Anybody want to join me tonight and watch/critique the new NBC series, “Revelations,” which is replacing “West Wing” in the 9PM time slot? (West Wing had its season-ending cliffhanger last week.)
Tom Shales, the outstanding WaPo TV columnist, doesn’t make it sound like much fun: “The least we can ask of the end of the world is that it be entertaining. But lo, NBC has unleashed the armies of the night in a six-game tournament against the armies of the day, and “low” sums up the whole thing pretty well.”
Uh, didn’t “South Park” and “Carnivale” already do this? …
Anyway, I won’t be disappointed if no one signs up. I might even admire you more.
But I am curious about the reasons behind dramatic programming like this, and what potential effects such shows may have on the populace. So, your impressions and opinions would be interesting to read.
Perhaps the best part of series like “Revelations” is that it gives Tom Shales — and you — a chance to make fun:
Meanwhile, two other little girls figure in the unholy mess — one who lies brain-dead in a Miami hospital but who suddenly begins chatting up a storm, drawing donkeys on a sketch pad and channeling Massey’s late daughter. He’s alerted to this by a dour, fanatical nun, Sister Josepha Montafiore, …
I’ve always enjoyed the campy horror of movies like “The Omen” series or “The Exorcist,” but this sounds as if it takes itself too seriously to be as entertaining as those horror classics.
I was planning on watching this as a safeguard anyway.
Living in the “buckle” of the Bible-belt where the Pentecostals and Baptists rule, I have to keep my ear very close to the rail on these things.
As a side note, my daughter, a very level headed 13 year old has to be on guard at all times from the “blindside” attacks of her classmates on religious issues, so we will watch together. This is sure to be a hot topic in her school and she knows better than to be caught unaware.
The “Left Behind” series of books are best-sellers in our little ‘burg, so we are used to hearing this stuff.
Who knows, it might be good TV, albeit personally repugnant.
btw, I read somewhere — but couldn’t find the quote — that this series makes the “rational” people like the professor out to be the bad people.
Your daughter. .. that’s rough. I sympathize. When I mentored in a school last year, I’d occasionally say, “Oh god.” And the kids — third graders, mind you — would sternly, solemnly tell me I shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain. I replied it was just a generic phrase of frustration, and not a reflection on God. But.
I’ll come by here in the morning and post my impressions. All the reviews I’ve read make it sound really stupid so I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it thru all six episodes.
You may admire me less for the fact I was going to watch this dreck anyway but, sometimes, I think I see patterns in the media narrative, a kind of dominant storyline used to manipulate the public in subtle ways. So I’ve been really curious about how they are going to frame this. The coincidence of a PVS woman/child in Florida (which they swear they had in the can before the Schiavo circus)got my spidey-sense tingling.
From the promos I’ve seen, it’s doesn’t appear to bear the slightest resemblance to the actual Book of Revelations. I mean, is the nun/heroine supposed to be the “woman crying in the wilderness”? I certainly don’t recall any little girls or bloodless homicidal maniacs in John the Beloved’s drug-fevered vision. And they keep showing an adorable little toddler, implying that’s the returned Jesus. Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t Jesus supposed to return as a full-grown king with a big, fiery whoop-ass sword?
Anyway, I’m going to be liberally drinking wine while I watch so I might need some help recalling what happens at the end of tonight’s episode. 😉
Polydactyl and sjct, thanks for your help. My main problem is that, since I’m a heathen, I don’t know much about the book of Revelations, so your comparisons will be especially valuable.
And if this is too painfully bad to watch, I say we switch channels! 🙂
This is however, “event” TV. Being a former broadcast professional and having my hubby still in the trenches at the local NBC affliate, it seems like the thing to do. And now, I am watching with a purpose.
As to the daughter and her lot at school…it is a wonderful school that teaches critical thinking and not the tests. But, it is full of children from seriously evangelical fundamentalist families–that recognize that the public school system will not prepare their kids for college. So, school good–children misguided by environment difficult to deal with.
Watching “Revelations” will be like the trip to Books-a-Million that I made at Christmas-time to buy her best buddy a missing volume from his “Left Behind” library. That truly made me ill…I couldn’t find it in the general fiction and had to ask. I was led to the Christian writings department. ARG.
Criminey, first time in a long time I’ve been glad of it. This kind of stuff makes my tin foil hat smoke.
I will be checking tomorrow for y’alls impressions and commentary. Bless you.
to turn on the gas, put my head in the oven, and light a match.
I think I have to go along with Booman on this. I saw a few ads and those alone seemed to piss me off for some reason and put me in mind of the whole execrable ‘Left Behind’ series. Anyway tonight is a brand new Smallville and Jack & Bobby-yahoo so that’s what I’ll be doing.
A ps to the Jack & Bobby show, I’m afraid it’s going to be cancelled. I’m also surprised the moral majority haven’t gotten wind of this show cause the content of shows is sure to really piss them off I would think. I was hoping they would and get some protests going which would make it popular and thus save the show but so far no luck there.
I have other plans. I’m going to wash my hair.
Sorry, cannot watch. Went through having bible thumpers as inlaws and they were also card carrying members of the Christain Coalition far right wing nuts. I did love the Omen though. Have fun!!
I completely forgot that last week’s WW was the season ender. And a double-damn to the fact that this show has six episodes. YIKES! But all is not lost – apparently tonight has an episode of American Idol with the results from last night’s segment. What to do, what to do, what to do? Well, it has been about 6 hours since I last washed my hair. (I’ve seen nothing of the critiques, but the commercials look pretty action-packed)
for not making the Friend of Satan a guy in a turban named Abdullah.
I know somebody must have had to fight hard to achieve that.
I just heard an ad for “Revelations” on Air America radio! What a venue for an ad. Lordy.
I do hope it’s a bomb. Among other reasons..I have a friend that is in town, shooting a pilot for NBC…so the more shows they have that bomb they better chance he has of his show getting picked up…
While the starring nun’s resemblance to a young Meryl Streep was both enjoyable and nostalgic (not to imply that the years (and her surgeons) have been anything but kind to Miss Meryl), and while I am confident that this show will become a huge hit, perhaps even eclipsing “American Idol,” complete with widespread fashion marketing implications, I must admit that watching it has reaffirmed the rightness of my longstanding policy of refusing to watch any entertainment programming that does not feature Paris Hilton.
Sorry, no plans to watch.
Unless there’s one of those TV series crossover things, and Jane enters the narrative to give the hoopleheads a piece of her mind.
I would rather roll naked in thumbtacks and then jump in a vat of alcohol.
But it is moot as I do not have cable and mountains block (YIPPIE!) broadcast TV.
I’ll wait for the reviews here, I’ll be watching my radio ; )
The first episode set up the underlying theme: intellectual, rational, science guy = bad; weird, faith-driven, fundie-funded nun = good.
The depiction of doctors as organ-hungry vultures was an interesting cultural shift. Remember when medical shows were popular? Young Doctor Kildare and Marcus Welby? That was back when health care was affordable. Nowadays, I guess, writers feel free to demonize them.
The show had some notably effective scenes:
The rebellious girl being struck by lightning was very nicely done. While she hung like a rag doll on the tree, I thought of the archetypal imagery of Woden, suffering for wisdom, and then reminded myself that was the wrong mythology for this storyline.
When the girl speaks, the actor playing the priest made a clever choice to deliver his lines in whispery panic. It conveyed serious drama and sucked me right into caring about him. In similar scenes with the nun, I felt less involved. Her wide-eyed blankness — meant to convey awe, I suppose — came across as coldness, as a lack of concern for the girl as a human being. Instead, the nun appeared to be using the child as a kind of automatic writing device kinda like a Ouija board.
Indeed, the actress playing the nun (guess I should look up her name eventually) failed to engage my sympathies. Perhaps she intended to convey serenity with her lack of animation. Maybe she was going for some etheric quality or spiritual authority but when she over-intoned the line “reconsider your position on donating to religion,” I just laughed out loud at the heavy-handedness of it.
Bill Pullman, on the other hand, is a fine actor and his projections of grief, anger, confusion and feeble hope delivered his character straight into my heart. I even got misty-eyed during the final scene where his hand-holding restored the heart beat of the comatose child.
The sub-plot with “Satan’s Friend” is merely disgusting in its overt rip-off of the Hannibal Lector mythos. In general, completely, over-the-top evil characters are simply not believable. Even Hitler looked in the mirror and thought himself a fine fellow. Everyone justifies the harm they do with some cloak of good intentions so purely evil characters always come off as cartoonish. Only an actor of the calabre of Anthony Hopkins can pull this off.
Final impressions: Who is this show being aimed at? Certainly not Christian fundies who were probably asking, “What does this have to do with Revelations?” while looking for elements they recognized and failing to find them. Is this an alternative “Left Behind” written by secularists who never bothered to read the source material?
I agree, and actually thought it was pretty good. Different at least from the tired old sitcoms and copdramas. I don’t know why progressives were so turned off by the whole concept and seemingly against it as if it would be transforming and gloriously positive toward religion. It reminded me more of the Omen or Exorcist than a Sunday morning bible thumping show. This is hollywood after all. I also hated the nun.
You know, I can imagine the producer pitching this to the network saying, “It will be a blend of X-Files and The Omen. We’ll call it Revelations but it won’t have anything to do with what’s in the Bible. There’ll be a beautiful nun and a Harrison Ford-type scientist so there’ll be lots of that sexual tension that can never be consumated vibe. We’ll throw in a Hannibal Lector type who eats the hearts of little girls. And there’ll be this whole ominous final battle between good and evil stuff with lots of cool special effects.”
It kind of reminded me of “Millenium,” the series developed by the same guy who did “XFiles.”
Then I fell asleep halfway through. (Not a reflection on the show but on my level of fatigue.)
I didn’t watch this, but I loved “Millenium” – a lot of obscure occult in that.
Spot-on summary, sjct. Glad that you posted early!
It occurred to me on the way home from work last night, that Wednesday evening was a rather odd time for NBC to slot this. Initially, being a rather self-centered West Wing fan, I was only thinking of how I’d rather watch WW reruns all summer, but Wednesday nights is when all of the evangelicals have their mid-week services. Talk about ruining your ratings from the get-go.
This first show has enough to offend or confuse everyone. Christians will be a bit put off as it appears that the script will wander from scripture and secularists may not even get the signs and omens as they appear. The nun is heavy-handed, but she is pretty vague–yo, hey, a sign. Like I mentioned to Susan when she did the call out for volunteers, I am no Bible scholar, but there are things that were in opposition to my limited knowledge.
For example, the baby rising from the sea is being greeted as a miracle birth–the nun’s mission is to find a living Jesus. The townspeople are rapt with attention in a positive way. My recollection was that the ‘beast from the sea’ was the anti-christ and not the evil, killer guy Isaiah Haden.
I did enjoy the scene where Dr. Massey is lecturing on the Biblical plagues of Egypt, explaining the entire sequence of recorded events as the result of a volcanic eruption that (a) turned the Nile muddy red, (b) drove out the frogs which (c) died in the heat and attracted insects that (d) carried typhus and infected those working in the fields who were generally (e) the oldest, i.e. firstborn children.
Re: Susan’s comment below about similarities to “Millenium”…I think before it is all said and done, it will bear more resemblance to “Twin Peaks.” This first episode is all over the place and is only bound to get wackier.
So, with weirdness being front and center, I think that sjct is on to something with the tension between Sister Josepha and Massey, but that will be secondary to some other character twist. Massey was too easily won over for me not to be suspicious. The scene with coma-girl’s heart starting didn’t sell me, but it sure seem to sell him.
I’m on the watch for “Twin Peaks” style red-herrings. First on my list is Massey’s mentor played by John-Rhys-Davies. I don’t think he’s even been named yet. However, I think he will be the one that has to be won-over in the end or somehow plays a larger role in the plot. About the only line he got in the show that stood out was “if only HE would show himself” speaking of God and science.
This was not the “TV Event” that I was expecting. However, I thought that the commercial placements were very interesting. Each break started with a movie commercial, all horror…House of Wax, Amityville Horror, etc. Each break contained a pharmaceutical ad: Zantac, Sepracor, etc. Each contained either a credit card, tax service or other financial. The kicker for me was a :10 ad for partypoker.net. Which audience are they appealing to?
If you really want to get dirty and take a shower afterwards, head over to the Revelations message boards where they have already accumulated thousands of posts. Things that make you go “hmmmmmmn”.