Apocalypse Now and Then

Friday morning a week ago, I caught an item on a cable network saying that members of the Christian right are making an outcry against a TV show to air on NBC, The Book of Daniel. I would have ignored it if I hadn't heard about the flap; since then I decided to tape the show to judge for myself if it was an outrage.

From the snippets I had then, it stars Aidan Quinn as a clergyman who has, I think, a gay son, and Jesus appears to the cleric as a more or less comic figure, it looks like from the commercials I’ve glanced at. Then I heard that the Christian rightwing element is protesting the program and trying to stop it from being broadcast altogether because it doesn't conform to their theology. In other words, they are going to pull the same shit they did with God, The Devil, and Bob. That was a cartoon that I really liked and it was shouted down and bullied off the air by them a few years back.

Saturday, a week ago:

Well, I taped Daniel last night, and it was so-so, I guess. It is satire, I'd say, a soap-opera in the fashion of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. It shows up everybody except Jesus as a fool. Which is -- by the way -- pretty much the way I see the human condition and therefore is, in my opinion, an accurate depiction.

And an accurate depiction of humanity is good theology, as far as I’m concerned. If one scriptural quotation comes across loud and clear in this show, it's "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (That's Paul the Apostle writing.)

The reverend is a good, well-meaning man who tries to do the right thing but is overwhelmed by the evil around and within him. His most obvious vice is "Canadian headache pills," which Jesus gently chides him about ("I thought you were cutting back on those"), and perhaps the preacher's worse sin is pride, represented by his ambition to become bishop.

His wife seems to be a pretty good skate, the obvious problem for her being "martinis" -- also when the pressure is on, which is always, as in the case of the rector.

Ellen Burstyn is Daniel's bishop and, besides hitting him up for his Vicodin, it turns out she sleeps with Daniel’s father (James Rebhorn), who is also a bishop, and who is the husband of a woman with Alzheimer’s, whose cerebral lapses tend to bawdy remarks in the company of everyone.

Then there are the children -- a daughter, Grace, who is busted at the outset for selling pot (to buy anime software), a son, Peter, who is openly gay, at least to his decent parents, and Adam, a rather amoral, smug, cruel son, adopted, of Chinese birth. Humor, or a facsimile thereof, takes place around the dinner table with the kids slamming each other as the stoner, the queer, and the -- what? -- asshole?

Speaking of which, Adam is boffing one of the parishioner’s daughters -- in the reverend's garage -- and the main objection the girl’s mother seems to have is that the boy is likely to make “oriental grandchildren running around [her] Christmas tree” -- not that the two children are having sex per se without the spiritual maturity to appreciate its meaning or consequences.

In the extended family, Daniel's brother-in-law absconds with $3.2 million in the church's funds. Daniel goes to a fellow cleric, the Catholic priest, played by Dan Hedaya (Dan played Cher's father in Clueless, in case you were expecting gravitas in a member of the clergy) and asks the priest to employ the parish mafiosos to find the brother-in-law and strong-arm him to get the money back ("It's not like I'm asking you to have him whacked, Frank."). Charlie does die (Frank protests it's strangers who are involved). His widow takes up sexually with the 28-year-old secretary that Charlie ran off with. And so forth.

The show has the potential to be of prophetic value, and it has its truly worthwhile moments, but I'm afraid it's a little too silly overall to be of much value to this lost world. I do hope, however -- and pray -- it will succeed beyond the most fearsome belief of those righteous naysayers of the religious right (wrong) -- the likes of Albert Mohler and James Dobson -- so that they and their Pharasaic clan might be confounded. (Again, Paul says words to the effect, "for God made foolish things to confound the wise..."). Amen.