Fox and ABC are going absolutely crazy with the pilot pick-ups today, apparently taking a Costco, buy-in-bulk approach to programming—which is exactly how you wind up at home, lamenting that you bought an industrial-sized tub of Cheez-Its for some reason. But right now it’s all about the heady rush of consuming, and ABC is definitely high on something, picking up two multicamera sitcoms from Andrew Reich and Ted Cohen, the two latter-period Friends producers who went on to give you short-lived shows like Welcome To The Captain, Worst Week, and Romantically Challenged. that you may not have even been aware existed.
Perhaps ABC is playing the odds by picking up two Reich/Cohen projects at once, hoping that, like twins in the womb, maybe the stronger will survive by eating the other, so it’s likely only one of these will actually make it to air. Vote now: Do you think it will it be Smothered, about a young couple who are comically "smothered by their two very different sets of parents"? Or will it be Work It—a show that Deadline describes as having “a Bosom Buddies vibe,” primarily because it is exactly like Bosom Buddies, seeing as it concerns a pair of unemployed car salesmen who “realize that it is now a woman's world” (as so many men have), and that the only way they can ever find work again is to dress up in women’s clothing and get jobs as pharmaceutical reps? Would it sway your decision either way if we told you that Work It also finds the cross-dressing men “inadvertently” becoming better husbands and fathers, then sharing what they’ve learned with their fellow men at “the sanctuary of their local bar” every night? What if Reich and Cohen also gave them a live-in nanny, preferably played by an Italian guy, or inserted a subplot that found them frequently getting involved in petty crime, thereby forcing them to attend some sort of court that takes place at night?
Of course, such vintage sitcom tropes are so old-fashioned that they’re suddenly trendy again, as also seen in Fox’s acquisition of a new single-camera comedy about “the sexual politics of men and women,” a logline that describes approximately one-third of the sitcoms on air and in development. But this one is from Liz Meriwether, the writer behind the similarly zeitgeist-y No Strings Attached—formerly known as Fuck Buddies—and the stalled 2007 Fox pilot Sluts. Ergo, it also boasts one of Meriwether’s signature edgy titles: Chicks And Dicks, so you just know it will be bold and fearless and talk about periods and dicks and things. Some viewers will be all like, “Can she say that?” and the other viewers will be like, “It’s a woman’s world—welcome to the 21st century!” and then tweet a picture of their boobs. Anyway, considering ABC’s recent fascination with “bitches,” it’s sort of a surprise they let this one go—though it's probably for the best, considering there's no way Chicks And Dicks wouldn't be constantly mistaken for that cross-dressing show.