January 07, 2006

"The Book of Daniel"

Did anyone else watch that last night? I tuned in, only because of all the hype I read about on Google News.

Essentially, it's about an Episcopalian priest, who's got a Vicodin problem, and his family, which includes a gay son, an adopted Asian son, a drug dealing daughter who's into Anime, an alcoholic wife, a pot smoking housekeeper, a mother with Alzheimers, and a father who's the bishop, and a lesbian sister-in-law.

And, oh yeah, Daniel has conversations with Jesus.

Whew!

I admit it, I liked it! After two hours last night, I came away thinking that some of us can be pretty two-faced when it comes to our spirituality...in that we go to church on Sunday and are all nice, but the other six days we're gossiping, stealing, lying, bigoted. And I also took away that just because a man has answered a call to the church, that doesn't make him any less human than the rest of us.

And the conversations with Jesus were great, I thought, because Jesus actually says things like "I used to talk to him, but he stopped listening," and "You know it doesn't work like that" when Daniel asked Jesus to help his ailing mother.

Was it Liberal? I don't know, I wasn't looking into the politics of the whole thing. They did make a fleeting mention, however, of the gay bishop, and that was only because the priest was talking to his gay son. I just looked at the show as a drama, a story, nothing more. Does it make a mockery of relgion? Only when Daniel is on the pulpit high on Vicodin. Homosexuality wasn't glorified, only mentioned because it was essential to the plot.

I guess the reason I liked it so much was because of something the Pastor of my church said a few weeks ago, about being a regular person like everyone else. He's certainly had his life experiences, and he's proof that forgiveness is possible...but I won't go into that here.

What did bother me, though, was all those damn "music video" commercial spots for the upcoming Olympics and those "Earl" commercials.