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Original Air Date: January 8, 2008
“The Seminar” opens with the guys grooving along to Phil Collins’ early 1980s hit “In the Air Tonight,” a golden not-too-oldie that’s always good to hear. At work, they all attend a sexual harassment seminar led by beautiful Dorrit Meander (Guest Star Bridget Wilson-Sampras). AUBREY fidgets throughout because he’s never been good with authority figures, while LAIRD does his thing ogling the trainer and deciding that he’s going to nail her because she’s hot.
When Dorrit asks for volunteers to serve as so-called “Harass Captains,” Aubrey immediately and eagerly steps forward. His reasoning is that “if you don’t want to get stung, you’ve got to align yourself with the Queen Bee.” Laird’s response is that he’ll be happy to just make Dorrit buzz.
At the Brooker’s house, Gracen’s wife LEILA gets irritated when she walks into the living room and finds MARMADUKE drinking peanut butter tea (Ew!) out of a mug from her biggest real-estate rival, Donny Darmajian. Marmaduke suggests helping her create buzz to boost her sales by standing on a street corner with a sign. Leila then invites Dougie’s wife CINDY over to wrap fifty espresso machines in an hour so that she can give them away at an open-house party meant to help her compete better against Donny.
Back at the seminar, Laird begins his scheme. He approaches Dorrit as she’s leaving and lies to her that some female coworkers have been harassing him because he’s a newly divorced and gullible single man unfamiliar with how the dating world works these days. Dorrit offers to investigate, and they agree to meet later. Laird continues his act by pretending he’s too timid to shake her hand without taking a whole minute to actually touch her. GRACEN‘s response hits the bull’s-eye: “I’m equally disgusted and impressed.”
Later, Aubrey begins sporting a huge orange button the size of a desert plate while monitoring “carnal indiscretions and wayward banter” around the office. As Laird clarifies, he’s simply a snitch. However, DOUGIE‘s too busy sampling Laird’s state-of-the-art, Hi Def video goggles hooked up to vintage Swiss-porn videos to notice or care about Aubrey’s new job. Aubrey can’t let the porn offense slide, though, so he confiscates the verboten videos. Unfortunately, as he exits Laird’s office, he drops the box just as Dorrit passes by, and she assumes the videos are his. That’s Catastrophe #1 for Aubrey.
In the car on the way to work the next day, Dougie moans that he can’t get Laird’s porn out of his head before Laird explains why he’s so focused on Dorrit. Anybody can sleep with a dentist or a plus size model, he claims, but nailing a sexual harassment officer is like “climbing Mt. Everest to get to the fruit at the top.” Aubrey warns him to leave that fruit alone and let it rot, but of course Laird doesn’t listen.
At work, Laird visits Dorrit, and after meekly getting her permission to enter, he claims someone sent him roses with a note saying the word is out that he’s a very fiery and attentive lover who’s only looking for a committed situation. It goes on to state that the anonymous writer doesn’t care what he wants because she (or he) is going to make Laird hers (or his). Laird claims to be frightened, and Dorrit confirms that the note implies a classic case of creepy sexual harassment. When Dorrit asks how he feels, Laird replies that although he has perfect abdominal muscles, he’s been out of the dating scene so long, he doesn’t want to be objectified. Dorrit’s reaction is to devote even more time to Laird’s phony stalker story.
Later, Aubrey storms into Laird’s office. He finally noticed that while he was getting coffee earlier, Laird magic-markered over the first three letters of “Harass Captain” to make the button say “Ass Captain” instead. Catastrophe #2. Aubrey angrily tackles Laird to the floor, right before Dorrit passes by to catch him hovering over Laird on the ground, both men on all fours, yelling “Now who’s the ass captain? Yeah, I’m the Ass Captain. Yeah, it hurts, don’t it? You like it now, don’t you?” Catastrophe #3.
At home, Dougie confesses to Cindy that he cheated on her for about 15 seconds the day before in Laird’s office with a woman credited as “Woman Milking Goat.” All Cindy cares about, though, is whether the woman was prettier than her, and she becomes convinced that she has to see the video to judge for herself. So, they ride over to Laird’s house to get the box of porn, which Laird is thrilled to hand over. After Dougie has the box, Laird shatters their attempts to be discreet by yelling out to the street where Cindy’s waiting in the car to enjoy his pornography. The couple tries to cover it up by pretending he said “enjoy his photography.”
Word has obviously gotten around at work, and Aubrey is now an outcast. Colleagues turn away to avoid him when he enters the office the next day and finds Dorrit waiting for him by his desk, which is “decorated” with bold red-and-white signs that say “Under Investigation.” The moment she reveals that he’s being investigated for sexual harassment, Aubrey faints.
When Dorrit questions him later, Aubrey grows increasingly flustered and repeatedly says things with a double meaning, such as mentioning a former principal named Mr. “Wiener” and the fact that he has problems with authority “figures.” Believing him guilty, Dorrit confiscates Aubrey’s badge. He promises to be on his best behavior but then inadvertently winds up stumbling upon ambiguously sexual situations as he walks down the hall: women in low-cut tops brushing their hair, bending over in short skirts to pick things up off the floor, sucking on ice pops. When he finally makes it to the elevator, the episode’s funniest visual shot occurs. Aubrey gets onto the crowded elevator full of women, immediately followed by a really tall woman who squeezes in facing him with her cleavage pressed right into his face.
Dorrit arranges to meet Laird in her office at 7 to get to know him outside of work. She only means in a professional sense, but horny Laird is convinced that he’s about to get the “fruit at the top.” So, he goes to Dorrit’s office with a bottle of wine and two glasses, only to discover Dorrit, Aubrey, who ratted him out completely, and all the women who work in the office waiting to ambush him inside. Laird’s response to being busted is to give a speech about how he appreciates all women equally and that it’s time for sexual harassment laws written in the 1980s to be updated to reflect modern times. The scene then segues into Laird attending a sensitivity training seminar led by Aubrey with the acronym Booby (Be On One’s Best BEhavior).
Sometime during all of the office events, Marmaduke gets busy on a street corner spinning a big red sign shaped like an arrow that points the way to Leila’s open house. After a small person named Seth (Guest Star Tony Cox) walks up and informs Marmaduke that he can get good speed from the sign if he treats it with respect, Darmajian’s group of sign-spinners approach and begin sign-spinning furiously to warn Marmaduke off their turf. The rivals schedule a spin-off at high noon, which Marmaduke wins by taking his tiny guru’s advice to make the sign ride with the wind. A couple approaches Leila when she arrives later and informs her that although they love her house, they didn’t get a free gift and Darmajian is offering them a hot-air balloon if they buy his instead. Leila promises to take care of them personally.
Elsewhere, Dougie and Cindy attempt to make their own porn video to get the porn actress out of Dougie’s head. When someone knocks on the door, however, the couple panic, thinking it’s the porn police coming for a porn raid after finding out what they’re doing through the Patriot Act (Insert eye-roll). Cindy decides to hide their tape and Laird’s box of porn by wrapping the box. Yet, it’s only Leila at the door, and she grabs the wrapped box from Cindy to give to the couple from the street corner. Neither Cindy nor Dougie stops her because they’d rather move than admit what’s inside.
That leads to the episode’s second funniest scene, the final one. The couple from the street stops by the Brooker house one night to tell Leila they like the neighborhood but weren’t sure if it would be accepting of their “lifestyle.” As they confess that Leila’s open-house gift immediately resolved that concern, Gracen walks up with groceries. The woman eyeballs him, noting to her husband while they walk away that he’s kind of small. Gracen, who’s never met the pair before, picks up on their weird vibe anyway, and he rushes Leila into the house, telling her he’s not sure, but he thinks the couple wants to “do” them.
MY TAKE: “The Seminar” was primarily about Laird and Aubrey, with Aubrey getting some especially funny scenes. The subplot about Marmaduke helping his mother Leila outdo her real-estate rival wasn’t nearly as funny, although I did get a big kick out of Marmaduke’s “sign spinning” to the tune of Soul Coughing’s “Super Bon Bon,” a nice bit of 1990s musical nostalgia.
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