If you find nothing funnier than unemployment, have I got a show for you.
The former producers of “Friends,” who presumably will never have to worry about money again, not only seem to find hilarity in the unemployment struggle, but have created a “sitcom” (lots of “sit” not much “com”) around it called “Work It.”
“Work It” doesn’t work. It’s not only not funny, but it’s also not original.
The new series borrows from this season’s most popular TV trend (the one that doesn’t involve the formerly dead) — the one about how women have ruined it for men.
Here we have two out-of-work former Pontiac employees, Lee (Ben Koldyke) — a husband and father — and Angel (Amaury Nolasco), a single, mechanic/Latin lover, (I swear). The guys are forced to dress as women in order to get work as pharmaceutical reps.
Why dress in drag you may ask? Because “It’s not a recession, it’s a man-cession,” their pal says. Crank up the very fake laugh track.
Luckily for Lee, his large-man’s frame fits into his wife Connie’s (Beth Lacke) size six dresses and size seven shoes, so he doesn’t even seem to need to buy new clothes.
Not only does he look like a giant man that no one would mistake for a woman, he gets large, womanizing Angel — who has no idea how to sell anything — to put on women’s clothes and sell pharmaceuticals, too.
Since all women only get where we are by flaunting sex (according to hard-working nurse, Connie, “Sometimes we have to let ‘the girls’ out and turn on the air conditioning”), the two men flirt shamelessly with male doctors.
They show their thongs and bend over backwards, literally, to sell the latest asthma medicine.
Look, there’s a long and awfully funny history of men dressing as women in order to get jobs in movies and TV — “Tootsie,” “Big Momma’s House,” “Bosom Buddies” — but “Work It” doesn’t belong on that list.
Call me strict, but I was turned off by the first joke in tomorrow’s premiere, which compared a prostate exam to Jodie Foster’s gang rape in “The Accused.”
The only thing funnier than being unemployed is being gang-raped, I guess.
What a dumb show.