I am – Hercules!!
“The Book of Daniel” is an hourlong about a pill-popping Episcopalian priest with a pot-dealing white daughter, a gay white son, a randy hetero Asian son, a martini-slurping wife, and his own personal Jesus.
When I saw Jesus in the promos I confess my interest was piqued. The Denis Leary character on FX’s “Rescue Me” also has an imaginary Jesus who likes to sit in automobiles and have conversations while the main character is motoring. Some of the Jesus stuff in “Daniel” isn’t bad, but when it doesn’t work - as when Jesus and Daniel start laughing at each other’s lame parodies of Episcopalian self-help book titles – it’s ruinously off-putting. (The pretend-Jesus conceit works considerably better on “Rescue Me.”)
Because the show’s Jesus character doesn’t look too disdainfully upon homosexuality or pre-marital teen sex, conservative Christian groups are screaming about it, generating much badly needed publicity for the series. Bob Waliszewski, of Focus on the Family's teen ministries, tells the Associated Press that the show portrays The Christ as a "namby-pamby frat boy who basically winks at every sin and perversity under the sun."
“Daniel” comes from the brain of homosexual sitcom vet Jack Kenny (“Dave’s World,” “Caroline in the City,” “Titus,” “Wanda at Large”). One (perhaps cynically) comes to suspect that Kenny got the job running an NBC hourlong in part because the last time a gay sitcom writer was given an hourlong to run, it turned out to be the ABC megablockbuster “Desperate Housewives.” Also, “Book of Daniel” has a kind of “Let’s make fun of the way people acted in 1950s sitcoms” feel to it. At least two characters in the two-hour opener – the minister’s wife and the minister’s father - use the word “perspiring.”
Sitcom logic abounds. The 23-year-old gay son inexplicably agrees to be set up on a date with a girl so his grandfather (an Episcopalian bishop) doesn’t learn he’s gay. Since the gay son is already “out” to the rest of the family, one wonders why he’s wasting everybody’s time, including his own.
More bizarre is a hospital waiting-room scene in which the WASPy fortysomething mother of a teen girl explains that she doesn’t want her daughter getting serious about the handsome Chinese-American boy she’s been kissing on. “I have no intention of watching little Oriental grandchildren running around my Christmas tree,” she announces soberly to (get this!) the minister’s wife, whom she knows to be the adoptive mother of the Asian kid. Who outside of a Klan rally blurts out a statement that rude and racist in a public place - to the mother of a minority teen?
But what matters Herc’s opinion? He has yet to laugh at “Desperate Housewives” once!
The Hollywood Reporter says:
… a well-intentioned drama with a few comedic quirks but without depth or greater purpose. … the minister here scarcely prays or questions. Instead, Daniel just muddles through one situation after the next, trying to comfort where he can, sort of like "Father Knows Best" with a collar. … The closest Daniel comes to a higher plane of thought is his frequent conversations with Jesus (Garret Dillahunt), whom no else can see. And what would Jesus do? Who knows? All Daniel gets from Jesus are insipid platitudes ("Life is hard, Daniel, for everyone. That's why you get a nice reward at the end of it.") At the very least, Jesus should be telling the reverend to stop lying to his father about Peter's sexual orientation. Then again, that's something that should be obvious to the minister to begin with. …
Variety says:
…Whimsical and busy, "Daniel" is overly ambitious but highly watchable, with an interlocking web of smart-ass, squabbling but ultimately loving characters. … Jack Kenny has laid the soapy elements on thick and still managed to create an appealing little world … The snarky banter among the kids, in particular, at times feels too precious, but there's plenty of life, surprisingly, in Daniel's regular exchanges with Jesus ("Deadwood's" Garret Dillahunt), who offers cryptic advice but stops short of proffering solutions. When Daniel asks if he's privy to these sessions because he's "chosen," Jesus brightly assures him, "I talk to everybody." …
USA Today gives it three and a half (out of four) stars and says:
… Whatever else you may have heard about The Book of Daniel, it is first and foremost a show about a true-to-life, loving, complex family. It is also witty, earnest, intelligent, overdone, overly ambitious, wildly entertaining and superbly cast … Daniel was created by Titus' Jack Kenny, and like that underrated sitcom, it offers a deft and dense mix of humor and drama, sometimes broad, sometimes grounded. … Like Desperate Housewives, the serialized Daniel is packed with plot — more, at times, than one hour can hold. Some twists are a bit much, and the show has to be careful not to use Jesus' visits as a convenient crutch. But it already shows great skill at handling problems to which we can all relate …
The Buffalo News says:
Ohmygod, nothing is sacred in the first three episodes made available for review, which are overloaded with plot developments that range from the slightly ridiculous to the outrageous. … "Daniel" is always interesting but far from perfect. Unfortunately, the religious audience most likely to be initially drawn to the series might be the ones most offended by its liberal use of story lines involving sex and drugs. The temptation is to write off the quirky "Daniel" as destined to be nothing more than a noble failure that will be included in the good book of critically acclaimed series that the public ignores. I'm no fortune teller, but it deserves a better fate.
9 p.m. Friday. NBC.
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