The Book of Daniel: Laughing Out Loud

NBC’s new primetime show, the Book of Daniel, stirred up some minor controversy because the protagonist, an Episcopal minister who bears the same name as his famous ancestor, Daniel Webster, has an ongoing conversation with a character who represents Jesus. Some Christian groups said that the depiction of Jesus (played by Garret Dillahunt) was disrespectful.

I tuned in out of curiosity and started laughing five minutes into the two-hour pilot.

The Reverend Daniel Webster, by all appearances a good man, is constantly tempted by and finally succumbs to the lure of Vicodin (Rush Limbaugh’s painkiller of choice). His wife Judith is an alcoholic…but let Aidan Quinn, who plays Daniel, explain:

Well, I'm an Episcopalian priest who struggles with a little self-medication problem, and I have a 23-year-old son who's gay, and a 16-year-old daughter who's caught dealing pot, and another son who's jumping on every high school girl he sees, and a wife who's very loving but also likes her martinis.

"I can't tell you how many people have said to me, `Hey, that sounds like my family.”

But does your family also have:

1) an Episcopal bishop for a grandfather a) who doesn’t know that his grandson is gay and is always trying to set him up with a girl, and b) who is having a difficult time caring for his Alzheimer’s-afflicted wife and is having an affair with Daniel Webster’s boss, the lady bishop, who herself is popping pills and enjoys a drink before noon?

2) a brother-in-law who absconded with $3 million in church building funds and whose naked body is found in a motel with no trace of the money?

3) a brother-in-law’s jilted wife who initiates a love affair with her late husband’s mistress?

All this in addition to a child who died of leukemia, the racist wife of the senior warden who refuses to let her daughter continue to “date” Daniel’s son (did I mention that he was adopted and of Japanese ancestry?), the Catholic priest who can use his mob connections to help Daniel find the stolen money, and the housekeeper who raids the daughter’s marijuana stash.

As its elderly parishioners die off and few young families replace them, membership in the U.S. Episcopal Church has been declining for decades and now rests at 2.3 million. It’s a sign of how desperate we are for members that one person I spoke to hoped that the soap-opera-ish Book of Daniel will induce the curious to walk through our doors. Well, I suppose as a denomination we’re on the B-list (the burgeoning A-listers are the Mormons and Baptists), so any publicity is good publicity. (I remain hopeful that the Church can get back on its feet without parlor tricks, but that’s for another time and place.) At least I’ll get a good laugh every Friday until the show’s cancelled.