ABC on Friday announced it had canceled
the sitcom Work It after only two outings, according to The
Hollywood Reporter.
In the series, which premiered on
January 3, Lee Standish (played by Ben Koldyke) and Angel Ortiz
(Amaury Nolasco) played two unemployed men who land jobs as sales
representatives for a pharmaceutical company dressed as women.
Before its premiere, the show drew the
ire of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest gay
rights group, and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
(GLAAD), which said that the show reinforced mistaken stereotypes
about transgender people.
The groups protested the show in a full
page ad which appeared in Variety.
“Work It will harm transgender
people,” read the ad's headline.
Work It, however, was pulled due
to a combination of low ratings and bad reviews.
“While many of ABC's positive and
groundbreaking portrayals of LGBT people have been critical and
popular successes, the public had little interest in this outdated
show,” Herndon Graddick, senior director of programs and
communications at GLAAD, said in a statement.
(Related: RuPaul
loves the word “tranny”; OK with Work It.)