There are some performers that are just so packed with talent, they could either potentially do anything or are so difficult to categorize they are challenging to find the proper role for. And there are others who have such a unique life story, producers want to tap into that element and maybe use some of those facts to help create stories. That gets us right to "Kristin."
Kristin Chenoweth is the person I'm talking about when it came to those elements of both incredible talent and interesting life story. And this show was intended to be tailor made for her.
Here, a secretary named Kristin leaves her native Oklahoma to come to New York to pursue her dream of acting. What she doesn't know is that Tommy (Jon Tenney), the guy who hired her from a local NYC Baptist Church congregation, needed to use her good graces; he planned to use Kristin to help repair his image after a sexual scandal threatened his career (we're talking the summer of 2001 here). Tommy was apparently a sex addict, as there were a number of scandals to mop up, and it seems he was somewhat attracted to Kristin, as well.
Plots of the show involved the homespun wisdom of the titiular secretary who displayed more religious virtuosity at times than you might get on an episode of "The 700 Club" and Tommy's constant need to use her to clean up some other issue that the press was having a field day with, regarding his personal life.
Kristin was aided in her personal odyssey by her best friend Santa (Ana Ortiz) and by her Reverend from the church (Christopher Durang). While Tommy had his assistant Aldo (Larry Romano) and employee Tyrique (Dale Godboldo) to lean on.
What's most puzzling is how they had all of the puzzle pieces to make a really inciteful, interesting and genuinely funny series and it just didn't fit. And there were so many ways they could have gone with it!
They could have focused on Kristin's personal story, being from Oklahoma and her attempts to audition for roles and the elements involved with that. They could have more closely examined the religious side of things, with the relationships within the church, and placed that in context with New York, generally, and made commentary about how organized religion had been declining for many reasons for many years. They could have had Tommy and Kristin hashing out more about their differences and their similarities, with maybe each of them on the opposite side of an issue, and by the end of an episode, wound up agreeing about it. There was a subtle Devil vs. Angel undercurrent going on in the narrative. They might as well have gone to the max with that concept.
Heck, they could have even done the standard "Fish Out of Water" thing and had Kristin dealing with the culture shock of leaving the tiny town she was from into the biggest city on the continent. PLENTY of material to draw on there, as so many other shows have done!
And there was the most glaring issue: all but ignoring Cheno's amazing singing voice. If her character wasn't a member of a choir or if she wasn't striving to succeed in show biz, I could see leaving that element out. But the thing was, it would have been perfectly fine to have Kristin sing regularly, since she could have performed Operatic passages or Hymns without there being a problem with current or future royalties.
In the end, it was probably best that this show didn't become successful. If it did, Cheno likely would have stayed with it for a few years and wouldn't have had the chance to audition for an alternate take on the story of "The Wizard of Oz" on Broadway. That would have been a Wicked shame.
Much like 380's "For The People" (1965), it kind of makes this show more notable for its cancelation than its existence!
