Onward Christian Soldiers: One Step Forward and Two Steps Back

NBC is doing what networks traditionally do in summer, burning off new series that didn’t make the fall cut. Any fall cut.

And no wonder. Tuesday night’s “Kristin,” originally meant to air last season, is about as laughless as comedy gets.

That’s the bad news. That and the possible record number of stereotypes it hammers into the first three of its 13 scheduled episodes.

You’ve got your Italian American lugs who talk like dis, y’know? You’ve got your female Hispanic (presumably Puerto Rican) who’s a spitfire and so hot-blooded that she has sex with a Native American on an exposed beam at a high-rise construction site, 600 feet above the pavement. You’ve got that Native American then predicting that his wife will “tom-tom” his butt.

And you’ve got your yahoo of an Okie just begging to be ridiculed, especially when using such expressions as “hog heaven” around cynical, supposedly urbane colleagues.

That hick is Kristin Yancey (Kristin Chenoweth), the Broken Arrow, Okla., native who takes a job as personal assistant to morally corrupt real estate tycoon Tommy Ballantine (Jon Tenney) for sustenance in New York City while pursuing her dream of becoming a Broadway star. The series opens with her getting rejected for a chorus line when losing out to longer legs.

Wee Chenoweth herself has been a Broadway star, of course, in 1999 heading her own brief show, “Epic Proportions,” following a Tony-winning performance as a preschooler in a revival of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” Two years ago, she was featured, too, as villainous Lily St. Regis in ABC’s rendering of “Annie.” And she also happens to be from Broken Arrow.

The unpleasant irony of her series snickering about Oklahoma is the timing of its exhumation by NBC, just now when headlines about Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh are again raking emotional wounds across the state, surely even in Chenoweth’s tiny hometown.

Nonetheless, “Kristin” would be worth no more than a paragraph or two if not for one other thing.

Kristin Yancey’s lordliness. She is not only identified as Baptist, but a devout one. Yup, one of them there zealots who actually prays.

For years, Hollywood producers and writers shrank from Godly themes, regarding them as mortal sins for prime time, diverting from their blacklisting only to portray deeply religious folks as devious--and we’re talking mostly of Christians here--or worthy of contempt or derision.

Then like a divine thunderbolt came the Sunday night epiphany of “Touched by an Angel,” a CBS ratings bonanza that had the long-resistant industry’s consecrated-come-latelys suddenly detecting gold in God.

Now back to “Kristin,” an otherwise trivial and banal series from John Markus (a consulting producer on “The Larry Sanders Show”) that lowers the talented Chenoweth into another of prime time’s sightless dark wells.

Here’s the surprising thing, though. Cracking that darkness are glints of light.

Baptist-Christian jokes do, indeed, fly here, as early as Ballantine learning that his new assistant was submitted for the job by her minister because she’s “warm and virtuous and has no interest in sex.”

When munchkin Kristin arrives, Ballantine calls her a “short Christian who goes yoo-hoo.” His right-hand man, Aldo Bonnadonna (Larry Romano) finds her “cute as a little Baptist button.” His jealous sales director, Santa Clemente (Ana Ortiz), sees her as another “Bible Belt Barbie.”

It turns out that Kristin is not only prayerful, but virginal, a “virtue,” says notorious sexual harasser Ballantine, that “makes her hot” in his eyes.

Rules of sitcomdom require Kristin to express her spiritual side mostly in the extreme, exiling her to the cornball, goody-goody fringe. She refuses to bend, for example, condemning as dishonest Ballantine’s request to book him reservations at three trendy restaurants that evening so that he’ll be covered when he does make up his mind.

“I will not lie for you; I will not break the law for you,” she says. He lights up, calling her “one savvy Christian.”

Enough already.

Except that you become aware gradually that the real target of this anti-Christian mocking, whether by design, is not Kristin at all. It backfires on the shooters, for looking very stupid are Ballantine and others making these cracks. Kristin turns out to be much smarter than her tormentors, not only taunting Ballantine from time to time, but delivering this flirtatious tease at the end of the premiere: “A person’s spirituality is connected to their sensuality. And I’m extremely spiritual.”

In other words, she’s a person, not a pulpit, a view of devout Christians that TV would have withheld in past years when the industry spoke of the pious in a brand of tongues grasped only in Hollywood. Thanks for small favors.

“Kristin” is generally so bad, on the other hand, that Chenoweth may want to omit it from her resume. And watching any of this, from relentless “short” jokes to obnoxious gags about burning chickens in a coming episode, may be too high a price to pay for a few slender rays of spirituality.

Godly or not, hog heaven has its limits.

* “Kristin” can be seen Tuesdays at 8:30 on NBC. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).

Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.