Over the past several Mondays, I've grown more and more impressed with The New Adventures Of Old Christine, the post-Seinfeld Julia Louis-Dreyfuss sitcom that CBS has kept on the air despite middling ratings and little buzz. Yes, it's a traditional three-camera sitcom–without much in the way of a "sit"–but Louis-Dreyfuss has developed so many facets to her neurotic single-mom character that at this point she can get a laugh out of a nothing line like, "God, I'm lonely," provided that she says it with the right inflection, and at just the right time.
What does all that have to do with Miss Guided? Just that between Louis-Dreyfuss on Christine, Tina Fey on 30 Rock, and Christina Appegate on Samantha Who?, there's a wave of strong female leads on sitcoms right now, and it would've been nice if Miss Guided could've been part of the trend. But alas, Miss Guided is a pretty much a complete botch: a decent idea for a show undoubtedly dumbed-down in development-land.
The always-delightful Judy Greer plays a former high school nerd who gets a job as a guidance counselor at her alma mater, where she hopes to help other outsiders like herself by proving that they can become as beautiful and successful as she did. Only she's can't be that successful if she's just a guidance counselor. And while Greer is definitely pretty, there's a gawkiness about her character too–she definitely remembers what it was like to be a nobody, and still kind of carries herself like one.
In the right hands, Miss Guided could've been poignant farce, making fun of Greer's harmless self-delusions and how she can't really change who she is. And there's a little of that, in the first episode's introduction of a romantic interest: a hunky fellow faculty member who's also in the line of sight of the high school's former homecoming queen. The look of mild panic on Greer's face when she realizes that she's going to have to compete with the popular kids again is both funny and real.