Julia Louis-Dreyfus has rightfully earned her place as one of her generation’s funniest actresses, thanks largely to her beloved roles as Elaine Benes on Seinfeld and Vice President Selina Meyer on Veep, both of which brought her Primetime Emmy Award nominations. But Louis-Dreyfus also received an Emmy for one of her most underrated roles, as the titular Christine Campbell on the CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine.
Because Old Christine’s target demographic was more the American middle-class family rather than the more niche, youth-oriented markets of Seinfeld or Veep, she’s sooner remembered for those performances rather than the chaotically desperate, messy, and chronically single Old Christine. This is a shame, because for all the hilarity Louis-Dreyfus brings to every role she touches, Christine deserves more retroactive recognition in her filmography.
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What Is 'The New Adventures of Old Christine' About?
Created and developed by Kari Lizer, known for her work on Will & Grace, The New Adventures of Old Christine debuted as a midseason replacement on CBS in March 2006. Christine Campbell is a single mother with a young son who remains close to her ex-husband Richard (Clark Gregg) and her brother Matthew (Hamish Linklater), who lives with her. We’re given to believe that Christine is a vision of modern middle-aged singledom and divorce-hood, being able to stay such close friends with her ex-husband.
But this illusion is quickly shattered when her son starts attending a local private school, where she’s soon targeted by the rich “meanie moms” Marley and Lindsay (brilliantly portrayed by Tricia O’Kelley and Alex Kapp Horner) who look down upon Christine’s middle-class, divorced lifestyle. But to add insult to injury, she learns from them in the pilot episode that Richard has secretly started dating a younger woman… also named Christine (Emily Rutherfurd). With her quickly dubbed New Christine, that would only leave the former Mrs. Campbell to be Old Christine. Thus begins a new era of single misadventures for her to start finding herself again.
What made Old Christine’s premise so successful, aside from Louis-Dreyfus’ brilliance no matter what the script, was that it was in many ways a modern take on the classic female sitcom. Christine often references The Mary Tyler Moore Show, once claiming that she had to find new meaning in her life after it was cancelled. Try as she might, she so desperately wanted to be a Mary. But Christine was the Rhoda—she overdosed on wine, regularly felt like she was failing at motherhood, and couldn’t keep her house clean to save her life. And, as more people in her life start coupling up, she gives in even more to her loneliness. Christine cries herself to sleep to Under the Tuscan Sun and had “Alone Again, Naturally” on regular rotation on her car radio. She was, in many ways, a pastiche of Grace Adler, as well: she was messy, lazy, and prioritized voting on American Idolover voting in real-life elections. In short, Christine Campbell was an accurate amalgamation of the American middle-aged woman in the mid-aughts.
Why Was 'The New Adventures of Old Christine' Cancelled?
The New Adventures of Old Christine was part of an era of network TV comedy on CBS that generally didn’t survive more than a season or two. See also: Courting Alex, Gary Unmarried, Accidentally on Purpose. (Justice for Jenna Elfman too, while we’re at it.) As long as Old Christine aired as a follow-up to How I Met Your Mother or Two and a Half Men, ratings were stable enough. But when the network tried making it the lead program of a new comedy block on Wednesdays in its fourth season, ratings fell dramatically. It seemed that no matter how rightfully acclaimed Louis-Dreyfus was by critics for everything she did on Old Christine, the series never received the proper exposure it needed to become the hit it should’ve been. Still, The New Adventures of Old Christine survived for five seasons and 88 episodes before its untimely cancellation in May 2010. During its final season, Christine had begun dating a psychologist portrayed by Eric McCormack in an attempt to boost ratings.
When Old Christine was cancelled by CBS, Lizer was quoted as saying she believed the decision to be sexist, claiming they’d received breadcrumbs of support from the network since the series’ inception. She stated that the powers-that-be at CBS at the time clearly didn’t care very much for a “female-of-a-certain-age point of view” and that they’d squandered the talents of Louis-Dreyfus and Wanda Sykes, who co-starred as Christine’s best friend Barb. Given the allegations made against former network head Les Moonves nearly a decade later (particularly by Designing Womencreator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason) it would not be difficult to perceive Old Christine receiving minimal network support and sexist treatment, since it focused on middle-aged, divorced women. Lizer briefly attempted to strike a deal to continue Old Christine on ABC, to no avail.
Despite Louis-Dreyfus receiving Primetime Emmy Award nominations every year that Old Christine was on the air, it still remains her most underrated role in that pop culture enthusiasts on social media will sooner reference her guest appearances on Arrested Development or 30 Rock before they will The New Adventures of Old Christine. I first watched the series on DVD after its cancellation and despite being a 13-year-old male and not a middle-aged divorced woman, I’ve always found myself relating to the type of character Christine is: the one who always gets the short end of the stick despite trying so hard not to. In other words, the series’ legacy is also somewhat tainted by sexism in that it was observed as a show just for middle-aged, divorced women when that’s definitely false. “You’ve gotta be freakin’ kidding me,” Christine often quipped in the awkward situations she somehow always found herself involved in. The New Adventures of Old Christine is a show for anyone who’s tried so hard to impress an old flame, only for him to show up with his new girlfriend, also named Christine. “Are you freakin’ kidding me?” No, I’m not, Christine. Life sucks sometimes. But we laugh it off anyway.
