My Friends Tigger and Pooh, and 30-ish from most everything else I've discussed, Monsters at Work was the last show of the Disney Watch during my original run on Twitter. Around this time, only first two episodes were out, so naturally, to celebrate, I brought along some friends: Aster, Izumi, and Ian! Here was some of what we thought...

Yeah none of this makes sense.... Which was really the original take I had on Monsters at Work. After two episodes, I decided it was C-tier material. 

I'm not sure I feel that way now.

Also something I did for this project after around Gargoyles was to predict the ratings of the shows I hadn't seen fully yet. I forgot to include this for My Friends Tigger and Pooh (though I believe it was C or D tier). For Monsters at Work, I thought it was gonna be B-tier. Thought it was gonna be good. I was wrong.

Monsters At Work slowly becomes your "everyman with a group of weirdos he learns to love" stories, which isn't inherently bad. For example, Community pulls off this trope well by making the characters incredibly off the shits, but giving them all a bit of relatability, including its everyman (though I use the term loosely), Jeff Winger. Not to mention, the characters in community play well off one another very well.

Monsters At Work tries to do a similar formula, with Tylor as our everyman tossed into MIFT with funny gay dad Fritz, positive and reminiscent of the good ol' college days Val, Cutter who exists, and Duncan, who sucks shit.

Unfortunately, my friends seem to have deemed him a "transmasc king."

Val and Duncan probably could have been my favorite characters if they were both a little more morally grey. One of the episodes went into Val and Tylor's relationship and how Tylor was the only person who was ever nice to Val in college, which was why she acted like that. Which... I guess I understand what the show was going for, but it would have been so much funnier if Val was gaslighting Tylor into thinking certain college experiences happened for funsies, or to get it right in his mind that they're besties. A little underhanded, but improving morale. Duncan should take up kinning that's the only take I have to make him seemingly kinder but still a dick.

12:49 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "god this show is just like. they made everything wrong with pixar made it worse and made it into this show" 

The show also focuses on Mike and Sully, being the new CEOs of Monsters Inc. Though they're in charge, they're still humble, and Mike still has to fill out paperwork for Roz... I mean... Roze... They're usually the ones in the more goofball situations. Probably because they are rich now. This theme will be important later.

12:29 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "me talking 2 my not furry friends"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ultimately, this story takes immediately after the first movie, showing us consequences, which is interesting. It seems Monster's Inc. is the first and currently only one to use laugh power instead of scream power, which gets them into all sorts of pickles, but feels incredibly low-stakes. If Tylor gets fired, he can work another job as a scarer. It's evident he's good at this, and is willing to negotiate his dreams, so I know he'll turn out okay even if he's thrown onto the streets. Even though Tylor wants to impress Mike and Sully, a lot of events will hurt Mike and Sully, but not Tylor in the long run.

The Cover Up is a great example of this. Duncan (the temp boss), Tylor (who did a prank on Duncan gone horribly wrong), and Val (who gave Duncan temp boss) discuss accountability for an outage and agree it is all their faults. Also Cutter's fault (told Tylor to prank Duncan) but honestly she's just there. So, Duncan suggests a cover up that would ultimately save their jobs but create risk in the laugh economy. Ideally, Mike and Sully would want to identify the problem that clears their business's name, but for some reason, it puts all of them on the same side...

A lot of episodes are surprisingly business oriented, and rarely in a funny way. Which is weird because these are a bunch of outcasts. You'd think a bigheaded character like Duncan might be the Ted Baxter of mechanics, but he's mostly just lazy...

12:29 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "the exciting adventure that is a Wall Repair Episode"

Also a lot of the original voice actors are phoning it in a bit...

11:58 PM · Jul 8, 2021 "god jennifer tilly DOES NOT want to be here"
12:44 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "this song would be so sweet if billy crystal gave an iota of a shit"

Which kind of sucks because they're given a lot of attention, every episode even ends with Mike teaching comedy... A cute premise, but it's hard to make comedy funny and Monsters at Work isn't willing to put in any effort.

12:50 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "there was a bit where everyone was trying to understand a whoopie cushion and i was like "oh this is a really good bit of anti-humor" but then they tried to make it funny and added way too much" 

I hate to suggest that Monsters at Work is corporate, especially since the one thing that has been drilled into me while watching these shows is that every single one of them is corporate. You can detect the patterns Disney was doing over periods of time to try and rake in those cable subscriptions and whatnot.

But nonetheless.

12:42 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "monsters at work is dogshit" 

Also Blue Mike, the most hilarious character in the show, is only in one episode of the 6 I watched and it was boring. 

Rating For Monsters at Work: D-Tier

We're gonna have to come back to this one though. Season 1 was only 10 episodes and we're guaranteed a season 2 down the line... So look out for part two coming ????????? idk lol

...Also while we're at it, since we're moving down, why don't we move up too? Season 3 of Amphibia has absolutely been killing it with all the new characters it has introduced. Hoping it stays as good!

Also I forgot Raw Toonage that is there too.

So Hey. Tier Update.