OK, so I watch Earl, Scrubs, and The Office, so I see promos for this new show premeiring Friday night at 9. It looks interesting, and I can tell that MANY people (bible betl, anyone?) will hate it, and my local news station said some places have already banned it.
It’s about a priest with a daughter who deals drugs, a son who is banging a bishop’s 16 year old daughter, a lesbian sister-in-law sleeping with the woman accused of murdering her (the sister-in-law’s) husband, and might have a member of his congregation might be hitting on him.
Oh yeah, and Jesus lives with him.
Sadly, I feel this show will air this one episode, then no more. I assume we all remember God, The Devil, and Bob? Any show who’s main theme is portraying Christianity in anything less than a perfect light doesn’t last.
This actually looks interesting. I’ll give it a watch, and keep an open mind. I’ll Tivo a few episodes, too, just in case it disappears completely. Future generations might want it as an artifact.
Nonsense. The Kramdens on 7th Heaven were anything but perfect. The sitcom Amen poked fun at church life, even depicting a pastor and church deacon as buffoons – and it was a modest hit. The mini-series The Thornbirds was a big hit, even though many Catholics were displeased at seeing a Catholic priest fall in love.
No, the controversies surrounding the Book of Daniel go far beyond merely failing to depict Christianity in a perfect light.
I dunno. It looks like “Desperate Housewives” meets “Priest” meets “Joan of Arcadia.” I’m an Episcopalian, so I’m mildly interested in it from that standpoint (the Aidan Quinn character is an Episcopalian minister), but I have low expectations based on what I’ve seen in the promo spots, and predict it won’t last long.
So according to my local news station, it’s a few local places in Oklahoma and Illonois that are banning the show. Geez. It’s just sickening that they would go ahead and not show it not even knowing completly what it is. At least let the damn thing air once before getting rid of it. And for that matter, how about you actually let your viewers decide what they want to watch.
I think that’s what makes me most angry about things like these. People send in letters and emails saying how horrible the show is, and blah blah blah. If oyu don’t like it, don’t watch it!
I believe that’s Indiana not Illinois, there bouv.
I Was worried it wasn’t going to be shown here locally.(At present my “there” in in the hills of Arizonia where I know “Brokeback Mountain” will never play! I plan on watching it.
Christian Republican, Assembly of God-member here who plans on watching TBoD & wishes Wildmon & Co would shut the hell up!
So far, I haven’t heard anything about TBoD that it demeans C’nity- It does portray C’tians as less than perfect- and dear God, I can vouch that we indeed are!
I would like to see Fr. Aidan have a fundy-pastor pal who ALSO has conversations with Jesus.
Biggest potential controversy- how will JC talk about the son’s gayness? Will He or will He just talk about how Fr Aidan should respond?
No one is “banning” the show, some local affilitates have elected not to carry the show. In once case another network’s affiliate has picked it up, so it will be seen in that market. It’s free market, and that’s fine.
One interesting point that was raised was if a show was to portray Bhudda or Mohammed the way this show portrays Christ would groups object in the same manner as the Christian groups did. My guess would be yes, but I’d still want to see the show.
It looks interesting, but I hope they don’t throw in too much wierdness for wierdness sake. Shows like that tend to fizzle. It has quite a bit of promise.
I suspect that I’ll be mildly offended by the show, if I bother to watch it at all (I don’t watch much TV anymore). Even aside from this, it looks really bad. It’ll probably get canned before I get around to watching an episode.
The trailer I saw didn’t look too interesting, and I’m assuming they thought they put good bits in that. So no, I’m not looking forward to it. I may check it out, though.
My local paper called it a “limited-run series” in its (unfavorable) review, so this is probably a safe prediction.
Four Kansas station announced plans to pre-empt it, then reversed the decision after being inundated with emails denouncing the decision. KBTV in Beaumont TX, WGBC in Meridian MS, WTWO in Terre Haute IN and one other station the call sign and location for which I can’t locate have pulled the show.
And those local affiliates are not “banning” the show from their markets…how exactly?
It’s free market, but that doesn’t mean anyone has to be “fine” with the decision. Refusing to air a program on the basis of a bunch of people who haven’t seen it and are only complaining about it because they were told to by someone else who may or may not have seen it is disgusting and worthy of a Pitting. Those who don’t want to watch the show in Terre Haute have the option of turning off their televisions. Those in Terre Haute who do want to see it are SOL because of a bunch of whining sheep who aren’t content with controlling pretty much everything so they have to pretend like they’re somehow being victimized.
Yeah, I liked it. I can’t for the life of me wonder how Christians were up in arms about portraying Jesus. He was extremely likeable and did nothing that I could find offense about.
Perhaps the bishops having the affair would offend a few and the Catholics being mafia guys… but Jesus being in the show? Probably the best advertisement for Christianity on TV I’ve seen in a while.
I liked it too, but man, they crammed a lot of family/societal/cultural issues into two hours, didn’t they?
I like this Jesus. He’s not as interesting as Denis Leary’s Jesus, but then Daniel isn’t an alcoholic hooked on pain meds, so it’s natural that Daniel’s Jesus will be calm and reasonable.
Issue overload, and they should fire Jesus. Although I was slightly amused by the “Episcopalian self-help book” titles, pretty much every time they had their little chats the show just ground to a halt. Daniel ‘n’ Jesus is just an externalized internal monologue and it’s pretty clear the creators were just looking for a way to avoid doing it as a voice-over.
It was still good enough that I’ll probably tune in again, since there’s not really anything else on Friday nights anyway.
It was OK, I thought they were throwing way too many issues into the show. Cut back the topics by half, and spend more time on them instead.
As to banning, TV stations decide all the time whether to air things or not. There are other stations who can choose to pick it up. If a station thinks that they would lose more viewers (or get boycotts or negative press) by airing a show, they have every right to choose not to air it. But this is off topic, maybe this can be in a GD thread.
Nice idea but it seemed they tried to cram about two years of material into one show. A daughter selling drugs and a gay son and an oversexed son who happens to be dating the daughter of a minister with a racist son and a mother with Alzheimers and a priest father sleeping with the bishop and a stereotypical Italian Catholic priest with ties to the mob and a lesbian sister-in-law…etc. No wonder Jesus spends so much time with this guy.
