Webster's wife trying to get a mortgage, but is turned down. Houskeeper is smoking outside. Is smoking supposed to be bad? Oh, and the houskeeper is Black.
Mob priest comes by. The money has been found. But you have to use... the mob to build the church school. I always suspected...
My head is spinning.
Overview: not for the pious. Moments of amusement. Acting is erratic. Not quite as tight as Desperate Housewives or some of the other "edgier" tv shows. And I promise not to use the word "edgy" ever again.
Jesus clearly needs better lines.
She's not just smoking, I think the implication is that's she's using some of Grace's stash. . .
Posted by: Emily | Jan 07, 2006 at 06:14 AM
I think that we can all agree that smoking at least is a dangerous and deadly lifestyle choice. Great blogging today.
Posted by: John | Jan 07, 2006 at 08:42 AM
She is not smoking tobacco (which is a destructive habit). She was smoking marijuana, a joint to be frank. Certainly not as addictive as tobacco, but, in its secular illegality, far and away taboo... If you want to talk about silliness and smoking (anything), recall that Daniel hid his cigar when speaking to the young jogger.
Posted by: Calvin | Jan 07, 2006 at 10:00 AM
Thanks cal. I did mention the silliness of the cigar earlier.
Posted by: John Wilkins | Jan 07, 2006 at 12:30 PM
I have not seen the show yet, but did hear about it. It sounds like a chapter takin right out of the real life that I experienced with my ex-father-in-law who was a Episcopal priest(since deceased) In fact, I have written a fictional book about it. Soon to be published. He was deposed by the church in 1999 for violating his vows..More to come!
Posted by: B Lewis | Jan 07, 2006 at 03:26 PM
She was smoking weed -- the implication being that she's the one who cleaned out the stash in the teddy bear, since she was the one who saw Grace trying to hide the teddy bear.
Posted by: Keith Campbell | Jan 07, 2006 at 04:30 PM
I thought this was written by a gay guy dreaming about mom and dad in a fantasy life while tossing the lesbians a scene and making sure all the straight people were hypocrites, drunks, druggies, or adulterers.
I wanted this to be funny. I wanted this to be brilliant. I even might have wanted to be enlightened a little.
Posted by: abh | Jan 07, 2006 at 07:45 PM
She was smoking weed? Now that's funny.
You know, maybe this is really bad gay comedy. Will and Grace do it much better.
Although, in the end I'll give it a B.
It's not good enough...
But I'll tune in next week.
Posted by: John Wilkins | Jan 07, 2006 at 08:43 PM
All in all I'm willing to give this a second viewing next week. Yes it had some annoying "mistakes" but that wasn't my greatest concern.
"Opening" episodes tend to be overpacked with exposition -- as this surely was. I did find myself, by the end of the second hour, beginning, however faintly, to care about the characters -- I suppose it was the rather cold portrait of The Bishop's Wife with Alzheimers that did it. Ultimately this will -- for me -- prove to be the success or failure of the series: are these characters people or mere cardboard sinners? As I said, first episodes tend to want to pack in so much exposition that they use cliches to "flag" certain personality traits; there are some decent actors here, and I hope they will flesh out the persons within the roles -- especially Jesus, who needs to be more than kind and clever. And I really do hope the local RC priest begins to show some depth of character.
If things don't start to ripen and mature in the next episode, I'm afraid this series is headed for the footnotes.
I say all of this admiting, even I, that I hated the "pilot" episode of Star Trek The Next Generation -- which suffered from many of the same flaws as the writers tried to tableau each character in somewhat annoying succession, giving none of them sufficient depth. It took a few weeks for the characters to grow into the third dimension.
So I'll be back next week to take another look.
Posted by: Tobias S Haller BSG | Jan 08, 2006 at 12:42 PM
I agree...I think it was tobacco of a wacky nature.
I really liked the show, myself...
Posted by: sudiegirl | Jan 09, 2006 at 07:19 AM
In a word...frenetic. They need to pull the pace down a bit and give some time for character developmenta nd an unfolding of foibles. This was a dumping... It's as if they *expect* the show to get canceled and wanted to fit a half-season worth of ideas into a two-hour opener...
Posted by: Derek | Jan 09, 2006 at 08:32 AM
you need someone to watch the show with! no, seriously, i'm thankful that you "live blogged" because i missed the show. now i can read it play-by-play.
grace and peace.
Posted by: Nathan Hart | Jan 09, 2006 at 12:08 PM