Review of Miss Guided that Includes Many Words and Phrases

I really wanted Miss Guided to be good. Judy Greer stars; she was uproarious in Arrested Development as George Bluth’s flash-happy secretary, Kitty (“Say goodbye . . . to these!”), but has failed to turn that potentially career-making role into any kind of stardom, repeatedly stumbling on weak scripts (American Dreamz, the dreadful television bomb Love Monkey) while occasionally doing good work in smaller roles (a guest shot on My Name Is Earl was particularly funny). And while creator Caroline Williams’ name may be on the worst episode of The Office, given the way sitcoms are written I’m sure she did her share of good work on one of my favorite shows. Chris Parnell has been great in a recurring role as Dr Leo Spaceman on 30 Rock. These are the ingredients for a good sitcom. Unfortunately, they just aren’t working.

Greer plays dippy but sweet-natured Becky Freeley, a high school guidance counselor who has the misfortune to be employed at her alma mater. Becky appears to be popular with students, but she’s an incurable dork, and stumbles around her social life like she never left the tenth grade: Her best friend is the beautiful English teacher Lisa (Brooke Burns), who has all the markers of one of the popular girls -- vain, perhaps a bit mean -- and who doesn’t seem to be aware of Becky’s existence much of the time; she has an incurable crush on Spanish/shop teacher Tim (Kristoffer Polaha), who is a beefcake but more than a little bit dim; and she has conversations like these in the teachers’ lounge:

LISA: Guys get intimidated by me. It’s actually kind of annoying.
BECKY: Are you sure he likes you? Maybe he likes someone else.
LISA: Like who?
BECKY: I don’t know who he likes.

The show is punctuated from time to time with private moments in which the teachers address the camera head-on to tell you what they’re thinking. Most of these come from Greer, though Polaha and Parnell get in on the act a little bit. Though I can see what they’re supposed to be -- much like the “talking heads” in The Office, they serve to pace the show and provide punch-lines to scenes that might have difficulty providing one otherwise -- they feel overused and frequently fall flat.

The pilot features Ashton Kutcher as Beaux, a “traveling educator” (read: substitute teacher) who threatens Tim’s position by teaching Spanish, well, competently. Beaux also makes like a bee for Becky instead of Lisa, tossing Becky’s life into a bit of a turmoil until it turns out that he’s a crackpot hippie who doesn’t have a college degree and is encouraging students not to get one, either. This bit of stunt casting has been pushed very hard by ABC (his name has been tacked on as an Executive Producer, and all the spots seem to want you to believe he’s either [a] the head writer or [b] the star), and by coincidence or design, he gets the bulk of the laugh lines. Unfortunately, there are only two of those (“you don’t need a degree to sub for music, art, or PE -- or to just hang out” being the best), and though Greer pours all her considerable talents into her role, not much comes of it. I liked Becky, I just didn’t think she was funny.

The second episode, which aired directly after the first last Thursday, has a clever concept, but repeatedly misses the mark in what could have been a funny episode. A student has started a website, LindsayLopez.com (“a blarg”, in Becky’s terms, modeled on Perez Hilton but covering only the school), that includes a “most doable teacher” list. Becky is 18th on the list, a concept that, if you’ve seen Judy Greer and remember high school (and your high school was anything like mine), is kind of ludicrous, but hey, it’s TV, let’s suspend our disbelief for a moment. When Lisa places first, Becky tries to climb the charts -- only to dress like a colossal dork circa 1987, and then, through a series of unfunny slapstick antics, get injured and end up in a neck brace, in the process plunging to last place. The big twist that gets her to number one is dirty but not very funny, which is weird -- the show is, for the most part, sunny and clean, if not hilarious; in that moment it is none of those things.

Miss Guided has potential, and I’ll be giving it a run again this week, in case it’s just having some growing pains at the moment. It’s the kind of show that could break out. The actors are funny, and when they have good lines they hit them hard. The “sit” part of the sitcom is well-defined and funny in the abstract if not in practice -- Parnell’s Vice Principal Bruce has an “office aide” who functions as essentially a butler, which is a funny idea that could be further explored; Becky’s crush on Tim is silly but not the sort of will-they-won’t-they drama that gets old quickly; and the concept of a high school at which the teachers are more like teenagers than the teenagers are could turn out to be very funny. But it’s got one more week. Right now, to be perfectly frank, Miss Guided sucks. But it might get better.