Posted by Dustin on 03.04.2012 at 12:47 pm

As NBC has been doing with some of their new shows, ABC decided to put “GBC” out there in a few forms before the actual broadcast tonight. I couldn’t pass up a sneak peak now could I?

The show is about Amanda Vaughn (Leslie Bibb) who is a Dallas native, but moved away 18 years ago when she married her husband Jack. Jack however wasn’t a great guy, got caught in a huge ponzi scheme, tried to flee with his mistress, and drove off the road because he was . . . distracted. Amanda and her two kids are forced to return to Dallas when all her husbands assets are seized. They move in with Amanda’s estranged mother Gigi (played by Annie Potts). We soon learn that Amanda was a mean girl in highschool, and the four girls she tormented the most aren’t happy she’s back . . . but their husband’s are! While she was a mean girl, she was also the girl every guy wanted to date. In the pilot Amanda struggles to get back on her feet, while her main nemesis Carlene (Kristen Chenoweth) leads the pack of old girls against her every step of the way.

I really enjoyed this show. It felt very “Desperate Housewives” versus “Mean Girls.” I’ve loved Leslie Bibb since “Popular,” adore Kristen Chenoweth and Miriam Shore (who plays Cricket), but it was Annie Potts who stole the show I. She basically plays a combination of an amped up Mary Jo and Julia Sugarbaker – the Terminator from “Designing Women.”

I definitely wonder where the show will go story-line wise. One story twist was very easy to pick up on, and the reveal wasn’t so shocking. It was pretty funny though! That’s a secret Amanda still has in her pocket by the end of the pilot. Given she’s reformed, you get the sense she doesn’t plan on using it though. A few other twists and surprises I didn’t see coming and were nice endings to the pilot.

Of course the major issue I’m having is getting hooked on the show, and not having it succeed. Shows with underlying religious themes, or very blatant ones, tend to be the target for large boycots. In fact this show already is, before anyone has even seen it. One Million Mom’s has already come out with a campaign against it. The irony is while the church is a part of the show, it’s not the entire show. The show is more about exposing hypocrisy, not Christian hypocrisy per say, but the way many tend to live and judge. Those who throw the most stones tend to live in the biggest and shiniest glass houses.