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  • Showing posts with label Kristin Chenoweth. Show all posts
    Showing posts with label Kristin Chenoweth. Show all posts

    Kraft Cream Cheese Ads Pulled From ABC Series

    Kraft has since issued this statement to The Huffington Post:

    As part of a larger multi-show media buy on ABC-TV, there were some spots included in the rotation for the new "GCB" series. It's customary to advertise on premiere episodes due to their large viewership like Philadelphia Cream Cheese did this week.

    The brand has decided to redirect advertising to other programs with an established audience. Although we received a few consumer complaints, this decision was not linked in any way to the content of this particular show.

    EARLIER: Kraft has lost faith in "GCB." According to TMZ, Kraft has pulled its Philadelphia cream cheese ads from the new ABC series.

    "Philadelphia has decided to pull its advertising from 'GCB,'" a Kraft rep told TMZ. "We have received a few complaints from consumers and their opinions about our advertising are important to us."

    Based on the book "Good Christian Bitches" by Kim Gatlin and starring Kristin Chenoweth, Annie Potts and Leslie Bibb, ABC's "GCB" (Sundays at 10 p.m. EST) has been met with controversy ever since its pilot stage. The show was produced using the book titled, but was tweaked to "Good Christian Belles" before simply being called "GCB." The acronym title proved to be a challenge while promoting the new nighttime soap.

    Prior to its premiere, "GCB" riled religious groups, and continues to do so. In April 2010, before the show was even ordered to series, critics started bemoaning the name.

    Christian publisher Tessie DeVore told Fox News that the title portrays Christians in a bad light.

    "I find the title offensive. I don’t think those two words should be combined," DeVore said. "A show like this can damage perceptions [of Christians in this country]."

    New York City Councilman Peter Vallone is the most recent vocal critic. He's called for viewers to boycott "GCB" and for ABC to change the name of the series.

    “The fact that ABC considers this sort of language and this sort of title is something that would even be considered for a TV show is really a sad statement about how low we have sunk," Vallone told the New York Daily News.

    The Intersection of Boobylicious And Christianity

    As soapy shows go, "GCB" is very much in the vein of "Desperate Housewives" or "Dallas," only perhaps with an even meaner streak. It's a story of tables turning, as former high school mean girl Amanda Vaughn (Leslie Bibb) moves back to Dallas after her marriage comes to a very scandalous and tragic end. Once home, she finds that the girls she ruthlessly taunted back in high school have risen to society leadership positions, much of it centered around the church and Carlene Cockburn (Kristin Chenoweth).

    In fact, it's pretty clearly established in the premiere that this will be a series about the battle between Amanda and Carlene, who refuses to accept the possibility that her former tormentor has changed. For now, Carlene clearly has the upper hand and influence. She manages to keep Amanda from landing a real job by calling in favors with her friends, forcing Amanda to take a job at a bar called Boobylicious.

    When a photo of Amanda on the job and in uniform begins to make the rounds, she taunts her former rival relentlessly, calling it sinful and un-Christian. But when Amanda finds out that Boobylicious is ultimately owned by Carlene and her husband's corporation, Amanda lets Carlene have it in the sweetest way possible. She thanks her publicly in prayer at church for her job, outing Carlene as the owner of Boobylicious in the process. It's open season!

    While HuffPost TV Critic Maureen Ryan thought the show's general premise of a former mean girl trying to rebuild her life surrounded by the very girls she'd tormented was a great breeding ground for comedy and drama, she was disappointed to find little more than "screechy Texas stereotypes" in a "cartoonish, silly soap."

    Why You Need To Watch ABC's Texas Housewives

    If there was ever anything to make you wish to God (with a capital G) that Molly Ivins were alive and sitting right next to you with a glass of Maker's, providing a running commentary, it is ABC's new series "GCB." I will not be as good at reviewing this fictional Texas scenarios as Ivins was at critiquing things that actually happened in Texas. Have you ever read her take on the Texas legislature? It was a beautiful thing to behold, but I am not there yet. Additional handicaps: 1) I am from the South and grew up visiting relatives in Texas, but I am not a Lone Star native. 2) My taste in television tends toward "The Bachelor" and "Criminal Minds." Consider your source.

    Here's what I do know: Generally speaking, it's not terribly effective to give a film or series that you want people to remember a name that is an acronym -- especially an acronym easily confused with CBGB or BCBG. Fortunately, there's an easy way to remember this one -- just remind yourself what the series was going to be called before a lot of people got very upset: "Good Christian Bitches." (For a while, the title was going to be "Good Christian Belles," which would have been no fun at all.)

    Billed as a Texas version of "Desperate Housewives," the show is based on the book "Good Christian Bitches" by Kim Gatlin, who also co-wrote the series. The premise is this: Recently widowed former mean girl Amanda Vaughn (Leslie Bibb) is forced to move back to her hometown of Dallas with her two kids to live with her socialite mother, played by Annie Potts. The women Amanda terrorized in high school, who in her absence have grown up to control the Dallas society machine, are less than thrilled by Ms. Vaughn's return, especially since their husbands definitely are thrilled. The GCBs, led by Carlene Cockburn (Broadway veteran Kristin Chenoweth), thus conspire to make Amanda's life hell. A lot of the conspiring and hell-raising happens to take place in church.

    As Brooks Barnes noted in the New York Times, "If the first episode is any guide, the series ... will be way, way (way) over the top."

    I'd say so. The entire thing begins with a failed Ponzi scheme and oral sex that proves fatal to both parties.

    It's understandable that some Christians feel that this show misrepresents them: God here is made an accessory to the GCBs outfits and their antics. Some have argued that naming any show "______ Bitches" is demeaning to women in general. That's probably true, and if so, an acronym hardly fixes the problem. And I suppose it threatens to misrepresent Texas women, specifically, to the larger world.

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