http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/14/work-it-canceled_n_1206016.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003


After only two episodes, ABC has pulled the plug on its controversial new comedy, "Work It," reports Zap2it.

Tuesday night's episode drew only 4.9 million viewers, and a dismal 1.5 rating in the coveted 18-49 demo. "Work It" was consistently panned by critics, including HuffPost TV's resident critic Maureen Ryan, who called the cross-dressing comedy, "One of the worst sitcoms of all time."

"Work It" has been widely criticized for its gender politics, but that's not all. In its pilot episode, Amaury Nolasco's character uttered the cringe-worthy line, "I'm Puerto Rican... I'd be great at selling drugs."

Not surprisingly, the joke backfired, setting off a firestorm of criticism on Facebook and Twitter, and even a primetime demonstration by about two-dozen people on Wed., Jan. 11 outside ABC studios in New York.

It looks like even the sitcom's provocative artwork and timely references couldn't save this sinking ship.

So with a hole in the Tuesday night lineup, that means "Cougar Town" can make a speedy return, right? Well, not really.

Reruns of Tim Allen's "Last Man Standing" will fill the 8:30 p.m. Tuesday spot for the rest of January. ABC has yet to announce its official plan for the time slot.

just bring back Cougar Town or one of the other better shows you dummies!

Yeah, I liked it in the 80's when it was known as Bosom Buddies.

Seth we broke that news on Twitter and on the General board... I don't care what anyone says, it was not mocking any group. It was a sitcom.
https://twitter.com//SitcomsOnline/status/158068924670414848

It was crap THE END

Crap or not, that's one's opinion. I thought it was ok, not great but not terrible either. My point was it was not mocking any group, gender or race. There have been many episodes of sitcoms that dress up as the opposite sex (Three's Company, 227, Perfect Strangers off the top of my head). It's all in fun and they were not actually doing it to mock any gender (they were doing it to get jobs). Most who were complaining about this show didn't even watch the pilot. Episode two was something you would have seen in the 80s--silly laughs (reaction to guest star Sam Anderson's face when he saw the underwear was priceless). It was a nice throwback episode, but I guess that doesn't work these days.

Brian, it was on ABC. How could it possibly have been crap!? They can do no wrong. ;)

AKA, that was not my point. It's all about opinions, so like it or not, I don't care (I didn't care for Man Up, by the way). I was just saying it wasn't offending anyone and as for that race joke, I've seen worse on All in the Family and The Jeffersons.

Those shows used racial humor to make actual points about the racial divide in America. That line is basically just LOL PUERTO RICANS!!!!!!!!!

Oh well, now it's gone and let's never speak of it again.

Brian, it was on ABC. How could it possibly have been crap!? They can do no wrong. ;)


I agree, ABC is the bench mark for all the greatest comedies and dramas. :drool: Fact is, if Work it was on NBC it would be crap, but since it was on THAT network...it really wasn't all that bad. LOL

Brian, I didn't say Work It was among the greatest comedies. It wasn't great. I know that, but it wasn't the worst show of all-time that most people keep saying. If you have a problem with my tastes, then I don't know what to say but that you have too much time on your hands. I will say it again, my point was that they were not offending anyone--they were just guys dressing up as woman (which has been done before in sitcoms), not to be transgenders.

Those shows used racial humor to make actual points about the racial divide in America. That line is basically just LOL PUERTO RICANS!!!!!!!!!

Oh well, now it's gone and let's never speak of it again.

That's a good point, but Outsourced did the same thing last season, didn't it? Well, Work It is gone now. It still wasn't offending transgenders. If anyone watched it, it was just silly and harmless stuff. Not saying it was for everyone, like I said in my review http://blog.sitcomsonline.com/2012/01/abc-mid-season-pilot-review-work-it.html (which I'm sure Brian didn't read, yet he likes to start stuff).

Pavan, my point is, if Work it, was on another network, you probably wouldn't even be heard from. For some reason, if a show is good or bad, you feel the need to see the bright side of it, however, slight it might be. That's doesn't happen with shows on other networks.

Pavan, my point is, if Work it, was on another network, you probably wouldn't even be heard from. For some reason, if a show is good or bad, you feel the need to see the bright side of it, however, slight it might be. That's doesn't happen with shows on other networks.

Did you read my review of Rob then (or Work It, since you think I think it is among the greatest comedies of all time)? I praised the cast of Rob.

And your comment "it was crap THE END" had nothing to do at all with my previous post, which I mentioned nothing about the quality of the show. And the bright side? All I said here was that it wasn't mocking transgenders. I made no comment on this thread about the quality of the show.

Did you read my review of Rob then (or Work It, since you think I think it is among the greatest comedies of all time)? I praised the cast of Rob.

And your comment "it was crap THE END" had nothing to do at all with my previous post, which I mentioned nothing about the quality of the show. And the bright side? All I said here was that it wasn't mocking transgenders. I made no comment on this thread about the quality of the show.


I *think* you are missing my point Pav. I don't think you think Work It was great, just that you do look at the positive sides of shows on your network which happens to be ABC.

As a reviewer, which you are, you have to be unbiased or at least sound that way. You may have praised Rob in your review, but the big question, probably the biggest of all, will you watch it against an ABC show that is on at that time or will you just DVR it and watch it?

I *think* you are missing my point Pav. I don't think you think Work It was great, just that you do look at the positive sides of shows on your network which happens to be ABC.

As a reviewer, which you are, you have to be unbiased or at least sound that way. You may have praised Rob in your review, but the big question, probably the biggest of all, will you watch it against an ABC show that is on at that time or will you just DVR it and watch it?

Well it's not on ABC anymore is it? Once again, I made no positive remarks on the show here besides that it wasn't mocking transgenders. And what does my watching live or DVR have to do with anything? That's my personal call and has nothing to do with our reviews. I have watched Big Bang Theory live many times, thank you very much. Where are my positive remarks on Man Up then? I've praised the top three new sitcoms: 2 Broke Girls (CBS), New Girl (Fox) and Suburgatory (ABC), (2 of 3 not on ABC, but you don't see that).

You are blowing everything up for no reason. As Christina Applegate says (an NBC star!!), if you have nothing nice to say to people, don't say anything at all ;)

You are cool with me Pav, LOL The show needs to be buried along the likes of Cavemen, The Secret Diaries of Desmond Pfeiffer and Homeboys in Outer Space! :lol:

You are cool with me Pav, LOL The show needs to be buried along the likes of Cavemen, The Secret Diaries of Desmond Pfeiffer and Homeboys in Outer Space! :lol:

That's fine, I respect that. That is an opinion, which we all have. And I felt people were knocking Work It for things that had nothing to do with the series at all (like they thought it was mocking transgenders).

You would have thought they would have learned with "Bosom Buddies" such a formula grows stale quickly. Plus, it was drawing far too much criticism right out of the gate. Sitcoms these days seemed to be created and produced by children. Is it just me, or do you have to be under 30 to even "get" most sitcoms today?

I thought the show was more offensive to women than to transgenders for the idea that, "LOL ONLY WOMEN GET JOBS US POOR WHITE MEN WHOA IS POOR WHITE MEN NOTHIN EVER GOES RITE FOR US"

HIGH-LARIOUS! The whole premise was just stupid.

I thought the show was more offensive to women than to transgenders for the idea that, "LOL ONLY WOMEN GET JOBS US POOR WHITE MEN WHOA IS POOR WHITE MEN NOTHIN EVER GOES RITE FOR US"

HIGH-LARIOUS! The whole premise was just stupid.

That's why this show bothered me in a way shows like Bosom Buddies never did. As a woman, the whole idea that women are able to get jobs just by being women is complete bs. In fact being a woman has been a hindrance because many employers still think women will quit if they get pregnant or that they are not the breadwinner. There had been been a story that in fact with the poor economy men are taking traditional female jobs.

I admit. I take this issue far closer to heart because a very good friend of mine came out as trans relatively recently, and when you take time to learn the causes of it, what they have to go through and what they face - and when you've got a loud mouth like myself - advocacy comes naturally. Combine my inner advocate with my dislike of bad television, and it starts to make a bit more sense why I've been on the warpath against this show.

This article came out before the debut of the show, but I think does an amazing job of explaining just why transgendered people have had such a problem with the existence of this show.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erica-keppler/work-it-abc_b_1166102.html
(The author's words and most relevant parts are quoted, verbatim, below):

If transgender people were on a full and equal footing with the rest of society, if we were completely respected as a minority group, if we had full protections under the law like those based on race or religion, then I suppose we could view it as a little good-natured ribbing and take our lumps the same as anyone else.

The problem is that we are not. Here are just some of the findings in a survey conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality. Transgender people surveyed:

Were four times more likely to have a household income of less than $10,000 a year

Had double the rate of unemployment

Had twice the rate of homelessness

Additionally, of the transgender people surveyed:

90 percent had experienced harassment or mistreatment on the job

47 percent had been fired, not hired, or denied promotion because of being transgender

71 percent had attempted to avoid discrimination by hiding their transition

16 percent had been forced to work in the underground economy

53 percent reported being harassed or disrespected in places of public accommodation

22 percent had been denied equal treatment by government agency or official

We are the most discriminated-against minority group in America. This isn't a little, innocent jab at your best bud. This is kicking down people already at the bottom.

It really doesn't matter if this show is about transgender people or only about masculine-identifying men masquerading as women. The general public will still conflate the two. The jokes at the expense of the main characters will turn into water-cooler jokes about trans people. The depictions of the lives and experiences of the main characters will become the cultural assumption about the lives and experiences of trans people. ABC's ability to craft and mold cultural attitudes, assumptions, and opinions blows away anything we in the transgender community can do for ourselves.

Take for example the very premise that two men struggling in a job market that favors women can simply dress up as women and have a better shot at finding employment. This is the polar opposite of the reality for actual transgender women. It is far, far harder to find work as a trans woman than it is as a man or a cisgender woman. Long-term unemployment is an extremely common consequence of transition, and underemployment is often the best that can be hoped for. If this show is successful in convincing audiences of its most basic plot element, they will also be successful in convincing the American public that life must be pretty easy for trans women. They will have people thinking that finding work is a snap and that giving us protections from discrimination in employment would be like giving tax cuts to the wealthy. It would undermine our attempts to gain relief from the greatest hurdle we face in our survival.

And while there are those who say that because these characters are not transgender women, the story has nothing to do with the transgender community, I have to point out that what these characters are trying to do is superficially the exact same thing trans women are forced to do: find employment and navigate in a world that is intolerant and discriminatory, sometimes violently, toward men who violate masculinity. This is an outrageously difficult challenge for anyone who has gone through it, and it is always approached with enormous fear. Few people can imagine the fear experienced by the transitioning transsexual. It is hard to imagine any kind of economic hardship that could drive a masculine-identifying man to go through that, and even harder still to imagine him being successful at it. These men would be exposed for what they are by lunch on their first day on the job, probably in the first hour or minutes -- I guarantee it. For such a plot line to be depicted even remotely plausibly, these two men would be the absolute only people in their workplace who would think they were pulling it off.

This is where it becomes impossible to avoid conflating these characters with transgender people. For the premise to have any credibility, every other character in the story would just assume that these are two trans women but would be too polite to say anything about it. Thus, the story and the humor would turn on two men trying to pass as women while the audience knows that everyone around them sees right through them.

Most people who watch do not think they are transgenders. I did not think that one bit when I saw the pilot in May (when no articles or anything was out on this show). I think in 2012 people can differentiate what transgenders are. These guys on the show are straight guys and you see them in their actual lifestyle. If you think they are actual transgenders then you have some intelligent issues, because it is clear they are not.
And like you said, that article was out before the premiere of the show which proves people overreacting before even seeing it. If they liked the show or not, it is clear it wasn't offensive. I watched both episodes and it was just silly laughs and nothing controversial. It's just that the people who hated it so much (some didn't event watch it) come up with any little excuse or line (that Puerto Rican joke is tame compared to some other lines from other shows...he was Puerto Rican himself for crying out loud, where were the complaints on last season's Outsourced then?) to hate it.

And Seth, you were in this group who didn't watch the premiere yet and were knocking it like crazy because the media was knocking every single part of it. You can think for yourself, can't you? Sure if you hated the show after the premiere, that is fine! We all have opinions but to say this show was offensive is a joke.

I tried to make it through an entire episode, but I just couldn't. Offensive or not, the show is terrible. Bottom line, the premise sucked. How many shows have there been where men wear womens clothes? 3 or 4? I believe the last one was Ask Harriet and that lasted about a minute. The only reason Bosom Buddies(a show I happen to like) lasted as long as it did(2 seasons) was because of the talented cast(mainly Hanks and Scolari), otherwise it would have been axed much sooner.

I tried to make it through an entire episode, but I just couldn't. Offensive or not, the show is terrible. Bottom line, the premise sucked. How many shows have there been where men wear womens clothes? 3 or 4? I believe the last one was Ask Harriet and that lasted about a minute. The only reason Bosom Buddies(a show I happen to like) lasted as long as it did(2 seasons) was because of the talented cast(mainly Hanks and Scolari), otherwise it would have been axed much sooner.

Yes...and "Bosom Buddies" is STILL enjoyed by many, whereas "Work It" was just hyped-up crap!

Crap or not, that's one's opinion. I thought it was ok, not great but not terrible either. My point was it was not mocking any group, gender or race. There have been many episodes of sitcoms that dress up as the opposite sex (Three's Company, 227, Perfect Strangers off the top of my head). It's all in fun and they were not actually doing it to mock any gender (they were doing it to get jobs). Most who were complaining about this show didn't even watch the pilot. Episode two was something you would have seen in the 80s--silly laughs (reaction to guest star Sam Anderson's face when he saw the underwear was priceless). It was a nice throwback episode, but I guess that doesn't work these days.


Agreed. I saw the first episode and laughed. It was clever. I'm sorry I missed the second episode. I wonder if they would have been able to keep up the routine every week for the show. I feel bad for the actors because they are out of the jobs. Like yourself, I think people went a little overboard with the criticism. I liked the pilot. If it gets a DVD release, I'd buy it.

I watched both episodes and it wasnt that bad and I am not sure how it would be offensive to people who are transgender because the 2 guys in this show were just cross dressing which is not what being transgender is.

I watched both episodes and it wasnt that bad and I am not sure how it would be offensive to people who are transgender because the 2 guys in this show were just cross dressing which is not what being transgender is.


Exactly! I did not realize there was so much controversy over this show. Not to offend others but I think others are being over the top about their criticisms and this program.

just bring back Cougar Town or one of the other better shows you dummies!

It will fill the 8:30 PM ET slot beginning Febraury 14, Valentine's Day. Sorry if someone mentioned that already.

I'm glad "Work It" is gone. "Man Up!" wasn't a great show, but it had its moment or two - but most of all, it had Teri Polo. Seeing her fail again in another failed sitcom hurt like hell. I'm happy that the sitcom that replaced hers was a disaster.

I didn't see "Work It," the critics' reviews made me want to skip it. :p

The second episode of Work It was funnier than the pilot. Two guys dressing up as women to get better jobs shouldn't have caused such a controversy, think of all the times it's been done in the movies & on other tv shows without causing such an uproar. They were not changing their male genetic make-up to become women, they were just "pretending" to be women. The show really wasn't that bad, I've definitely seen worse shows.

The backlash was not because they were dressing up as women. It was because they were doing so in a very degrading way based off of a bull**** and borderline sexist premise that "WOMEN ARE GETTING ALL THE JOBS LOLOL SUCKS TO BE US"

The backlash was not because they were dressing up as women. It was because they were doing so in a very degrading way based off of a bull**** and borderline sexist premise that "WOMEN ARE GETTING ALL THE JOBS LOLOL SUCKS TO BE US"

That's why it bothered me. In fact men are taking jobs that traditionally hire women because many employers think men are the breadwinners. Forget the fact that many women are single or others are married but the breadwinners and most women are now co breadwinners. So for a tv show to state this myth that women take all the jobs is extremely sexist. As a woman who has lost jobs because I am women (and still struggling in this economy)I find shows like this highly offensive.

The backlash was not because they were dressing up as women. It was because they were doing so in a very degrading way based off of a bull**** and borderline sexist premise that "WOMEN ARE GETTING ALL THE JOBS LOLOL SUCKS TO BE US"

They made no mention that women are getting all the jobs...

The backlash was not because they were dressing up as women. It was because they were doing so in a very degrading way based off of a bull**** and borderline sexist premise that "WOMEN ARE GETTING ALL THE JOBS LOLOL SUCKS TO BE US"

Doesnt sound like you watched it because thats not what happened at all.

ABC actually promoted it as a new "hit" comedy. So much for truth in advertising! :lol:

ABC actually promoted it as a new "hit" comedy. So much for truth in advertising! :lol:


I was wondering about that, too. The announcer called it a "hit" comedy. I was like "really?" I was very confused. However, I liked the show. I missed the second episode, though. I wanted to see more of this show.

I was wondering about that, too. The announcer called it a "hit" comedy. I was like "really?" I was very confused. However, I liked the show. I missed the second episode, though. I wanted to see more of this show.

Maybe on Hulu . . .

Erm, the "women taking over the workplace" thing was mentioned in the first 5 seconds of the trailer, so unless the show completely cut that...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9Joid6wx3Q

The part that gets me is where the ladies are all eating celery sticks or whatever and he pulls out the giant sandwich and feels he has to throw it away because women don't eat. Psh, I'm a 115 pound young lady and I can pack in a roast beef footlong in less than 15 minutes like it's my job. He should've kept the sandwich. I think if he'd have kept the sandwich the show would've been a hit.

All shows should have more guest appearances by The Sandwich.

Erm, the "women taking over the workplace" thing was mentioned in the first 5 seconds of the trailer, so unless the show completely cut that...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9Joid6wx3Q

That is said by a secondary character portrayed somewhat as a loser on the show you could say they are mocking him by insinuating that only a loser would say that, the main characters are not at all portraying the "poor me I am a man" attitude you are suggesting. By these standards we could probably argue all shows at one time or another are offensive to someone.

You probably have a better arguement if you want to say the show should be cancelled because it sucked. Which again I didnt think it was that bad.

All shows should have more guest appearances by The Sandwich.


I agree The Sandwich is one of the most underrated character actors in the business.

I agree The Sandwich is one of the most underrated character actors in the business.

Hungry? :rotflmao: