Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25141183-20140726081516/@comment-24882645-20140813071926

GonkhNation wrote: Don't shoot but, I really don’t think Benson was being all that unreasonable in this one. To start off with, at the beginning of the episode it was established that Mordecai and Rigby hadn’t finished a week's worth of work. I like Mordecai and Rigby; they're amongst my favourite characters of the show, but this is a week’s worth of chores that they are being paid to do, and they deny it to their boss's face when he calls them out on it! Sorry but if they were to do that at any other job they’d be fired way before it ever gets to that point.

Second, Benson gave them an ultimatum. Do the work that they should have finished last week and they could get their burgers. It wasn't outside the realm of possibility that if they just put their heads down and powered through it, they could have ended buying those things. Let me reiterate that these were jobs that should have already been finished; they didn’t get any new ones. So that means when Mordecai and Rigby were shocked at the massive amount of boxes they had to move in Skips' shed, it kinda meant they didn’t bother to open the door when they were originally given the task. Benson’s the park manager, it's his responsibility to make sure the other workers do their jobs, and he gets in trouble himself if that doesn’t happen. Sure he could have been “nice” and let Mordecai and Rigby buy those burgers before the sale ends, but does anyone honestly think they wouldn’t have gone right back to slacking (like they’d been doing the whole previous week) if he had? Just saying.

Third and lastly, if you look carefully Benson was never going to buy one of those burgers for himself. He didn’t place any importance on them like the others did. I say this because I think the part most people take issue with is when he ate Mordecai and Rigby’s share at the very end. He did that to push a point, not because he wanted the burgers for himself. One could argue that that makes it worse, but I looked at it more like a father who doesn’t see the 2am concert his children are begging to attend to be nearly as earth-shatteringly important as they’re making it out to be. To Benson having work done on schedule probably took precedence over some fast food that he never bought the hype into, it's just his way of looking at things. I'm not saying that's necessarily right or wrong, but it pays to see things from both sides. That's actually an interesting way of looking at it. I guess I'm just so used to Mordecai and Rigby being.... well, Mordecai and Rigby that I can't help but side with them sometimes. By this point, one would think Benson knows better than to scold them when they most likely aren't going to listen to what he has to say, anyway. I have to agree with everything you pointed out, though. If Mordecai and Rigby would have done their chores in the first place, I'm sure Benson would have let them get their burgers. While I don't think yelling at them would have been unreasonable, the manner in which he treated them bothered me. He literally followed them around all day and got in their faces every time they tried to get something to eat, which honestly seemed kind of OOC. Benson's never really gotten that mad at them before, and they had done way worse in the past. In this case, it was just work that hadn't been done. In earlier scenarios, they unleashed a video game demon and spawned a monster just by playing rock paper scissors. Even though he's threatened them several times in the past, he's never fired them, and that was during surreal circumstances. All the duo wanted to do in this case was get burgers, and he just seemed to go overboard with the way in which he approached them about it.

Don't get me wrong; I know that Benson has every right to punish them when they slack off. In this instance, however, it felt kind of forced and uneccesary, especially when Mordecai and Rigby hadn't done anything wrong up until that point. As you mentioned, they might not have done a week's worth of chores, but that shouldn't have come as a surprise to Benson. If anything, I expected him to yell his usual: "Do it or you're fired!" threat and walk away like he normally does. While I can see his point of view, it just kind of bothers me that he was willing to spend all of his time following Mordecai and Rigby around. I like what you said about Benson trying to act like a father figure, though. That would explain why he tries to reason with them and constantly gives them advice.