I love Kristin Chenoweth. She's the reason I finally gave in and
watched The West Wing. She led me to the brilliant Pushing Daisies. Now she has
brought me to GCB, a new comedy drama focusing on the somewhat salacious lives
of a tight-knit and very, very Christian community. The first I heard of
Good Christian Bitches, to use it's much better full title, was when a picture
appeared in my Facebook feed with a string of comments saying how offensive
this show was. This was before the episode had even aired, and the strong
reaction immediately caught my interest. It seems people were offended by the
mere prospect of Christians being shown in a bad light on American TV. I don't
know what everyone was worried about because, to be quite frank, this show has
the most likeable cast of Christian characters I've come across, and it's a
really entertaining pilot to boot!
Think Desperate
Housewives meets Mean Girls and you're some way towards the premise of GCB. The
show follows Amanda Vaughn, who is forced to return to the Dallas home she grew
up in when her husband dies under unfortunate circumstances, exposing his
illegal activities along the way. She and her two children are all moved in
with Gigi, Amanda's mother, within the first five minutes, giving us plenty of
time to meet the other residents of this community. There's not an awful lot of
plot in this opening episode, but there is plenty of plotting, and more than
enough material is set up to keep the premise interesting. Kristin steals the
show as Carlene, the ringleader of the local ladies, who are none too happy to see
Amanda back in town. It turns out that Amanda was quite the mean girl in their
high school days, and most of the ladies forgot to grow up.
Sharon, one of Carlene's faithful minions, gets an eyeful.
Gigi on the other hand is very happy to have the chance to exert
some influence on her grandchildren, teaching her grandson how to make
cocktails, introducing her granddaughter to big hair, and of course dragging
them all to church. “My grandchildren are going to church so they get into
heaven, end of story, Amen.” she declares when Amanda resists. This is honestly
about as heavy as the religion side of things gets, at least in this first
episode. While it raises some interesting debate about imposing religion as a
duty rather than a choice if you’re looking deep enough, it’s really not at all
disrespectful, so it’s a shame that such controversy seems to have been stirred
up just for the sheer fact that the show contains Christians who are a bit
bitchy. After a hilariously passive-aggressive welcome from Carlene, Amanda is
set upon by what seems to be everyone she ever knew in high school, friends and
enemies alike. Carlene is fortunate enough to live opposite Amanda’s new home,
putting her in a perfect position to spy on her. The telescope she has set up
certainly doesn’t hurt either. When Amanda begins receiving increasingly lavish gifts from a secret
admirer Carlene rallies the girls to find out who is committing these
apparently heinous acts. The central cast are all really great here, and the
show has such a fun tone, with another great line never more than a few moments
away, that it’s really hard not to get caught up in all that close-knit community
bitchiness.
However, as Amanda starts looking for a job this bitchiness turns into
something more concerning when it becomes clear that our grown-up mean girls
are bribing those offering jobs to make sure she remains unemployed. They don’t
have a grip on the whole town of course, and when Amanda takes a job at ‘Boobylicious’
the reaction is not exactly positive. It does however provide Amanda with the
opportunity to expose the self-righteous Carlene as the hypocrite she is in
front of an entire church congregation, and by the end of the episode we know
that she’s really made herself an enemy all over again. Carlene’s antics are a
joy to watch, this opening episode is well-written, with fast-paced and clever humour
making up for what it lacks in real drama, and the entire cast work well
together. The episode does also offer up a lot of tantalising threads that will
no doubt lead us to some more intriguing plot-lines now that the introductions are
all done. I may have been drawn to this pilot by some over-hyped controversy
and the undeniably adorable Kristin Chenoweth, but it turned out to have a lot
of potential on it’s own merits, and I’m looking forward to seeing what it does
with it.
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