Good Christian Bitches Woos This Texan With Inside References And Annie Potts

Annie Potts' outfit is dangerously close to being accurate and that terrifies me.

I’m having trouble writing about GCB, or Good Christian Bitches for those of us who don’t want to sound like we’re talking about drugs.

See, I was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas. I went to a nice parochial school and in middle school we took weekly trips to Dallas to play sports against the kids the supposedly grew up to be the titular characters of this show. So I have a bit of a baseline as to what it means to be an affluent Dallas woman. And worse, I grew up on a farm where my closest neighbor and best friend was living on a working ranch only a few miles away. Rodeos and cotillions went hand in hand in my house and church (Episcopalian like a good little WASP) was required on Sunday.

So you can see how I’m going to be a little sensitive watching this show.

I notice things that others would not. Like the real estate sign one GCB is pounding into the ground is a riff on the locally famous central Dallas realtor Ebby Halliday. Or that the car dealership next to some highway is a rundown version of the most expensive car dealership in North Texas. Seriously I don’t think I can even afford to drive by the place. I also notice the jibes at my hometown, the mocking of I-20, and the wonderfully realistic renditions of Highland Park and the decor of the homes and offices therein. And any North Texas gal can appreciate the show’s advertisement of Neiman Marcus (I hope they got paid to plug it though–because DANG).

But then, being from North Texas and knowing a couple of ranchers and oil folks I also notice the inaccuracies. Like suggesting a “straight” “cowboy” would be wearing more sequins on his jacket than a high school rodeo queen.

But you know what? I feel like I have to forgive them. Sure it fetishizes my culture, but it’s really no worse than Dallas and if we all weathered that we can weather this. Because beneath the gentle mocking of Texas there’s a really fun story about a woman getting her life back.

I didn’t expect that. I knew going in that the show was about a woman whose husband steals a lot of money and then gets himself killed leaving her in debt and forced to return to her hometown just to survive. But I didn’t expect Leslie Bibb’s character, Amanda, to also be a recently recovered alcoholic who is trying to make real and genuine changes for reasons beyond a loss of wealth and privilege.  Nor did I expect to see Marisol Nichols (from BLIND JUSTICE) on my television playing the newly won best friend who also happens to have come from poverty, be the only non-white woman in the group and the only unmarried one. Hmmmm. Later we’ll find out she’s also the only registered Democrat I’m sure.

The rest of it though–that I expected. Annie Potts is superb as the super rich mother with a whole other value system that she insists on forcing on her daughter and grandchildren. It’s not like she WOULDN’T be superb in such a role and it’s kind of boggling that we don’t spend more time with her in the premiere. If this show breaks out and becomes a big thing it will be largely due to the Potts factor.

Kristin Chenoweth is saccharine sweet and shrill and evil all at once as the new queen bee of their Dallas neighborhood. I think the show might use her singing church songs as a way to close out each episode, and while I’ll get tired of the songs themselves fairly quickly I’m all about having Chenoweth singing on my tv weekly. The only real quibble with her character, is how cartoonish she is. She isn’t the only one, there are gay cowboys, a fat beauty queen, and a horny former high school star that are all painted in big broad strokes. But it’s the pilot. We just need a rough outline of where they are and where they’ll go to get enticed into coming back.

And oh will it. This is like the first season of Desperate Housewives merged with King of the Hill. Only, you know, Annie Potts still has her shins.