Friday, October 17, 2003
Hot new TV star: God
The brashly offbeat premise for "Joan of Arcadia," and its sizeable audience in its first few weeks, suggest a swing back to the sacred for TV's truth-seekers.
Airing Fridays at 8 p.m. EDT, "Joan of Arcadia" introduces us to an ordinary 16-year-old girl with a penchant for running into folks who reveal themselves to her as God, then give her chores to do.
The tasks -- like getting a part-time job at a book store or joining the chess club -- may seem like odd things for God to be concerned with. Odder still: He doesn't really order Joan to do them.
"I give suggestions, not assignments," says God, at that moment facing Joan as a sanitation worker. "Free will is one of my better innovations."
The reassuring message of the show: Divine intervention, and the answers it might lead to, can conceivably occur with any personal encounter.
While other series try to solve each mystery surrounding a death, "Joan of Arcadia" confronts the mysteries of life.
"Those are questions people wish they could ask God in person," says series star Amber Tamblyn, explaining why, like them, she identifies with her character.
"Joan is starting to focus on things she's never focused on before. But she's also an adolescent, and I know how that feels," says Tamblyn, 20. "You don't listen to people. You want to stay in your own little world."
'It's about fulfilling your nature'
CBS' "Touched By an Angel," whose nine-year run ended last season, dispatched its angels each week to help people in spiritual distress. A gentle drama preaching an explicit gospel (God loves us), it was tremendously successful. Yet it spawned no imitators, triggered no craze.
Maybe "Joan of Arcadia" will have a broader impact. It presents the sacred less in spiritual terms than as a Learning Annex seminar in character growth, with God himself the instructor. It feels good and it's thought-provoking. And since God in his omniscience can handle any load, it invites countless spinoffs.
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