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+ another review by Samantha Bornemann

On Television As It Is in Heaven

Ed Vitagliano of the American Family Association is right when he says, "If they wanted to try to alienate conservative Christians, they're making every effort to do so." In the opening scene of NBC's latest sin-fest, The Book of Daniel, the Reverend Daniel Webster (Aidan Quinn) and Jesus (Garret Dillahunt) are driving to a pro-abortion rally at Barbra Streisand's house. While the son of God cuts lines on a copy of The Purpose Driven Life, Webster deliberately rear ends a car with a fish emblem on the bumper. "Stupid Christians," Jesus sneers.

I jest. The likelihood of a major corporation spending millions of dollars just to piss people off is as likely as "liberals" at Target plotting to destroy their most profitable shopping season. But groups like the American Family Association and NBC are playing a coy game of opposites attract media attention in the lead up to this drama about a Vicodin-popping Episcopalian minister with a gay Republican son (Christian Campbell) who talks to Jesus. The premise implies gross irreverence that courts controversy, which gets press, so the producers can turn around and say, "It's actually a serious respectful show." As if to give into their critics, at its laziest The Book of Daniel comes off as a sassier Seventh Heaven. The Webster family is essentially good-hearted and their problems are resolved with a talk and a hug.

But its irreverence also serves a more productive purpose. Using extreme circumstances to challenge nasty fundamentalists claiming to represent a religion that is based on forgiveness, acceptance, and charity, The Book of Daniel is more explicitly Christian than any network show in recent memory. In the first episode, Webster announces, "We believe in one God," before the scene cuts to the opening credits; the characters pray and sing hymns; the bishop-based governance of an Episcopalian church is convincingly portrayed. I suspect the "controversy" will not linger once any sane person watches it. The Episcopal Diocese of Washington has already started a blog, where the comments are almost all accepting, treating the show as a worthy discussion tool.

The pilot, "Temptation," opens with Webster and his wife Judith (Susanna Thompson) picking up their daughter Grace (Alison Pill) from the police station. She's been arrested for dealing pot to pay for manga computer software, and pretty much every major plot development from this point on is as ridiculous and over-the-top. The following day Webster learns that his brother-in-law has run off with three million dollars of the church's funds leaving Judith's sister Victoria (Cheryl White), who is having an affair with his raven-haired secretary Jesse (Alana de la Garza). The theft and family troubles attract the unwelcome attention of Daniell's practical-minded boss, Bishop Beatrice Congreve Hovering (Ellen Burstyn), and the congregation's most prominent uptight member Roger Paxton (Dylan Baker). (Webster's adopted Chinese son Adam (Ivan Shaw) is messing around with his daughter.) The effect of piling up so many outrageous storylines on top of each other is exhaustion for the audience as well as Rev. Webster and by the second episode the show starts to approach the unbearable absurdity of a David E. Kelley dramedy.

What's odd is that even with this plethora of addictions, sexual hang-ups, and interfamily gripes, the show is dramatically inert. Webster's painkillers leave him mild mannered to a fault. (And here, I'd like to say how extremely irritating it is to name a character after a famous U.S. Senator, orator, and character in The Devil and Daniel Webster for no discernable purpose.)

Webster's Jesus is similarly laidback, the kind of person who's called a "really good guy" with the implication that he's also really annoying. (Although at the end of first episode he goes on an amusing riff making fun of cheesoid self-help books written in his name with invented titles like Tuesdays with Jesus.) It's not clear if he is supposed to be "the" Jesus, but I suspect he represents Webster's spiritual conscience, in the blandest terms possible (he counsels Daniel with "Life is hard" and "You've got to let kids be kids").

Webster's talks with Jesus reflect the show's underdeveloped doppelganger motif. Son Peter is haunted by the death of his twin brother and Daniel has his thieving brother-in-law. Every character has a private and public persona and chiaroscuro lighting emphasizes their "light" and the "dark" sides. A harsh overhead backlight provides a heavy, but potentially illuminating weight on some characters' shoulders. But Webster never seriously wrestles with spiritual issues or questions his beliefs, and his relationship with Jesus is too cozy to provoke dramatic tension. When Daniel bucks one of his trite aphorisms with, "I know that's supposed to be comforting, but it's not," Jesus cracks a joke, they laugh, and the scene ends.

In tackling extreme life issues with such wishy-washy conclusions, The Book of Daniel gets a lot of little moments right, but smudges the big picture. The details are a credit to the strong cast. Aidan Quinn movingly conveys the complexities of Webster's job when he visits a parishioner about to be taken off life-support and the actors playing the smart-mouthed Webster kids bring edgy energy to jokes that sound like they're all written by the same comedian. But these moments don't warrant tuning in every week. The Book of Daniel needs to own up to its promise, to tackle modern's life many complexities from a Christian perspective more enlightening than one found in a Sunday school chapbook or on a megachurch jumbotron.