Web Video / Bored

Bored is a Web Video series by New Zealand comedy troupe Viva La Dirt League. Presented in a Work Com format, the show follows the misadventures of a group of employees at a gaming electronics store, and mostly focuses on awkward workplace interactions and nightmare retail scenarios in the new millenium, with plenty of nerd culture references sprinkled in.

Bored is Viva La Dirt League's longest-running continuous production, being their first attempt at new ongoing content after changing their format from music video parodies, and ran for a while with only two main cast members (Rowan Bettjeman and Alan Morrison) after the dissolution of the original troupe. The show got off to a bit of a slow start, performing respectably but not spectacularly, only taking off in popularity (by the group's own admission) with the meteoric rise of sister show Epic NPC Man (which coincided with the arrival of third cast member Adam King). Bored is now considered a classic in its own right, and it is considered a mark of true fandom to list this as one's favorite VLDL show.

Fun Fact: The electronics store where the show originally took place, PlayTech, is a real electronics store in Auckland; the troupe used the actual shop as a standing set in exchange for utilizing the store's name and branding as Product Placement. As of 21 July 2023, following the purchase/construction of their own dedicated filming studio, the setting has moved to the similarly themed (and entirely fictional) tech store TechTown, run by Rowan's father.

A playlist of all episodes can be found here.

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Bored sports the following tropes:

• Accidental Innuendo: invoked in episode "Bigger", wherein Rowan and Alan argue over whose is bigger; turns out Ellie has the biggest (mouse pad).
• Accidental Misnaming: Rowan does this to everyone else in (appropriately enough) "Wrong Name".
• The Alleged Boss: In the initial episodes Rowan was technically Alan's boss, but he used to act more like his co-worker in equal conditions and friend than as a boss, this reaches the point that Alan sometimes had to remind Rowan that he is manager.
• Artifact Title: Bored started out as short skits about a bored manager, Rowan, and his equally bored employee, Alan, at a tech store. Eventually the series shifted to mostly be skits about Rowan terrorizing the rest of the employees.
• Bad Boss: Rowan is arrogant, self-absorbed, rude, insensitive, stubborn and unobservant. He avoids being a Pointy-Haired Boss (barely) because some episodes show he actually does know what he's doing (even though other times he's completely clueless).
  • Thankfully, with the move to TechTown to work under Rowan's father, Rowan was demoted to a floor worker on the same level as the employees he previously tormented, though the performance-review-based initiative for the vacant spot of store manager (after previous incumbent Rhi was hired to general manager) leaves it up to the chance that he might recapture the role.
    • As predicted, the moment Rowan is handed the black shirt during the Manager Trials, he declares the trials over and installs himself as permanent store manager. And, as Rhi points out, he is technically completely within his power to do so as acting, now full store manager.
• Berserk Button: Do not drop PlayTech property (such as spoons or pens) in Rowan's presence.
  • The fact that Rhi cuts him off from disciplining Adam when it happens at TechTown really sells it to Rowan that his position of power has dropped significantly.
    • Now that Rowan has finagled himself back into the permanent position of manager as the store manager for TechTown during the Manager Trials, this is likely to be maintained.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Alan is nominally the Only Sane Man, but if you push him too far he'll snap. He has killed (by the actor's count) at least three people inside the store over the course of the series.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Rowan in "Karen vs Manager" arrives as Karen is about to berate Adam, using his manager authority to fend her off.
  • In "Karen wants a showdown" Rowan tries to defeat her again, but is overwhelmed when two other Karens show up. At that moment, Alan walks in with his supermanager white shirt on.
• Brought Down to Normal: At least from Rowan's perspective. With the move to TechTown in order to work under Rowan's father directly, instead of as a black-shirt manager, Rowan's demoted to the same red-shirt worker position that his tormented employees have occupied. He does not take it well at all.
  • In a smaller, but still distinct case, when Ellie learns that her previous "hundreds per hour" salary at PlayTech is now heavily reduced to the standard $25 per hour at TechTown (NZ's minimum wage is $22.70), she tries to complain to Rowan about it but Rhi cuts the both of them short. Ellie does not take that well either but is less hammy about it compared to Rowan.
    • During the Manager Trials, both make an attempt to reverse this. Ellie attempts to hike her pay up to $1000 per hour, outlaw wearing pants in the store, and declares they must have an animal mascot that they will then fight in a Thunderdome, for which they also need a Thunderdome. More seriously, when the black shirt reaches Rowan, he takes the opportunity to end the trials and make himself the permanent store manager which, as Rhi nervously points out, is something that even as an acting manager, Rowan is legitimately allowed to do (though as general manager, she does manage to push back a little by giving him a pay cut like he was handing out to the others).
• Butt-Monkey:
  • If an episode focuses on Adam, chances are good that he'll be reduced to tears by the end of it.
  • Customer Hamish also serves this role; it's rare to see him leave the store with the items/services he has paid for or without paying an outrageous price for something mundane.
  • In his rivalry with Customer Ben, Alan becomes this, though on occasion he strikes back.
  • Deliveryman Byron fills this role in "Work Training", wherein the others not only forgot he still works there, they forget he's even in the room with them.
    • Taken to a new level when Byron arrives at TechTown, gets his name misspelled multiple times by Rowan and is forced to interview for the same position at the new store because Rowan apparently forgot all about him. Subverted when Byron is eventually hired and reveals he's still wearing the uniform, upon which Rowan immediately recognizes him and gives a heartfelt welcome, having thought he died.
• Cassandra Truth: None of them believe Rowan is actually a model, but he's shown to have a billboard in Times Square ^note for Gucci, in case you're curious. Another Fun Fact: Rowan Bettjeman actually is an actor and model with a number of professional credits under his belt.
• Catchphrase:
  • Rowan has so many they actually devoted an entire episode to pointing it out.
    Unbelievable. UN-believable.
    Pay cuts all around!
    Manager privileges, BOI.
    Just a sec.
    I'm a model.
  • Alan tends to insert the word "literally" whenever he's trying to make a point.
  • Customer Ben (like all the actor's characters) has "OUT-RAY-GEOUS!"
• Comic Trio: Rowan is the loudmouth Leader, Adam is the sensitive and naive Fool, and Alan is the generally powerless normal guy.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • Rowan hands out free samples (i.e. actual merchandise) like he sees in the supermarket. Alan has to explain the relative cost of a supermarket sample vs. PlayTech merchandise.
  • Rowan also doesn't quite get the idea of a "compliment sandwich" (i.e. a compliment, followed by a critique, followed by another compliment) — although Adam, the recipient of said "sandwich", isn't actually much better.
• Crazy-Prepared: Rowan writes a set of scripted responses for the sales staff when interacting with customers. Despite using vague and generic phrasing, the scripts prove surprisingly effective when the customer goes off on a personal tangent.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: In some episodes Rowan says something totally ridiculous that turns out to be true. One of the most out-ray-geous being during Adam's funeral when he insists that the supposed dead man is just sleeping, proceeds to shake his body and then beat on his chest, which successfully resuscitates and revives Adam.
• Death Is Cheap: There are several episodes where characters are implied to have died, and at least one where this is explicitly the case. They got better.
• Didn't Think This Through: Deliveryman Byron has a few deliveries to make before the end of the day and so wants to get them all done in one trip. Tragically, he underestimates both the number and size of the packages, and struggles to load them on his tiny scooter.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • For the first seven episodes the manager's shirt is red and the employee's shirt is black. This changes in episode 8, "The Red Shirt", where Rowan becomes convinced the red shirt is making him look fat and asks Alan to swap colors with him, afterward the color change sticks for the whole store and even into the TechTown era as well (perhaps Rowan noted it to his father before the transfer over there?).
  • The Bored series of videos used to include occasional videogame parodies (covering games such as DayZ), but these were eventually spun off into their own series.
  • In his first appearance Adam is hinted to hide a more sinister personality than he lets on. He acts nice to Alan and cries when the latter snaps at him, but the Revealing Hug shows he's faking it. He's also friends with Rowan. However in later episodes he's revamped into a genuinely sweet but timid guy, who is constantly bullied by Rowan. This later got combined into Adam being a Manchurian Agent for the Janitor.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Karen naturally has a deep voice, but in "Karen wants a showdown" her voice gains a reverb bordering on Voice of the Legion.
• False Friend: During the "Rowan the red shirt peasant", Rowan expresses worker solidarity and populist sentiments, to the extent of producing a working-class watch cap out of thin air, and says he has lots of experience being a redshirt, so he should be the new store manager (on the people's support, of course). When he thinks he'll get the black shirt back, he immediately returns to normal (IE a controlling jerk).
• Flash Step: Used on occasion, usually when someone wants to exit an awkward situation. Typically lampshaded with fluttering papers left behind and a cartoonish whooshing sound effect.
  • In "Call Centre", Alan and Ellie avoid the titular task in this manner.
  • In "Pay Transparency", Ellie does it again to evade a discussion of her inflated pay grade.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Once Ellie joins the main cast:
  • Rowan is Choleric — the short-tempered, callous, insensitive leader.
  • Alan is Melancholic — brooding, reserved, faithful and practical, but with a layer of cynicism. Also, on occasion, very paranoid.
  • Adam is Phlegmatic — timid, emotional, introverted and submissive.
  • Ellie is Sanguine — extroverted and energetic but sometimes undisciplined.
• The Friend No One Likes: Rowan; the others tolerate him only because he's the boss. The episode "Work Drinks" indicates that the employees often take off for drinks after hours without him, and while he acts cavalier upon learning this, he's shown to be actually quite hurt by it.
• How Did You Know? I Didn't: When a thief is trying to steal a Mac and confesses that he is going to use it to play games, Alan appears to beat him, when Rowan thanks him for having stopped the thief, Alan confesses that he did not know he was a thief.
• Humanoid Abomination: In her second appearance, Karen's voice gains a dark reverb, the air in the store grows cold with her arrival, she's capable of splitting herself into three Karens, and after being exorcised by Alan, Rowan and Adam she appears to disintegrate.
• Imagine Spot: Adam tells Rowan off after the latter "offers" to fetch him a coffee and then fails to follow through.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Rowan sometimes seems to show a soft side (such as comforting Ellie over her brother's death), only to be revealed that he is still a jerk. (He forces Ellie to continue playing Monopoly, after the aforementioned scene)
• Karma Houdini: Rowan does not usually suffer consequences for being a bad boss or fooling Hamish.
  • With the move to TechTown, while as of yet nothing substantial has happened, most agree that Rowan being forced to take a red-shirt worker position same as his former employees is an effective display of Karma Houdini Warranty, even if the opening for store manager offers a chance that this could be reversed.
    • Unfortunately even that appears to have been undone by the time of the Manager Trials as Rowan takes the opportunity as acting manager to dissolve the trials and declare himself permanent store manager, something that Rhi points out is completely legal to do.
• Loophole Abuse: As power-hungry as he is, Rhi really should have expected Rowan to pull this off. And he does so spectacularly during the Manager Trials where, as the acting manager on his turn, Rowan uses his authority to immediately end the trials and declare that he is now the permanent store manager. When Alan tries to complain to Rhi, she points out that since Rowan was technically the manager, albeit acting, his edict was legitimate. That said, he doesn't get off scot-free since as he's handing out pay cuts to everyone to cement his position, Rhi obliges and does the same to him as well to remind him that while he might be a black-shirt manager again, he is merely the store manager to her general manager.
• Madness Mantra: Rowan just nervously repeats "You're a... girl!" whilst interviewing Ellie for a job.
• Mistaken for Murderer: Deliveryman Byron is tasked by Alan to deliver a package that is wrapped in the shape of a dead body. ^note The true irony is that Alan actually has murdered people.
• Mushroom Samba: Rowan, Alan and Adam all accidentally get high at work (from eating, it turns out, Ellie's special brownie), resulting in all manner of special effects and even Medium Awareness.
• Nice Mean And In Between: Among the male workers, Adam is a Nice guy, Rowan is a jerkass, and Alan usually acts nice but with Jerk moments.
• Percussive Maintenance: Rowan's favorite method of computer repair, as shown in the episode "Hit It." He later applies the same method to reviving a seemingly dead Adam at his own funeral.
• Pet the Dog: Rowan gets moments like these occasionally (VERY occasionally) just to remind us he's actually human. See, for example, the episode "High Five".
• Product Placement: Not only the PlayTech store (as mentioned in the body), but also certain episodes will feature specific merchandise.
  • Techtown switched to fictional brands. Some of them were references to their other series.
• Prone to Tears: Adam has a gift for fake sobbing.
• Remember the New Guy?: Parodied with the deliveryman Byron, whose introductory episode establishes that he's actually been working at Playtech as long as Alan and Rowan. There's even a montage of flashbacks to prior episodes with Byron edited into them. Alan, of course, has no memory of him, making it initially look like this is another one of Rowan's pranks, or Byron is some kind of Backstory Invader. But no, Byron is real, and Alan was just very unobservant.
• Revealing Hug / Traitor Shot: Adam's debut episode ends with a twofer.
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: The first Techtown episode reveals that Rowan's dad was bankrolling him to the tune of millions. Which explained how Playtech stayed open despite Rowan's habitual cheapness with salaries and overspending on other things.
• Roger Rabbit Effect: One episode features the main cast re-imagined as cartoon characters, complete with toon physics. Rowan is not convinced.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Adam is the "cry at the drop of a hat" Sensitive Guy while Rowan is the Jerk Jock Manly Man (albeit kind of a nerdy version of one), with Alan falling somewhere in between.
• Sliding Scale of Beauty: Ellie in-universe is considered Common Beauty or Special Average; Rowan and Adam consider her attractive, but she does not usually attract much attention, at least not like other female characters, such as those who are played by Britt.
• The Smurfette Principle: Ellie was the only girl in the cast until Britt became a regular.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: Customer Ben in "In And Out" tries to browse past closing time. Big mistake.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In the initial episodes Rowan was relatively friendly, acting more like a co-worker than a boss, eventually becoming the bad boss for which he is best known.
• With Friends Like These...: Adam's "best mate" David, who scams Adam on auto repairs (charging 5K a pop to check the "flux capacitor"), and even comes into the store and robs Adam at forkpoint.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The "White Shirt Saga" is a pastiche of The Lord of the Rings.
• Yes-Man: Working at TechTown, Britt has pushed herself into this trope, doing whatever is asked of her at a moment's notice, and it seems like she's somewhat resentful of having coworkers because now she has competition vying for management's favor.

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