Another post on an NBC program I didn’t watch! Hurray!

This is one I can’t be moved to be upset about. I can’t see it succeeding, ratings-wise, first of all. (although I should probably not even type that until the overnights come in on Saturday, but…) Although Desperate Housewives has been successful, I can’t see this clone in a rectory with echoes of 6FU really kicking it on a Friday night – Desperate Rectories?

I think the bottom line on the cries of outrage on this show, with all due respect to our ECUSA friends, is that when you are writing a sort of edgy/satirical/dramedy about a priest in a denomination where a bishop’s male partner presented him with the symbols of his office during his consecration…you have to go over the top in order to be, well, edgy and satirical.

That said, thanks to Christopher Johnson, Here’s a Blog of Daniel, run by an ex-RC officer with the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

Christopher Johnson also links to the Tom Shales review of the show…which is a deft Shalesian drilling, just like the old days.

Perhaps realizing they’ve created a crop of characters who are irredeemably mean, venal and idiotic, the writers try to tell us these people are really sweethearts — not by depicting good qualities through action but simply by having them primitively vouch for one another. "He’s a good boy," mom says of the cautious and confused Peter. "You’re a good man," the priest is told by a golf crony. "She’s a good girl," Jesus says of Grace even after she’s arrested for selling marijuana, and later, of the priest’s bigoted, oafish father: "He’s a good man, Daniel. Everybody’s different."

Even the sadistically malicious Adam is called "a good boy" before the first two hours are over.

This is not sophisticated storytelling. It’s more like running through the meadow with a butterfly net and swooping up whatever happens to be fluttering around. "Life is hard," Jesus philosophizes. "That’s why there’s such a nice reward at the end of it." If only that were the case with "The Book of Daniel."

A side note: I heard Barbara Nicolosi interviewed on Relevant Radio last Friday, and she said that John Tinker, a faculty member at Act One, had been brought on board as one of the executive producers well after the pilot and perhaps first episode or two was filmed, and there just might be a teeny-tiny bit of hope. Given the starting point, I’m not sure that’s possible, but we’ll see…