Stream It Or Skip It?

We’re always surprised at what is popular on YouTube. Take the YT channel “superwog“. It has over 3 million subscribers, all of whom seem to love the adventures of to moronic friends in Melbourne, Australia. After those videos streamed on Netflix under the title Superbro, Theo and Nathan Saidden have brought their superwogs to a new series.

Opening Shot: Stuck in traffic, a man revs up his tiny 1980s-era crapbox of a car.

The Gist: Theo (Theo Saidden) loves his car, and is annoyed that he can’t open it up and get up to speed. He’s on his way to visit his buddy Johnny (Nathan Saidden) and bring some drive-thru, when a guy in a Mustang with a front license plate that says “DOUCHE” blocks Theo from changing lanes. Suffice to say, Theo explodes, especially when the Mustang guy challenges him to a drag race and Theo gets caught by a traffic camera after he goes through a red light.

At home, his mother (Theo Saidden) is irritated that his father (Nathan Saidden) is bringing home food from the dump again. Theo sees a letter that says he owes thousands in traffic tickets, and that his little red crapbox is going to get impounded if he doesn’t pay in 28 days. His father, who thinks that Theo is weak and needy, refuses to give him any more money, to the point where the two of them get into a physical fight when Theo steals his dad’s wallet.

Theo goes to Johnny’s place — Johnny lives with his grandmother — and the two of them think they should get their jobs back at the burger joint they were fired from. When they show up, the manager reminds them that they put the vacuum cleaner in the deep fryer and locked a coworker in the walk-in freezer. They demand to go to the “burger king” himself in order to get answers about why they don’t have their jobs back.

At the chain’s HQ, Theo and Johnny somehow manage to get an audience with an executive, thanks to their detailed observations on “cheese hang” and why the special sauce doesn’t glob the way it used to.

In the meantime, Theo’s mom has had enough of Theo’s dad’s dumpster diving; she takes all the food out of the house and drives to her mother’s house. In the meantime, Theo’s dad feasts at the dump and becomes so bloated he ends up in the hospital.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Son Of A Donkey is based on the Saidden brothers’ Superwog YouTube videos, which were stitched together and streamed on Netflix as Superbro. This feels like a far dumber take on buddy shows like Workaholics.

Our Take: If we didn’t know that the Saidden brothers already scored a successful series with the characters of Theo and Johnny, we would have had no idea why Netflix ever greenlit Son Of A Donkey. There isn’t a laugh to be found in the first episode; in fact, where the home life that Theo leads is supposed to be so disgusting it’s funny, it actually feels sad and tragic. Perhaps that what the Saiddens had in mind, but we doubt that.

The series is pretty heavy on modern Aussie slang, to the point where we clicked on the subtitles right away, which at least helped us understand what these guys are saying to each other. Even then, though, what we were seeing still didn’t make a lot of sense.

Yes, Theo and Johnny walk around thinking that everyone around them are idiots (which is a great sign that they themselves are the morons), and stand with their arms akimbo like they’re too-bulky bodybuilders, even though they have no muscles to speak of. But none of that stuff says anything more than these two guys are two of the dumbest people in Melbourne, if not all of Australia.

Maybe as Theo tries to figure out how to finally be an adult the show will be less stupid. But seeing Theo’s dad act like an ape as he breaks open one garbage coconut after another, then explodes in a torrent of piss directed at a paramedic makes us think that the series’ humor isn’t going to get much more sophisticated than that.

Sex and Skin: None, thankfully.

Parting Shot: Theo’s mom runs into the emergency room, and is told Theo’s dad is in kidney failure. Then Dad wakes up. In the meantime, Theo cleans his precious crapbox.

Sleeper Star: Loraine Fobb plays Johnny’s grandmother, and we were pretty much with her in telling both Theo and Johnny to fuck off.

Most Pilot-y Line: A firehose torrent of piss isn’t pilot-y enough?

Our Call: SKIP IT. While we think bodily function humor is as funny as anyone else does, for some reason we didn’t find any of what we saw in Son Of A Donkey funny.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.