WINTER TV EXTRAVAGANZA

 WORK IT!

* (out of ****)

It’s hard to believe Work It! is an actual show at any point through it’s 78 hour runtime; it consistently feels like a parody of a sitcom. It has everything you need to create a sitcom these days: idiot men whose stupidity knows no bounds, cunt bitches who never shut the fuck up, a family that jokes because they love, and people who have been screwed by the economy. The show spends the first five minutes laying down its hilarious premise. Lee, whose stupidity knows no bounds, has been out of work for a year. But in the world that Lee lives in, he can’t find work because companies have only started hiring women. Lee doesn’t think “Well, hey. I’ll keep looking” or “I should move to a more realistic world where women and men are struggling equally,” but instead thinks “Guess I better dress like a girl.” The show then becomes a series of logic-destroying, soul-crushing anti-laugh riots, one right after the next. Bad shows make me angry that a group of people got together and made something so awful. This show just made me feel bad for all involved. – RH

JANE BY DESIGN

** out of (****)

In doing my research for this post (i.e. looking for sexy pictures of the star), I discovered a couple strange things. The first is, I couldn’t find Erica Dasher’s, who plays the titular Jane, age anywhere. The second is for some reason a lot of people have seemed to search for pictures of her feet. Is she some secret foot fetish star? More research is going to have to occur until I get to the bottom of this, I need to know if I’m creepy for being attracted to her, and less creepy then most of the populace who are obsessed with her feet. Those two mysteries are far more interesting than this show, but it wasn’t as terrible as I expected. Someone took the Arrested Development plot line of Maybe getting a movie producer job by accident, transposed it to the fashion world and took out the jokes. That’s Jane By Design in a nutshell. The acting was pretty over the top and atrocious by most of the actors, though Jane held it together for most of the pilot. She’s the brand of gorgeous goofy ‘loser’ in high school, who isn’t well liked for no other  apparent reason than her fashion sense, dead dad and mom who ran away. Man, I always fucking hated the kids who came from shitty homes. The writers of the shows have no handle on any of the male characters, and it’s in them that the show fails the most. But when it’s Jane in her fashion world doing fashion-y things or whatever, the show is alright. I won’t watch this again, but I won’t scream at the TV if it ever pops up. I may actually let it stay on and see how things are going for young Jane.Oh, tune in if you’re a fan of statutory, ’cause that’s for sure going to happen.-MG