Last night saw the debut of one of the worst shows in recent
memory. Savaged by critics who had seen advanced copies and viewers who had
only seen commercials, “Work It” premiered to over six million viewers (a
respectable number, no doubt aided by little competition and the rubberneckers
who wanted to see what all the vitriol was about).
It was as bad as advertised. Maybe even worse. And I set a
season pass on my DVR.
A show like “Work It” demonstrates the worse tendencies of
the TV business. Even if you ignore the
fact that it is essentially a remake of the not terribly well remembered 80’s
sitcom “Bosom Buddies” (which would be long-forgotten had Tom Hanks not been
one of the stars), the laziness inherent in both the idea and the execution on “Work
It” are startlingly offensive.
The jokes are tired. The actors are straining under the
weight of the premise. The sets are laughable (and not in a good way) and the
characters are drawn so broadly they are barely recognizable as human beings.
And I am going to watch every damn episode that airs.
In my manifesto, I wrote that I watch a lot of TV, even
stuff I don’t especially like, because there is something to be learned from
even some of the dullest shows. And “Work It” is beyond dull. It’s dire. It was uncomfortable to watch the pilot.
So why watch it?
Television is an art form run by businessmen. Those businessmen rely on good decisions to
keep their jobs. All the way up the
line. The number of people that said “Yes”
to “Work It” in order for it to go from a kernel of an idea to a television
series on a major broadcast network is likely near three or four dozen. At no point in the past year, as the show has
been developed, did any of these people, whose jobs rely on good decision
making, think that maybe a premise based around two of the least convincing
drag queens of all time passing as women wasn’t going to be a break out success
for the network.
What’s more, the conventional wisdom in the TV business is
that you are better off saying “No” to things.
People get fired when they make crap because it costs the network money,
but saying “No” is free. That’s why it
is so hard to make something unique and creative: Because the people who decide
what to make would have to risk their careers to make it happen. TV execs reject hundreds of ideas for every
one they push on to the next step.
So in this culture of “No,” not a single person raised their
hand and admitted “This is a stupid idea.” Some writers pitched a concept, and
the studio gave them money to write the pilot script for the episode that aired
last night. They turned in that script
and the studio gave them more money to produce the episode. They produced it and the studio gave them
more money to rent production offices, hire a staff, pay for coffee and bagels,
and everything else that goes along with producing a series. ABC ordered (I think) 13 episodes, at a cost
of hundreds of thousands of dollars per episode. And through all this, not one of these
executives recognized that the show was a pile of shit.
“Work It” is a miracle show. They come along every few years and are so
aggressively bad that it hurts to think how anyone could think it would attract
viewers. They tend to be shows so
insultingly bad that you have to watch for fear of missing a Haley’s Comet of
awful. The TV industry has mechanisms in
place to make it easy to avoid shows this bad, and when that mechanism breaks
down, you wind up with a product so awful it approaches art.
And this isn’t a simple “so bad it’s good” situation. “Work It” isn’t ironically fascinating. Previous shows that fit that bill were things
like Kelsey Grammer’s “Hank” or Jimmy Smits’ “Outlaw.” These were shows created with a star in mind,
someone with past success on TV, that had a built in fan base they hoped to
exploit. “Work It” stars the guy that did six episodes of “How I Met Your
Mother” two seasons ago and the dude from “Prison Break” that did nothing but
shout “Maricruz!” for four increasingly convoluted seasons. “Work It” tries to entice viewers based
solely on the merits of its premise and execution.
The last time a program this bad and with so little going
for it popped up on our TVs, it was 2008 and the show was “Do Not Disturb,” a
22 minute turd of a sitcom starring Jerry O’Connell, Niecy Nash of “Reno: 911”
and a pre-“Modern Family” Jesse Tyler Ferguson.
It focused on the madcap antics of the staff of a trendy New York hotel and
watching it was like walking through the Island of Dr. Moreau. This
should not be!
And, yes, I watched all six episodes that aired.
There is another reason I find myself drawn to these shows
that wallow in such disregard for their audience. I fancy myself a writer of both TV and
film. And when I see a show like “Work
It,” a show that disregards what little effort it takes to achieve mediocrity,
it gives me hope. Writing is a fairly
thankless task when you are doing it, like I am, for free, and as time passes,
the idea that you can break in to the TV or movie business seems more and more
unlikely. And then a show like “Work It,”
or “Do Not Disturb” appears and you recognize that the bar for becoming a
working TV writer has been set even lower.
And “Mancession” is not a thing.
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