Themes of Church and Clergy in New Television Series

Posted on June 8, 2016 at 3:54 pm

Commercial television has usually stayed far away from religious themes in television series. For decades, most television characters were vaguely Christian, a few Jewish, and almost always their religion was about culture and the holidays. But religious themes and characters who are believers and even members of the clergy are suddenly showing up in a number of shows.

“Preacher,” on AMC, starring Dominic Cooper as a clergyman named Jesse, is produced by a duo better known for comedy, Seth Rogen and his writing partner Evan Goldberg. But it is based on the dark, disturbing, and very violent comic book series and the title character has supernatural power that may come from God. Time Magazine writes: “it’s thrilling to watch Jesse go from dour to empowered.” The Jewish magazine Tablet notes:

Attention parents, teachers, rabbis, and anyone else entrusted with cultivating the spiritual and moral development of the young: Take away your children’s books, ban all homework for a while, sit them down in front of the TV, and make them watch Preacher.

Sure, the show, which premiered this week, features spontaneous combustions, impalings on a plane, a ballet of stabbings, a homemade bazooka, and a character accurately named Arseface—and that’s just the first 30 minutes of the very first episode. But it also manages the very difficult feat of being simultaneously the most outrageously fun and the most theologically serious show on television, and the pleasures of contemplating the machinations of free will while gawking at a character holding up a gooey bit of flesh, say, and wondering whether it’s a slice of shawarma or a severed ear are too great to resist…. Custer is too busy to do much reading, but if he did he might’ve dug Abraham Joshua Heschel. Describing a world Custer would immediately recognize, Heschel lamented the fact that, too often these days, “faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion—its message becomes meaningless.”

The preacher is here to fix all that, and his approach is one Heschel would’ve applauded, give or take a few broken bones. Realizing early on that sermons and strictures make for a very poor engine with which to move hearts and minds, Custer, like Heschel, learns the power of radical amazement, the art of waking up in the morning and taking nothing for granted.

Cinemax’s “Outcast” stars Patrick Fugit (“Almost Famous”) and also has a supernatural theme, with demon possession and a clergyman character called Reverend Anderson (Philip Glenister), who says, “Church is not optional. This is the only thing that will fortify us, sustain us, inoculate us against the darkness.” The series is from the creator of the popular zombie series, “The Walking Dead.”

Hulu has a new series about a cult called “The Path,” starring Aaron Paul (“Breaking Bad”). His character has been a committed member of a religious group with his wife, but he suffers a crisis of faith that he knows means he risks losing everyone he cares about. Hugh Dancy plays the group’s charismatic leader.

And coming this fall, we have a comic take on heaven with Kristen Bell as a woman sent there by mistake. It’s called “The Good Place” and it’s coming to NBC. It may be a sitcom, but like the other shows in this list, it engages with some spiritual and theological topics in a compelling way.

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Eye in the Sky

Posted on March 10, 2016 at 5:43 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for some violent images and language
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Military violence including terrorism, bombs, explosions, characters injured and killed, some disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	March 11, 2016
Date Released to DVD:	June 27, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:	B01CUMHBJS

“Eye in the Sky” is a rare thriller that grips the mind and heart equally. Drones take our military closer than we have ever been before to the people and the activities of the enemy as they remove us further than we have ever been before from the visceral reality of the actions we take based on what we have learned. This film takes us inside the tactical, political, legal, and moral choices faced by the international governments and military in combating terrorism. Director Gavin Hood and screenwriter Guy Hibbert show us the stakes rising and the options shrinking with each passing second, so we in the audience must constantly ask ourselves not just what the characters should do but what we would do.

Colonel Katherine Powell of the British Army (Helen Mirren) is awakened by her phone. Intelligence received via drone indicates that three from the top ten international most wanted list of terrorists may possibly be together at a home in Kenya. The British and the US are especially interested in one couple they have been trying to find for six years. The wife is British and the husband is American. Both countries want them captured and tried at home.

If her team can positively identify the couple and the man they are meeting with, the mission will turn from reconnaissance to capture. But then the drone camera reveals that the danger is far more dire and imminent than they thought. The house is not just a meeting place. They are arming suicide bombers, taping their last statements, and presumably getting ready to send them into densely populated areas for maximum carnage. The people working on this are all over the world, with a military unit in Hawaii that analyzes images from a drone in Kenya, flown by a pilot in Las Vegas, commanded by military personnel in England, under the direction of elected officials who are both away from their countries on business.

The military has the capacity to prevent the suicide bombers from inflicting damage on civilians by blowing them up before they leave. But they are in the middle of a residential area. Is this warfare or an execution? Does it matter that two of the targets are British and US citizens? Does it matter that a little girl is selling bread just outside the house?

The international scope of the mission and the bureaucratic/political decision-making is fascinating. Information inside the house comes from a tiny mini-drone that looks like an insect, flown into the house by an operative nearby who is pretending to be both selling buckets in the open market and playing a video game on a phone. The operative is played by “Captain Phillips” star Barkhad Abdi, a very different and equally impressive performance of great intelligence and thoughtfulness. Information from the outside, including the biometric identification of the suspected terrorists, comes from drones monitored by Americans half a world away. Sitting at screens are Aaron Paul and Phoebe Fox as US military who are diligent and dedicated but not really prepared to blow up the people they’ve been spying on, especially that little girl.

There is a literal ticking time bomb in that house. We can see it. What should we do about it? Should we risk that child’s life to keep the suicide bombers from taking more lives? For the military, including Colonel Powell and her boss, Lieutenant General Frank Benson (the late Alan Rickman, making us miss him even more sharply), it is a mathematical calculus; not simple, but clear. They know they must consult the lawyers, who remind them of the criteria, almost a formula, they are required to apply. But the bureaucrats get nervous, and bump it up to the politicians. Calls must be made all over the world as the officials are participating in various diplomatic events; at one point it is even suggested that the question be put to the President of the United States.

But the film shows us that these questions have already been asked and answered. There is a calculus that is reassuringly quantitative and comprehensive but disturbingly clinical. As we see the people all over the world watching the people inside the house, trying to figure out how to apply those algorithms expressed in acronyms and percentages, the film forces us along with the characters to try to apply formulas to a world that will always confound them.

Parents should know that this movie features military violence including drones, guns, explosions, terrorism, suicide bombers, with some grisly and disturbing images, and very strong language. An extended part of the film focuses on potential “collateral damage” to civilians, including a child, from military action.

Family discussion: How would you improve the decision that was ultimately made? How would you improve the process for making it? Who should decide?

If you like this, try: the documentary “Drone”

Trailer: Helen Mirren Stars in “Eye in the Sky”

Posted on January 7, 2016 at 8:00 am

Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul star in “Eye in the Sky,” a military thriller about using drones for recon and weapons. Do you drop a bomb on a terrorist if there is a child playing nearby?

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Decoding Annie Parker

Posted on May 1, 2014 at 6:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language and some sexual content
Profanity:	Very strong language, sexual references
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Serious illness with disturbing scenes of symptoms and treatment, very sad deaths
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	May 2, 2014

Rashida Jones and Samantha Morton in Decoding Annie Parker (courtesy of Dorado Media)

This is the true story of two women who share a goal but meet just once, for a few moments. Oscar winner Helen Hunt plays scientist Dr. Mary-Claire King, whose pioneering research led to one of the most significant medical discoveries of the 2oth century, the BRCA1 genetic marker for early onset breast cancer. And Samantha Morton plays Annie Parker, a young woman who lost her mother and sister to breast cancer and then, when she was diagnosed with it herself, became dedicated to learning everything she could about the disease. An outstanding cast, a likeable narrator, and a thoughtful script co-authored by director Steven Bernstein take this out of the easy tears of the disease-of-the-week TV movie category. It is an absorbing drama with a lot of respect for its characters and a welcome sense of humor. “My life was a comedy,” a quote from the real Annie says as the movie begins. “I just had to learn to laugh.”

Annie’s mother died of breast cancer when she was a child, and Annie and her sister (Marley Shelton as an adult) superstitiously believe — or pretend to believe — that Death sleeps in a locked room on the top floor of their house, and that their mother make the mistake of awakening it. Their father dies when Annie is still in her teens, and we see her at the first of three funerals in the film, with fatuous remarks from the people attending and a skeezy funeral home employee hitting on her. “A lot of women can’t be cool and in mourning at the same time, but you pull it off.”

A little lost, and overcome with ardor for her musician/pool cleaner boyfriend Paul (“Breaking Bad’s” Aaron Paul in a series of 70’s and 80’s hairdos that are both horribly ugly and fake-looking), Annie gets married. They live in the house she grew up in and very soon they have a baby. And then, the last member of her family, her sister Joan, gets breast cancer and dies, funeral number two, same fatuous remarks and skeezy guy.

And then Annie gets a lump in her breast. It is cancer. She has a radical mastectomy and removal of most of her lymph nodes under one arm, followed by chemotherapy. She becomes determined to learn as much as she can about the disease, even building models of cancer and DNA. And she becomes a warrior against cancer, checking her breasts and insisting everyone else check, too. She even offers to check her husband for testicular cancer during an intimate moment.

Meanwhile, Dr. King is insisting that there is a genetic link and working to find it, despite a lack of support. She is told it will take ten years for the computers available to her to analyze the data she is collecting from women who are in families with multiple cases of breast cancer. But Bernstein wisely makes Annie Parker, rather than Dr. King, the focus of the film. This adds warmth and drama to a story that would otherwise be a lot of people in lab coats getting turned down for grants and crunching data. Parker makes an engaging guide to the years of struggle faced by both women, with a wry sense of humor and a steeliness of resolve that, endearingly, is as much a surprise to her as it is to everyone around her. She is very funny quacking (really!) to get the attention of a bored doctor’s office receptionist (Rashida Jones), who later becomes her close friend and ally. Morton is superb, showing us Parker’s vulnerability as well as her courage, and making us understand the scope and the human dimension of Dr. King’s work. When they finally meet we see how in an important way they kept each other going.

Parent should know that this film has themes of cancer, illness, and loss, with sad deaths and some disturbing scenes of symptoms and treatment, sexual references and brief explicit situations, adultery, some very strong language, and drinking.

Family discussion: Why did Paul and Annie have such different reactions to illness? How did humor help Annie stay courageous? Read up on Dr. King and her opposition to patenting gene sequences.

If you like this, try: “50/50,” “Wit,” and “God Said Ha!”

Trailer: Decoding Annie Parker

Posted on April 10, 2014 at 11:21 am

Helen Hunt, Samantha Morton, Aaron Paul, Rashida Jones, and Corey Stoll star in this fact-based story of two women, one with breast cancer and one trying to solve the genetic link in families with high incidence, research that led to the discovery of the kind of diagnostics that made it possible for people like Angelina Jolie to take preventative measures that can save their lives.

And here’s the real Annie Parker.