Joan of Arcadia

[Phil Elmore]

I made the mistake of watching Joan of Arcadia on network television a few weeks ago.

The premise of this television series seems to be that God is really, really annoying and that She or He delights in assigning life-altering chores to teenage girls. There is a lot of angst and doubt, which doesn’t make much sense to me, as I’d at least be pretty sure there IS a God if God was showing up regularly to give me homework and field my whining questions. The show seems as much devoted to the gimmick of God being different random people as it is to teaching ham-handed morality lessons.

I question all of these conventions. If God was busy showing up in life as random cafeteria ladies and hobos and insurance salesman and six-year-old girls, why not other random objects? Why not a toaster, or a shoe-tree, or a glass of water? If the idea of your toaster telling you, “Joan, I want you to take a baby-sitting job so you’ll learn to listen to people better in order to help them” sounds vaguely psychotic to you, it should. You should, therefore, find accepting the same instructions from your waiter or your dentist or a crossing guard to be equally schizophrenic.

I have a real problem seeing God as obnoxious or irritating. Somehow I don’t think this insipid, poorly written show has any business portraying God as someone who appears as a smug teenage boy in desperate need of a haircut.

At one point in the show I watched, Joan, our heroine, rails at the smug, teenaged-boy-incarnated God, asking him why life is so hard. I might counter that teenaged girls are perhaps not the best operatives for life-altering counseling. An adult might be able to handle these tasks with more dignity.

“Do you wish you weren’t alive?” God says ominously. Okay, end of discussion.

There’s no answer to that question when the Almighty is portrayed as an irritating and deliberately cryptic jerk. There’s no answer, that is, except, “No, no, no, that’s not what I meant, forget I said anything; please don’t erase me from existence.”

I, in turn, will try to forget that I watched this – a task made more difficult by the fact that I've since started watching the show regularly. I will do so nonetheless, and I will do so while hoping the real Deity up there isn’t too offended that I wrote this column.

 

[Andi]

Sounds more like Q than God.

 

[TonyM.]

Wha?!!! Something more awfull than touched by an angel! Is that really possible? If any teenagers tell me they're God or if any angels touch me I'm telling mom.

 

[Quick Sand]

I think maybe part of the problem is that the target audience of the show is not adult men.

Part of the point of the show is that Joan does treat God just like any other person, she argues with him, call him a jerk whatever, but in the end she always learns that there was some point to what she was doing and that in life, you won't always understand the full extent of your actions until after you do it. Also if Joan had dropped to her knees and been in complete awe of God etc., it would have been just like most other shows and moives in the past that involve God.

It helps make you think in a way. It's really easy to go through life and not pay much attention to the people around you, by God showing up as different people all the time it grabs her attention, he can talk to her whereever she is without causeing some huge thing.

And finally, being a girl in highschool stinks, it really does. I'm sure it's not easy to be a guy in highschool either for that matter, but high school girls are generally pretty emotional etc. You're trying to grow up but you're not actually old enough to realize that you're not an adult yet. I think the show does a pretty good job of protraying that.

Do I think this is the absolute best show ever produced on television? No. But do I enjoy it and watch it if I happen to be home on a Friday evening? Yes, I do.

P.S. I know that my grammar and sentence structure in this are not perfect or anything, I'm not writing it to be a formal "article." This is just my quickly written response. :asian:

 

[Cruentus]

Oh my goodness!

i WOULDN'T BE CAUGHT DEAD WATCHING A LAME SHOW LIKE THAT!

I've seen the previews....

I'd rather read a book. :uhyeah:

 

[Ceicei]

So I'm not missing anything by not watching it?? I haven't seen any episodes of JofA.

I spend way too much time on MartialTalk...and sometimes material on MT sure beats some shows on TV. If TV were to disappear overnight from the Earth, there won't be any tears shed by me. They kept cancelling out my favorite shows over the years that I basically lost interest in "the box".

--Ceicei