Your Cliff Notes for GCB with Leslie Bibb & Kristin Chenoweth

GCB is a show you can look for on ABC during the 2012 midseason premiere schedule. The show has had two trial names, “Good Christian Bitches” and “Good Christian Belles.”

gcb

Having not seen the show yet, my general feeling is that this will be the equivalent of a guilty pleasure, chick flick. Except it will be a TV series. And that’s unfortunate. Why? Because people will tune into a silly Lifetime movie for a couple hours, but they won’t be a fan of an exceptionally cheesy TV show for an entire season. However, sometimes campy works. If GCB manages to produce something that’s on the level of Desperate Housewives, then they’ll likely get a season 2.

A Sidebar: I’m looking forward to the GCB show, but not expecting anything too amazing. And if you’re a TV exec, low expectations are your friend! It’s easier for me to gradually warm up to a show than to be blasted with promo spots that built it up only to have the first several episodes flop. You might ask me, hey, how can we promote the darn show, then? My suggestion is to use internet banner ads on major websites like TV Guide, maybe even on Twitter. But don’t overdo the hype, and don’t replay the very best parts of your show on TV for a week before it airs. People will be annoyed. And the best marketing doesn’t happen online. It happens over the phone and on the playgrounds where Mother’s sit and talk to each other in a few spare moments they have. And since these are busy women (and men, although this show seems to target women), they don’t want to waste their time on a bad TV program. In a nutshell: only hype up your series half as much as you should. Then let other people build the show up for you by talking about how good it was. That’s free publicity, and everyone wants to get in on something cool that’s being kept a little bit secret.

While “GCB” will be super easy to trend on twitter (#gcb – except that I keep typing the c before the g…) it’s odd that they had to change the name so much. When you try to please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody. To take a show that is based on a book, you already have a title and built-in fans. The show went from Good Christian Bitches to Good Christian Belles and for some reason it was decided to be shortened down to GCB. Although it has a little bit of a mafia tone to it “The GCB!” this writer thinks the name change was a poor choice. “Good Christian Belles” conjured up a lot of connotations, and it was still appropriately snarky sounding. “GCB” sounds like what us TV fans on Twitter do to shorten TV show names (i.e. TVD for The Vampire Diaries and TSC for The Secret Circle.) It will be interesting to hear why the name change from Belles to just letters was made.

Now, let’s talk a little bit more about the actual series. Because a name, alone, does not make or break a series. The show will center on Amanda Vaughn, played by Leslie Bibb, who returns home to Dallas after her marriage ends. She has two children. Amanda’s overbearing and pushy mother, Gigi Stopper, is played by Annie Potts. …From that description it sounds a lot like “Hope Floats” set in a different location, huh? On the other hand, this has the possibility to end up resembling one of Bravo’s Real Housewives series

There’s Carlene Cockburn (Kristin Chenoweth) who’s the queen bee. And you know Chenoweth always delivers. Carlene’s husband is Ripp Cockburn (David James Elliot.)

GCB also stars Jennifer Aspen (Rodney) as Sharon Peacham, Miriam Shor (Swingtown, Damages) as Cricket Caruth-Reilly, Marisol Nichols (24) as Heather Cruz, Brad Beyer (Jericho) as Zack Peacham, Mark Deklin (Lone Star) as Blake Reilly.

Marisol Nichols is someone I remember from “Scream 2” (the sorority sister who scares Cici Cooper shortly before she dies.) A quick wiki check of this actress notes she was in that awful show The Gates, and is also a Scientologist.

Both Leslie Bibb and Marisol Nichols had small parts in the 90’s hit movie “Can’t Hardly Wait.”

GCB Show Synopsis from ABC

The soap returns to Dallas in this wicked new drama that shows that you can go home again… but only if you’re ready to face the sins of your past.

Amanda Vaughn (Leslie Bibb), once the ultimate high school “mean girl,” is forced to return home in disgrace after her marriage ends in scandal. Amanda is nothing like the girl she was 20 years ago, but as her old classmates reacquaint themselves with the new Amanda, will her home town welcome her with open arms or seek revenge? No one in this town is a saint, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have a heart. As Amanda and her teenage kids try to adjust to their new lives, the ladies from her past alternate between sympathy and scheming.

GCB Show Pictures / GCB Pictures