Joss Whedon’s super PAC Save the Day—the organization that promised to bring you a naked Mark Ruffalo—has released a new video in which Chris Pine plays a very bad co-worker named Leonard. At first, it seems like the group has abandoned its prior focus on the election for fiction, but it turns out Leonard is bad in ways that are suspiciously reminiscent of a certain political party. First he shuts down the entire company to try to block changes to the health care plan, next he ignores the majority of the company and insists on keeping a dangerous microwave in the break room, and before long he’s chasing women around the office yelling, “I am the boss of you! I’m the boss of your whole body!” and refusing to meet with a new employee who seems to be a Supreme Court appointee. Why did this company hire a Supreme Court nominee?
OK, so the office metaphor kind of breaks down after a while. On a structural level, too, the short mixes “having dumb or hateful ideas” with “refusing to do the job entirely.” (As anyone who’s had a not–quite–Joss Whedon–level job knows, if businesses started firing employees for being stupid or vicious, the economy would collapse overnight.) But the real fatal flaw is the finale, in which Pine’s co-workers vote him out—as if Chris Pine wouldn’t have gerrymandered the hell out of the entire company to ensure no one could ever wish him into the cornfield. Still, the fun is watching Pine misbehave, and boy does he ever. If Republicans had that kind of charisma, we’d all be doomed.
