Rededicating itself only to “big, breakout ideas that are incredibly unique” and, if at all possible, make it feel like it’s 1985, NBC has picked up a new comedy based on the out-there comedic premise of what would happen if your boss had a vagina. A natural vagina that had been there since birth—not some errant, adult-onset vagina that springs up overnight—making her, in fact, a “lady boss.” This alternate universe concept hails from Hilary Winston, showrunner of CBS’s Bad Teacher, which revolved around the similarly unorthodox premise of a lady teacher who’s bad at her job.
More pertinently, Winston previously explored this same territory in an article for Playboy titled “When Your Boss Has A Vagina,” which has now inspired the sitcom about exactly that. Deadline reports that the show will be set in a “fratty corporate office that gets polarized along gender lines when a new boss comes to town—a lady boss,” and the male employees suddenly find themselves forced to reckon with taking orders from her vagina.
What sort of comedic conflicts can arise when your boss has a vagina? Winston’s column offers an anecdote of her own lady boss, who instructed her in the fine art of blowjobs—though that seems unlikely to make it to network television. In her own experience as a lady boss, the real conflict, Winston explains, comes from male employees being forced to respect her, while also admiring how hot she is. Also, in recognizing that lady bosses be crazy, and always with the diets and the shopping:
The real difference between having a male boss and a female boss is social customs. No matter what our roles are, we’re tied to ones that have existed since way before anyone noticed the glass ceiling. You hold the door for me because I’m a woman, not because I’m your boss. You look at my ass because you’re a man, not my subordinate. And I wear V-necks because I’m a woman and I have nice tits.
All in all, having a lady boss instead of a dude boss is like having a relationship with any other woman. Which is always a little complicated. A little complex. A little confusing. A little crazy. You may see me crying in my car. You may know how many Weight Watchers points I get each day. I may be late for a meeting because Prada is on Gilt Groupe. But I actually care about seeing pictures of your kids, and I’ll throw the office a puppy party as a reward for a job well done.
Presumably the “puppy party” episode is being reserved for sweeps week.
Attached to helm the pilot—currently untitled, as we assume producers are wavering between Lady Boss or Boss Vagina—is dude director Seth Gordon, who has previous experience working with other kinds of wacky, only-in-Hollywood employers on Horrible Bosses.