A few weeks ago here I was griping about a bit of simple-minded stereotyping of a Christian character in the TV series Endeavour. Endeavour, in case you aren't aware of it, gives us the early life of Inspector Morse, whom every fan of British mystery stories knows; I found it disappointing but interesting. The stereotype was a cold and malicious Christian woman crusading against dirty words on television; according to the rules of this game, she had to be exposed as being not only ugly and self-righteous but a monster to her own family. [yawn] It was so crude and such a cliche that I couldn't even be much offended.
I was, however, a bit surprised, because I had some notion that this sort of thing has been done so often that writers are tired of it, and that portrayals of Christians and Christianity have tended recently to be more interesting. Well, I don't know how I can venture to make such a broad statement, as the number of movies and TV shows I see is very small. But for what it's worth, here are two instances of what I mean. Both are long and complex made-for-Netflix shows.
First, Bloodline. This is a combination family saga and crime drama set in the Florida Keys (which are photographed with exceptional beauty, so that I want to live there, hurricanes or no hurricanes). I think I watched the first episode out of curiosity, Netflix having recommended it to me, without really knowing what to expect. One episode was enough to hook me. It is very well done. There's a lot of first-rate acting in it, especially on the part of Kyle Chandler and Ben Mendelsohn.
The Rayburn family runs a successful hotel, but--you know how this goes--Behind The Facade Of The Happy And Prosperous Family Lie Dark Secrets. Mendelsohn's character, Danny, is a sort of black sheep son who has been absent for a while and whose return sets in motion a chain of bad things. Chandler's character, John, is a detective in the county sheriff's department. The bad things play out over three "seasons" of a dozen or so episodes each.
I read somewhere that the writers had originally envisioned five seasons, but that reviews and ratings declined steadily after the first season. At any rate the third season was the last. I can sort of see why, because most of the original story had run its course by then. But some strange and interesting things appeared toward the end of that last season. In particular there's a scene where Sally Rayburn, the family matriarch (played very effectively by Sissy Spacek), in desperation seeks out a Catholic priest for counseling and/or confession. The family is not Catholic and there's been no presence of religion in the show before this point (except for a funeral or two). Sally's troubles are of course all mixed up with her children, and the priest says something to her that really made me sit up and take notice:
You know who God is? A parent with insanely violent and destructive children. He had two choices: destroy them or die for them.
Now that's the real deal. I don't expect or even want TV and movies to preach Christianity to us. But I do want it to recognize the existential situation we face, and, if it deals with the faith, to understand that it is a serious response to a serious question.
(Later it appears that this encounter may not have really happened, and that a character named Ozzie, who has heretofore been a pretty frightening criminal lurking around the family, has become--or may have become--a sort of weird Christ figure, or maybe an angel or prophet. May have--it wasn't at all clear to me. I'm going to watch the last three or four episodes again and read some reviews and see if I can make sense of it.)
I recommend Bloodline, with a fair amount of qualification. The first season especially is very painful to watch in many ways. It's not sensationalistic--not a lot of violence etc.--just painful.
The other show, The Killing, is not as good, and I don't really recommend it. This is the American version of a Danish series which Rob G has recommended to us here a number of times, but which is hard to find in the U.S. I think I started watching it out of curiosity (and impatience at not being able to get the original). I won't say I was hooked after the first episode, but there was enough what's-going-to-happen pull to make me continue. There was a lot about it that I really disliked. It is very dark, and I mean that literally as well as figuratively: it's set in Seattle, and if I were to take it as a realistic portrait of the city and its people I would be astonished that anyone could live there. It's almost always dark and almost always raining. Even the rare bit of sunlight is pale. The people are miserable. They never really turn on the lights in their houses, apparently making do with a few 40-watt bulbs. And the crimes depicted are dark, sometimes gruesome, and heartbreaking: the third season (there are four) involves the murders of teenaged girls living on the streets, and the mere fact of teenaged girls living on the streets is heartbreaking.
I expected the murder which happens in the opening scenes to be solved at the end of the first season and if it had been I would have stopped there. But it wasn't. It took two seasons to solve that crime, and by then I had gotten so interested in the two detectives working on the case that I wanted to follow the rest of the series just to see how things would work out for them. They are Sarah Linden (just "Linden" most of the time) and Steven Holder (just "Holder" most of the time), played by Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman. As tends to be the case in contemporary crime stories, the detectives themselves have major personal problems of their own.
Anyway--to get to the point, since I'm not recommending the series--Holder's biggest problem is that he's a former (recovering?) meth addict. (Do they really let former addicts join the police?) Throughout the series there's always the fear that he's about to fall back into using. At one point, fairly late in the series, when a number of things have gone very badly wrong for him, he and Linden are driving around Seattle and he abruptly demands that she stop and let him out. She thinks, as do we, that he's off to buy drugs. But where he actually goes is to the church of a women's monastery/convent which I think is called Our Lady Queen of Peace. Like Sally in Bloodline, he's not Catholic. But also like Sally, he is in desperate need, and that's where he goes. He sits--maybe he kneels, I can't remember now--while the nuns chant from behind a screen. Nothing magical happens. But he isn't back on the needle.
An episode or two later he returns to the church, this time in even more desperate need. This time he's falling apart. After a minute or two he begins to storm around the church, yelling "Where is he?! Where is he?!" He goes over to the nuns' screen and beats on it, yelling; they are frightened and scurry away.
Again, nothing happens. For all I know the writers intended to say that all that God stuff is meaningless. That's alright. The significant thing to me is that those scenes give us the question, the hard question, and a Catholic church as a place which at least might have the answer, ought to have the answer, and to which one naturally looks for it.
Perhaps the entertainment industry has gotten some of the simple-minded attacks and stereotypes out of its system and there is some kind of a trend toward intelligence and seriousness in treating Christianity. It would not be surprising. And this is suggestive for what seems to be a darkening cultural future: the darker the night, the brighter the light. As they say, it's science.
By the way as far as I can tell the Seattle monastery is fictional.
Actually, now that I think about it, the intelligent-serious view of religion was present these many years ago in The X-Files. My all-time favorite line from that show, in an episode where suburban satanists have gotten themselves into grave danger: "Did you think you could call up the devil and make him behave?" An epitaph for our times, maybe.
Another line from The Killing that struck me: "To love a child is to open yourself up to all the hurt in the world."
*
As of 12:32pm Friday Sept. 22 I have essentially completed a first draft of my book. I know there are several places that need to be filled out further, but it's just a matter of paragraphs here and there. More dauntingly, there's a huge amount of sculpting to do on what's a fairly shapeless mass right now. But a presentable manuscript is within sight, although still distant. I should be able to get it done by the end of the year at least, if I don't get lazy and/or distracted. Next week I'll post an excerpt.
*
I saw this goose about to take off and pointed the phone ahead of it and pressed the button several times. I didn't really expect to catch it but I guess I got lucky.
I lived in Seattle back in 1995-96 and it is true, you can only find 40 watt bulbs for sale there! :)
Actually, thought it does rain and mist constantly it is a wonderful place to be, and when the sun does come out it is glorious. When you can suddenly see Mt. Rainier it is beyond glorious!
Posted by: Stu | 09/25/2017 at 09:18 AM
On the other hand: grunge. :-)
Did you say "Rainier" as in "it's rainier today than yesterday", or "Reneer," rhyming with "veneer"? I had always heard the latter but in this series they said the former.
Posted by: Mac | 09/25/2017 at 09:24 AM
It is pronounced reneer.
Grunge, ha! I guess the weather probably did have something to do with that music.
Posted by: Stu | 09/25/2017 at 09:33 AM
I wonder why they said it wrong in the series. Maybe it was actually shot elsewhere and nobody knew it was wrong.
Posted by: Mac | 09/25/2017 at 10:28 AM
I just looked it up and they filmed in Vancouver which is almost always where they film Seattle movies and TV, so I'm sure they know how to correctly say Rainier. It must have been a conscious decision by the people in charge. Rain-ier does sound funny due to the constant rain.
Posted by: Stu | 09/25/2017 at 10:36 AM
I thought that might be the case (filmed in Vancouver). They did have scene-setting shots that included, for instance, the Space Needle, but I guess they just had somebody fly over in a helicopter and get a bunch of those.
Maybe it's an in-joke among some Seattle residents to pronounce it that way?
Posted by: Mac | 09/25/2017 at 10:42 AM
" portrayals of Christians and Christianity have tended recently to be more interesting"
As soon as I read that, I though, "X-Files."
I'm pretty sure that's the same episode where a man is telling Mulder that the devil is mad because they weren't doing their rituals in the right way or in the right spirit or something and Mulder says, "Oh, you mean like using grape juice for Communion?"
I have been noticing that same trend in TV series that I've been watching. One, Suits in which a man without a law degree has been practicing law with a big firm. He goes to the parish where he grew up and talks to the priest and repents, I mean really repents to the point of having to go to jail. It gets kind of murky after that but the fact that that is in there at all is notable.
And then Broadchurch. The whole first series I kept waiting for the priest to be a bad guy, and he turns out to be a really good guy.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 09/25/2017 at 10:44 AM
That picture is quite beautiful.
A couple of weeks ago I was driving through the river bottoms where there are frequently large groups of great white herons and a few great blues, and instead there were birds that looked like great whites, but about halfway down, their wings were black. They were very beautiful rising from the water and rather ominous. They reminded me of white funeral cards with black borders. When I found pictures of them online I saw that their heads are very ugly and creepy.
They really don't belong in our area but I think they may have been forced off-course by the hurricanes.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 09/25/2017 at 10:52 AM
We have a lot of great blues but not very many whites. Those others you describe do sound a little ominous.
Yes, Broadchurch is a perfect example. I don't remember anything else about that X-Files episode but it certainly could be the same one. I'd like to see it again. "like using grape juice"...heh.
Posted by: Mac | 09/25/2017 at 11:14 AM
Speaking of birds, today outside the window at work there were a bunch of Tom turkeys strutting around with tails fully fanned. They were about ten feet away. It was quite a sight. I wish I had had a camera.
Posted by: Robert Gotcher | 09/25/2017 at 10:08 PM
Somehow big birds impress.
A while back here I kept hearing some very weird bird calls that proved to be from peacocks. Two of them were perched on a neighbor's house, then flew down and walked around in another neighbor's yard. I don't think there were any hens. I don't know where they came from. Never seen them before or since.
Posted by: Mac | 09/26/2017 at 07:25 AM
Visitation from MFOC.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 09/26/2017 at 12:53 PM
Maybe so. I should have prayed to her.
Posted by: Mac | 09/26/2017 at 01:02 PM
I was coming back to say that maybe she was blessing your writing.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 09/26/2017 at 01:32 PM
Robert, I wish you had had a camera.
Apparently in New England there are groups of wild turkeys going around terrorizing people. Sometimes they go to the door to ask for food. This sounds like a joke, but it's true.
When I first drove down to my house 16 years ago, about 5 vultures rose up out the ditch and flew in front of my car. I had had no idea how huge they are. I was thinking I would never be able to walk down the street, but so far no problem. ;-)
I won't lie down by the side of the road though.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 09/26/2017 at 01:35 PM
Wise plan.
Posted by: Mac | 09/26/2017 at 02:08 PM
I got the Danish original of The Killing from amazon without any difficulty. I do have a multi-regional DVD player
Posted by: Grumpy | 09/26/2017 at 02:21 PM
Many years ago when I lived in California's San Joaquin Valley, I drove to work every morning past a farm that kept peacocks as watchdogs. Never heard such a racket as they made.
Posted by: Marianne | 09/26/2017 at 02:45 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MhZPqHeEAQ
Posted by: Mac | 09/26/2017 at 02:56 PM
It never crossed my mind to buy it, Grumpy. My dvd collection contains Bergman, Fawlty Towers, and Dr. Who.
Posted by: Mac | 09/26/2017 at 02:57 PM
Do you watch the new Whos?
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 09/26/2017 at 03:54 PM
Not really. I saw a fair number of the David Tennant ones but very few since then. I'm actually not that big a fan. I have a sentimental attachment to the Tom Baker ones. The set I have was bought pre-Netflix-etc but post-Amazon, when mail-order dvds had just become an appealing alternative to whatever the local Blockbuster happened to stock. I was disappointed when it didn't include any Sarah Jane Smith episodes--just the less appealing Romana. No, I don't know why I didn't check first. I think I ordered it from Amazon with some soon-abandoned idea of collecting a lot of them.
Posted by: Mac | 09/26/2017 at 05:04 PM
Well, I watched all the David Tennant and Matt Smith ones, but the new guy was just ick. So I stopped after one and half, and now I'm out of the habit.
I have a friend who started collecting them as soon as they were out on VHS. He may have all there are to have.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 09/26/2017 at 08:59 PM
I think the last one I watched was the first one after Matt Smith. It dragged in what struck me as a trendy lesbian angle and I didn't see any more.
The same guy, Steven Moffat, who's mainly responsible for Dr. Who is also mainly responsible for Sherlock, and they both suffer from the same annoying frantic quality and intricate but to my taste not all that engaging plots (not to mention implausible).
Posted by: Mac | 09/26/2017 at 09:37 PM
Well, there's a lesbian couple, one of which is a lizard, and they seem to have become a large part of the recent episodes, or so I have been told by one of my offspring.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 09/27/2017 at 08:58 AM
Oh yeah, I'd forgotten the lizard angle. Seems like it was fundamentally just not that interesting a story. And the Doctor wasn't very engaging.
Posted by: Mac | 09/27/2017 at 09:58 AM
Oh, I liked Matt Smith, but then, he was the first one I saw.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 09/27/2017 at 03:44 PM
This wasn't Matt Smith. Peter somebody, I seem to remember.
Posted by: Mac | 09/27/2017 at 04:31 PM
I read just recently that Mark Gatiss, who played Mycroft on Sherlock, is also a writer and has worked closely with Steven Moffat on both that show and Doctor Who, and that they're set to collaborate on a new Dracula series. Not sure I'll be able to watch that.
Posted by: Marianne | 09/27/2017 at 06:50 PM
I thought the hip and glamorous vampire thing was over.
Posted by: Mac | 09/27/2017 at 08:48 PM
Exciting news about the book.
I've been meaning to see if I can find this anywhere, which surprised me in being made at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_(TV_series)
Posted by: Paul | 09/28/2017 at 10:24 AM
A friend in the UK saw it and said it was very good. He had some quibbles but liked it overall, and said that Sean Bean's performance as the priest is excellent.
Posted by: Rob G | 09/28/2017 at 10:57 AM
Sounds promising. Bean is always impressive.
The opening song is Randy Newman sung by Nina Simone, and the closing one is Ray Davies. Good judgment there. :-)
Posted by: Mac | 09/28/2017 at 11:43 AM
You guys know that the new Doctor is the mom from Broadchurch, right?
Posted by: Rob G | 09/29/2017 at 10:59 AM
No, I didn't know that. I just haven't had time to know anything lately.
Peter Capaldi. He's the one that made me quit watching.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 09/29/2017 at 11:27 AM
He was one of the leads in season 2 of 'The Hour," which I just watched. He was very good but the role was a lot different, I presume. He's been in a ton of stuff.
Posted by: Rob G | 09/29/2017 at 11:41 AM
I did know that about the new Doctor, because I have several Facebook friends who are Who enthusiasts. Lots of "IT'S ABOUT TIME!!" reactions.
Yeah, Peter Capaldi. I'm sure he's a good actor but that was not an appealing Doctor.
Posted by: Mac | 09/29/2017 at 12:33 PM
Finished Broadchurch 3 last night. While not up to the level of No. 1 (very few things are!) I thought it considerably better than No. 2 and well worth watching. It takes a little bit of time to bring the new story and the original one together, so despite the compelling nature of the new one, I thought that things grew even more so after the threads of the older story were woven in. The series is now complete, and I think that the ending was handled very well. It made me want to go back and watch the whole thing from the beginning, which says a lot.
I have to say that there is one sequence that is so perfectly done and so moving that it caused me actually to gasp out loud "Oh, no!" and basically to burst into tears. Now it's not uncommon for me to tear up a little during movies, but this is the first time I can recall ever having an actual "out loud" reaction like that.
Posted by: Rob G | 12/18/2017 at 07:21 AM
I think in the interests of convenience I'll reply to this on the most recent SNJ where I mention Broadchurch 3.
Posted by: Mac | 12/18/2017 at 09:39 AM
yeah, looks like we cross-posted
Posted by: Rob G | 12/18/2017 at 10:37 AM