The Man Crisis
The so called “Mancession” is getting a fair share of play this season. Previous sitcoms have focused on schlubby men married to improbably attractive stay-at-home moms who shook their heads in exasperation at their husband’s lunkhead ways, the new model is to have the schlubby man shake his head in exasperation at an increasingly feminized world. ABC gives us a double dose of this dynamic with Last Man Standing and Man Up, while CBS’s How To Be A Gentlemen has a metrosexual magazine editor is taught to grunt and sweat like the rest of us. But ABC takes the (beef) cake by combining the employment crisis with the crisis of masculinity in Work It. Taking a page out of early 80’s Tom Hanks in Bosom Buddies, the show features two out of work car salesmen who dress as women to snag jobs as pharmaceutical reps.
