Web Video / Workin' Boys

"It begins with a spotlight on me... Henry Hidgens."

Workin' Boys is a half-hour short film from Team StarKid, set in their Hatchetfield Horror Comedy anthology setting.

In The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals, eccentric biology professor Henry Hidgens reveals that he's always wished to develop Workin' Boys, a musical he wrote about a blatant self-insert and his six college chums hanging out on a football field and reminiscing about their college days, and entertains a captive audience with the show's title number.

StarKid fans began clamoring to see the real Workin' Boys, which left the Lang Brothers a bit stumped, as they had deliberately engineered it to be the worst possible idea for a musical. The solution, a short film about Professor Hidgens attempting to make a production of his show, was included as a stretch goal on the Kickstarter that funded Black Friday and StarKid Homecoming. The film was in pre-production when the COVID-19 Pandemic hit in early 2020.

In 2023, a week before the public release of Nerdy Prudes Must Die, StarKid revealed that they had in fact filmed the short on the down-low, and that it would premiere on the same day as Nerdy Prudes. On Friday the 13th of October 2023, the short was made available to backers of the aforementioned Kickstarter, and temporarily to all those who paid to see the Hatchetfield Halloween livestream that evening.

It was made available for all to watch on YouTube on April 27, 2024, and can be found here.

Workin' Boys contains examples of the following tropes:

• As the Good Book Says...: Grace Chastity quotes Deuteronomy 20:13 when killing Professor Hidgens.
• Ax-Crazy: By the end of the short, Hidgens is crazy enough to use a literal ax to kill the "Workin' Girls" cast members and perform the show himself.
• Battle Discretion Shot: While Hidgens murders the cast of "Workin' Girls", the camera instead films the audience waiting for the second act of the show to begin. We do, however, see the aftermath, which consists of a few dismembered limbs, a lot of blood, and Hidgens dragging a body away from the stage.
• Blatant Lies: Hidgens says that even if he was forced to Gender Flip the cast, he still wants to be truthful to the female experience and that suggestions are more than welcome. Then he yells at and fires Hailey for suggesting that they change "football-but-for-girls" to just "football".
• Captive Audience: After Ted attempts to leave the performance of "Workin' Boys," Hidgens shoots and kills him, making it clear that the rest of the audience are now his hostages.
• Chromosome Casting: In the Show Within a Show "Workin' Girls," every character is female.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: Hidgens goes insane, slaughters his entire cast and is shot dead while trying to take the audience hostage to watch his one-man show.
• Executive Meddling: In-universe. The Starlight Theatre is willing to produce Workin' Boys, but only if he changes the all-male cast to be all-female instead.
• Gender Flip: Hidgens grudgingly accepts turning his show into Workin' Girls, a gender-flipped version.
• The Ghost: Chad does not appear in the short, for he is too idealized in Hidgens's mind for any actor to do him justice. For seemingly the same reason, there doesn't appear to be any onstage depiction of Chad in the Show Within a Show either.
• Insistent Terminology: The one concession Hidgens makes to changing the genders of all of his characters is that every instance of the word "football" is changed to "football, but for girls". Every. Single. Instance.
• Lack of Empathy: Linda makes her return loudly mocking Ruth's stage fright and celebrating the cast's deaths because she hated the performance.
• The Lad-ette: Hidgens changes the genders of the characters and absolutely nothing else, so they're a bunch of old sorority sisters who spend their spare time throwing a football around and catcalling at men.
• Leitmotif: As expected, bits of "Show Stopping Number" litter the show, notably with the piano opening as Hidgens' main "theme" as in Nightmare Time. "Hatchet Town" also makes a reappearance to underscore how dangerous the snapped Hidgens is after he murders Ted.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: Implied. Hidgens explains to the cast of "Workin' Girls" that he and six of his college friends were struck by lightning, leaving him as the only survivor. During the opening night of "Workin' Girls," Hidgens' college friends appear to him as zombies, with the most plausible explanation being the lightning.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The Workin' Boys may have returned as revenants to persuade Hidgens to take revenge for his script being butchered, or he might just be losing his grip on sanity.
• Misplaced Retribution: Hidgens places all the blame for the show on the actresses, even though they weren't the ones that made him change it and have done their best to bring life to his script no matter how obnoxious he was.
• Multiple Gunshot Death: Hidgens takes two bullets from Grace standing up and has to have the entire gun emptied into him before he dies.
• Never Trust a Title: In-Universe, Ted attends the show "Workin' Girls" because he thinks it'll be about hookers. It's actually about six girls in corporate jobs who are nostalgic for their days in college.
• Odd Name Out: The Workin' Girls names are all changed to roughly female equivalents (Meg for Greg, Sue for Stu, etc.), except for Chad, who was adapted out of the actual musical.
• One-Line Anxiety: Ruth, who plays Secretary #4, can be seen trying out different variations of her one line "Excuse me, who are you?" Ultimately, Ruth forgets her line and Zoey has to continue the show by saying her line, "Who am I? I'm Henrietta Hidgens!"
• Poe's Law: Hidgens' writing is so bad that the audience thinks Workin' Girls is a comedy.
• Police Are Useless: Downplayed. Officer Bailey, who is attending the show, does nothing but cower in fear when Ted tries to leave the show and Hidgens shoots him. Upon being reminded that he has a gun, he gives it to Grace, who uses it to kill Hidgens.
• Prima Donna Director: In directing his show, Professor Hidgens refuses to accept any feedback, verbally eviscerates everyone's performances, and after a month of rehearsal, his speech to his actors on opening night is a scathing declaration that he will never forgive them for butchering his material. Then he massacres the entire cast for not doing his script justice and turns it into a one-man show which he forces the audience to watch at gunpoint.
• Sanity Slippage: Hidgens starts to lose it after seeing the performance of Workin' Boys and realizing that the audience think it's a comedy and goes completely off the deep end after possibly being visited by the spirits of his dead friends, spurring him to massacre the cast and do the show himself with the audience held at gunpoint.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Ted Spankoffski tries this after Hidgens murders the entire cast and takes over the performance himself. It gets him shot by Hidgens.
• The Show Must Go On: Exaggerated. Even while getting shot by Grace Chastity, Hidgens continues to perform "Workin' Boys" until he collapses and dies.
• Spoiler Cover: The short's Youtube thumbnail depicts the bloodsoaked Hidgens who appears after the short's climax. If not for that, the short would present itself as being a more Slice of Life Hatchetfield installment instead of the usual horror right up until that climactic swerve.
• Unreadably Fast Text: The program for the In-Universe show "Workin' Girls" is onscreen for about five seconds. Each cast member's bio contains a blink-and-you'll-miss-it joke: Zoey uses her bio to plug her Only Fans, Hailey uses her bio to apologize for ruining the bathroom, Ruth uses her bio to brag about watching her fellow cast members get undressed in the dressing room, and Cassandra's bio is full of cryptic language about having prophetic visions and being important to the Powers That Be, suggesting that she's a Mad Oracle.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: In-Universe, Hidgens describes his show Workin' Boys as "loosely based on [his] own college experience and the six best friends [he] ever had."
• Wham Line: After Hidgens says "Oh, boys. I'm so sorry," Greg replies "Then make it up to us, Henry" in a Voice of the Legion. This would be the first indication that the short would contain horror elements if not for the YouTube thumbnail being a Spoiler Cover.
• Who's on First?: When Ruth sees the audience for the first time, she has an attack of Performance Anxiety and forgets her line. Zoey tries to help her by repeatedly whispering her line to her — unfortunately, Ruth's line is "Excuse me, who are you?", which just upsets Ruth more as it makes her think Zoey has forgotten her.