Ben Koldyke drags it up in ABC's "Work It."
Credit: ABC
The new ABC cross-dressing sitcom
"Work It" won't debut until tomorrow night at 8:30, but it's already been subject to protests from both GLAAD and several transgender activist groups. And while I would never deign to tell any minority group (particularly one I'm not a member of) what they do and don't have a right to be offended by, in this case, it feels like the offense being taken is too narrow.
"Work It" could be seen as an insult to the transgender community, sure. But it's also an affront to all women, and men, and thinking adults.
(The only reason it's not offensive to kids is that the one underage character is on-screen too briefly, but her limited screen time suggests she'll deserve her own protest within an episode or two.)
"Work It" is the last, and least, of ABC's trilogy of new sitcoms about the crisis of masculinity in modern-day America. "Last Man Standing" more or less abandoned that as a premise and has just become a "Home Improvement" where Tim has daughters instead of sons, and "Man Up!" is already gone and forgotten, but the male panic is more deeply baked into this one and will be hard to let go of.
Ben Koldyke (Robin's co-anchor boyfriend Don on "How I Met Your Mother") and
Amaury Nolasco (Sucre from "Prison Break") play Lee and Angel, a car salesman and mechanic who've been out of work for a year. There are jobs out there, but not for them, it seems.
"It's a mancession," rants their oafish friend Brian (John Caparulo). "Women are taking over the workforce. Soon, they'll get rid of men." He speculates that men will only be kept around as sex slaves, but only for the kind of sex they don't like: "kissing and cuddling and listening."
While the auto industry is in trouble, Lee discovers that there are tremendous opportunities in pharmaceutical sales, but not for men - because, as one pharma girl explains it to him, "The doctors seemed to want to nail them less."
Before you can say "RuPaul's Drag Race," Lee has slipped into his wife's clothes - even though she's petite and he's built like a free safety - and conned his way into a job for a local pharmaceutical conglomerate. Though he couldn't look more like a guy in drag unless he was sporting a handlebar mustache, he gets the job in part by telling the boss what a tough time he had dealing with the sexist jerks at his last job, where "the guys were always sassing me, or patting my fanny, or ogling my teets."
Anyone who would take Lee for a woman and/or hire "her" for a job would have to be a moron of epic proportions - which is basically how all the female characters on "Work It" are written.
The Disney Channel sitcoms I occasionally watch with my daughter have more respect for both their characters and audience than "Work It" does. Everyone is blind or a fool and every situation exists only to set up something vaguely resembling a joke. It's hard to tell whether the show is most contemptuous of men, women or anyone dumb enough to watch it.
There's a scene near the end of the pilot where all the co-workers go out to a nightclub, and the "club" set looks so cheap you wouldn't be surprised to see it in a high school assembly about the dangers of underage drinking. I generally don't worry about bad production design, but this one just screams that someone behind the scenes decided they only needed to do the bare minimum to get the job done, and that's the attitude that most of the show gives off in one way or another.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with cross-dressing as a device for comedy. When the AFI named its 100 funniest movies of all time back in 2000, the top two slots went to "Some Like It Hot" and "Tootsie" (and "Mrs. Doubtfire" and "Victor/Victoria" were further down the list). But the sight of a man in a dress (or, to a lesser extent, a woman in a suit and tie) gets you one laugh if you're lucky. After that, you have to do something interesting with the characters and/or situation, and "Work It" would rather just tee-hee at the basic idea, and out of some very basic, tired bits of wisdom about how men are from Mars, women from Venus, blah blah blah.
Lee, for instance, is shocked to learn in his female alter ego that perhaps his wife wants him to take her someplace nice for a romantic dinner, rather than inviting her to tag along while he drinks with the guys at the corner bar. (And also that no one says "pocketbook" in the year 2011.) And when Angel joins the masquerade, his new co-workers are amazed that he knows how to fix a car.
"Tootsie" and "Victor/Victoria" came out in 1982, which was a weird nexus of Hollywood gender-bending, as it also featured John Lithgow's Oscar-nominated role as a transsexual in "The World According to Garp" and the second and final season of ABC's "Bosom Buddies," to which "Work It" keeps being compared. (1983, meanwhile, gave us Linda Hunt's Oscar-winning performance as a man in "The Year of Living Dangerously," and Barbra Streisand in "Yentl" being only slightly more convincing as a man than Ben Koldyke and Amaury Nolasco are as women.)
"Bosom Buddies" makes an easy punchline for someone looking to pick at the resume of Tom Hanks, but it was actually a solid comedy, mainly because its writers recognized almost instantly that Hanks and Peter Scolari were funny together regardless of what they were wearing. By the time that second season started, the show had all but abandoned the premise of two guys dressing as women in exchange for cheap rent, and just let the two leads goof around with each other. (Every now and then, you'd see the guys in dresses as they entered or exited the apartment, and it was always played as a joke: "Can you believe this used to be what the show was about?")
The moral, as we continue to learn today from shows like "Cougar Town" and "Happy Endings," is that while a high-concept premise might get you on the air - ABC president Paul Lee explained his affinity for the show by telling reporters, "I'm a Brit. It's in my contract. I have to do a cross-dressing show on the air" - you need to have talented people in front of and behind the camera for anyone to want to watch past the first episode or two. And when you stip away the wigs, makeup, padded bras and Ace bandages, there's nothing about "Work It" that suggests a show that will ever be appealing to either gender.
Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, The Star-Ledger, and now for HitFix. His new book, "The Revolution Was Televised," about the last 15 years of TV drama, is for sale at Amazon. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com
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January 2, 2012 at 3:19PM EST Reply to CommentWhat's your over/under on how many episodes will air before cancellation? And is this so bad that we have to watch, or so bad that we should stay away?
War Chief Shake Zula I'd give three, just because that's how long it will take this show to go from a 2.0 to an 0.5...
January 2, 2012 at 4:54PM ESTPaul F
January 2, 2012 at 3:22PM EST Reply to CommentI knew Nolasco was on this, but I didn't know about Koldyke. Shame, I remember liking him on Big Love.
david_macharelli
January 2, 2012 at 3:24PM EST Reply to Comment(And also that no one says "pocketbook" in the year 2011.)
My parents still say "pocketbook", but as they're in their 60's, it proves your point.
Truck I remember when Alan thought the Whites having an answering machine in 2011 was a ridiculous plot device in Breaking Bad.
January 2, 2012 at 5:30PM ESTJessamyn I have an answering machine, and I'm only 42. It does happen - and not just to Luddites. I have an iPhone too!
January 2, 2012 at 7:00PM ESTDanS I'm 38 and I use "pocketbook." of course my wife laughs at me for it, but there you go.
January 2, 2012 at 8:16PM ESTTroy
January 2, 2012 at 3:32PM EST Reply to CommentThat sounds terrible. I want to watch it twice.
Erin Marie
January 2, 2012 at 3:42PM EST Reply to CommentJust sounds like a crappy ripoff of Bossom Buddies and the reason why Tom Hanks got away with it is because everyone wasn't so easily offended in a PC society like today.
KarenX All I know about Bosom Buddies and Work It is what I just read in this article right now, but I don't think men dressing as women to live in a building with cheaper rent is anywhere near as problematic as men dressing as women to find jobs because of a "mancession" and "women taking over everything."
January 2, 2012 at 4:48PM ESTAlso, people weren't less easily offended in 1982 than they are in 2012. They just are less willing to stay quiet about it now.
Also,
klg19 The thing was, that the basic premise of "Bosom Buddies" wasn't offensive. It was made at a time when affordable housing was first starting to disappear in NYC, and Hanks' and Scolari's characters learned that a women's hotel was a cheap place to stay. That's not inherently offensive to women.
January 2, 2012 at 5:24PM ESTBut this new show--this is specifically about the threat that women in the workplace have taken away men's jobs (re which: how long have women been in the workplace now, anyway? They're only worrying about it now??) which means they've turned employment into a zero-sum game in which women's success can only come at men's failure, which is as absurd as it is insulting.
There probably aren't that many ways to go these days in order to create a drag comedy (for a sitcom, anyway--easier for sketches) but if Paul Lee is so British that he has to have one, he ought to be British enough to figure out how to do it well.
srpad
January 2, 2012 at 3:43PM EST Reply to Comment"Happy Endings" was high concept? I haven't watched it but I assumed it was "Friends 2011"
srpad Yep, I put the wrong year. At least it wasn't a check :-)
January 2, 2012 at 3:44PM ESTLiz The show was originally built around the Alex/Dave breakup before it evolved into just a hangout comedy (although it occasionally goes back to the Alex/Dave well).
January 2, 2012 at 4:06PM ESTNot as high-concept as "Courtney Cox dates younger men," but the pilot was definitely setting up for a much more plot-driven show than it's become.
Cheruth The original concept was that it was a sitcom that started where The Graduate ended. Which, is pretty high concept. Alex left Dave at the alter because some guy stormed in. But they had this entire shared life and shared all of the same friends so it was messy. Now they most just hang out but it is a significantly better comedy than Friends.
January 2, 2012 at 10:09PM ESTnic919
January 2, 2012 at 4:01PM EST Reply to CommentKids in the Hall did cross dressing way better and funnier too.
I kinda want to see this train wreck, but it is amazing that of all the pilots that get made every year, this is one that gets an order.
Cheruth Portlandia does it all of the time (both male crossdressing and female). And it can be very funny. The crossdressing isn't the problem it is the whole reasoning behind it.
January 2, 2012 at 10:11PM ESTMike
January 2, 2012 at 4:09PM EST Reply to CommentSo excited for this new show. Between this and Rob America will finally get good comedy back on the air.
txt
January 2, 2012 at 4:27PM EST Reply to Commenti remember reading somewhere that ABC president Paul Lee was so high on this show that he almost dressed in drag for the upfront last year...maybe it really is a Brit thing. at least ABC is still quite successful w/ its other sitcoms, so even if this one bomb in epic proportion, they still have Wednesday night to hold on to. Now where should Cougar Town and Don't Trust the Bitch in Apt 23 be slotted?
sepinwall My guess is Cougar Town goes here when Work It bombs and Apt 23 gets tried out post Modern Family in March and April - even though it's no better a match with Modern Family than HE or CT were (if not worse).
January 2, 2012 at 4:43PM ESTGreg I've seen people discussing the possibility that Cougar Town goes to fridays, especially since ABC cancelled Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
January 2, 2012 at 5:30PM ESTGuest
January 2, 2012 at 5:07PM EST Reply to CommentI have only seen the ads on tv for this, and I thought it was a terrible idea from those! I remember the show "Bosom Buddies", and this makes me think of that one, a little. It was an OK idea back then, but it seems idiotic now. I was right about other shows that flopped, and I'll bet I'm right about this one, too.
nath
January 2, 2012 at 5:07PM EST Reply to CommentShows like this make me wonder if network executives have some kind of secret competition to get the worst show possible they can on the air. "H8R" seems to have locked up the 2011 award, but the guys who greenlighted "Work It" and "¡Rob!" seem to be the early leaders for 2012.
nath
January 2, 2012 at 5:08PM EST Reply to CommentAlso, underneath the "Critic's Rating" and "Readers' Rating", I mistakenly misread the "Rate It" button as "Hate It". As in, liking this show is impossible, so use this button to voice the degree of disgust you have with it!
NJMark
January 2, 2012 at 5:36PM EST Reply to CommentFirst, because of the premise, the opposition, and because I'm twelve: "Koldyke... Hee!"
Second, and more seriously...
The aforementioned "Cougar Town," "Last Man Standing," and "Bosom Buddies," as well as "Community" (which abandoned the "Jeff pursuing Britta" thing) all became different shows than what was established in the pilots. (I haven't watched "Parks and Recreation" since the awful pilot, but apparently it's true of that show too.)
Could the same thing happen to "Work It"? Do the stars have a Hanks/Scolari chemistry to play off of? Or anything at all to get beyond the premise?
bigperm33
January 2, 2012 at 7:20PM EST Reply to Commentand yet this awful show will likely get better ratings (at least at the start) then Community, Parks Rec, etc.
Sandra
January 2, 2012 at 7:44PM EST Reply to CommentHow about they make a show where women dress as men to earn more money?
thanks Sandra. you made me laugh!
January 3, 2012 at 10:52AM ESTi think Glenn Close is trying that one out in Albert Nobbs....
DanS
January 2, 2012 at 8:15PM EST Reply to CommentI'm 38 and I use "pocketbook." of course my wife laughs at me for it, but there you go.
Joe
January 2, 2012 at 8:16PM EST Reply to CommentI'd just like to say that on behalf of BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, Channel 4, FIVE, none of which have cross dressing comedies (save for Mrs. Brown's Boys, but even then I'd argue that it was simply a man playing a woman's role), that Paul Lee, you're an idiot.
MoreTears The BBC has Come Fly With Me, which is in between "series," starring the two guys from Little Britain. Both shows involve the two men dressing up as women quite a lot. And frankly, it is not just about whatever happens to be airing on British TV right NOW. British comedy down the years has involved a notable amount of cross dressing, especially the British comedy that is well known in the US, like Monty Python and Benny Hill.
January 4, 2012 at 12:03AM ESTKris
January 2, 2012 at 10:05PM EST Reply to CommentWork it looks horrible. Man Up was actually good and they pulled it to put this garbage on? I'm old enough to remember Bosom Buddies which was very funny back in the day. Work it definitely is no Bosom Buddies.
It won't make it past the first episode. Then what will ABC do?
pete
January 2, 2012 at 10:17PM EST Reply to CommentEveryone should watch Friday Night Dinner on BBC America on Demand.
jj
January 3, 2012 at 12:29AM EST Reply to CommentI hope this ends quickly so we finally get Cougar Town back!
Vaughn
January 3, 2012 at 3:51AM EST Reply to CommentThe only time I laughed at cross-dressing in the last 10 years: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKXkfLhn6pA
Joe
January 3, 2012 at 10:14AM EST Reply to CommentNow I want a column where Alan's kids review Disney Channel and Nick shows.
sepinwall They would all be raves from the older one. (The younger one would just mash the keys with his palm and create an abstract word collage.)
January 3, 2012 at 10:31AM ESTnic919 And I bet the abstract word collage would still produce a better script for Work It than what has currently been written.
January 3, 2012 at 5:40PM EST71dude
January 3, 2012 at 1:44PM EST Reply to CommentThis couldn't sound worse if it were a remake of "The Ropers".
RKD2999
January 3, 2012 at 3:01PM EST Reply to CommentI was biased against Bosom Buddies because it was created by Miller-Boyett, who also created Full House, Perfect Strangers, Laverne & Shirley, Family Matters and Step by Step. I could barely stand any of those shows.
NJMark Did you have a time machine? Except for Laverne & Shirley, Bosom Buddies PREDATED all of those shows.
January 4, 2012 at 10:10PM ESTOtto Man
January 3, 2012 at 9:13PM EST Reply to CommentOnly an F? Can't we make an exception to go lower on the alphabet just this once?
Rachel Callaray
January 4, 2012 at 3:54PM EST Reply to CommentDoesn't sound like a good show, but have to admit, Tootsie is one of my all-time fav movies. How Dustin Hoffman learns to be a better man through acting as a woman was genius. Makes me laugh every time.