The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers Season 3 review: a balancing act

As prank shows go, The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers has one advantage over the pack: the joke is (usually) on them. The premise is that four mates – Jack, Falcon, Liam, and Dom – are constantly dropping each other in embarrassing situations, with the general public as the bemused and confused audience. But sometimes the audience gets a little too close to the action.

Now in its third season, there’s been a slow but steady trickle of complaints around the series, as some pranks have left the unwilling participants less than impressed. For a show built around the idea of four mates having a laugh at each other’s expense, it’s not a great look.

Awkwardness is built into the premise of a prank show, but this series’ big strength has been that the joke is usually on the cast, not the bystanders.

Watch The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers S3 trailer.

The structure of each episode is that each of the pranks has a pass or fail condition. If someone refuses to say a line suggested by the others, or they fail to achieve the goal of the prank, they fail. The person who fails the most each episode must do a punishment prank, which usually involves acting like a dick in front of a large audience.

Inspired Unemployed: gone awry

Things went awry last year when, for a punishment for Season 2, a free feminist event titled Love Unboxed held in Sydney turned out to be a showcase for Jack to say a range of inappropriate comments such as ‘Yeah, chicks dig consent,’ in front of an audience that was less than impressed.

Those on stage were in on the joke; those who’d come along to see a feminist discussion got something very different (though as advertised, there was a lengthy prank-free discussion afterwards). How offensive or inappropriate it actually was, is up for debate; what it did do was highlight how easily the series can rely on annoying and angering an unsuspecting audience.

Inspired Unemployed: challenges

The first challenge in Season 3 doesn’t suggest a team that’s learned any lessons from the controversy. The setting is a busy restaurant, and the challenge is to sit down uninvited at a table where other people are ordering and stick around for the meal without being directly told to leave.

One person calls security to get a prankster removed; some pretty blunt words are used towards another. The one winner succeeds despite acting like a sex pest because the dating diners are too nice to tell him to piss off. If you find uncomfortable moments funny, it’s a gold mine.

After that rocky start, the episode rights itself somewhat by returning to what the Inspired Unemployed do best: act like dickheads in front of people who don’t have anything better to do.

In this case, they’re pretending to be ballroom dance instructors, which mostly involves some very bad dancing and hamming it up shamelessly. It’s a lot more fun and a lot less awkward than the first segment; it may not be their freshest prank, but a dodgy dance lesson is a lot easier to shrug off than a creep sitting down at your dinner table and refusing to leave.

It’s the final punishment prank that sets the alarm bells ringing. Heading out onto the pitch at half time at a Socceroos match in front of 25,000 people, Jack is told he’ll be a goalie whose job it is to stop the ball from going in no matter what. Twist is, the person doing the kicking is a six-year-old girl, and every goal she scores is $100 for a charity.

Soon he’s blocking every shot she makes (this is not difficult), the crowd is getting angry, the little girl isn’t impressed, and he’s literally celebrating after every blocked goal – though to be fair, he’s been ordered by the others to do that. In previous seasons, more than one punishment has ended at this low point.

Here though, they turn it around. A bunch of real players come out to take a shot at goal – and at him. Then they hold him back while the little girl has her shot (she gets it in). He’s basically been turned into a wrestling heel, a bad guy the crowd loves to hate, and the segment ends on a high. And not just because Jack has been humiliated once again.

When they figure out ways to bring the public in on the joke, The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers is … well, it’s still a prank show. But there’s a big difference between a prank show that’s light-hearted entertainment and one that’s mean at heart.

After a bumpy start, the first episode managed to find the right balance; here’s hoping they can keep the jokes at the jokers’ expense.

Season 3 of The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers is broadcast weekly at 9.40pm Mondays on Network 10 and 10Play, with all episodes available to stream on Paramount+.

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