By D. W. O’Dell

 People love to bitch. Okay, I love to bitch, and I’m people, so maybe I’m projecting. But the world is filled with people who want something, and when they get it they aren’t happy.

Take religious types. Excuse me, that’s a bit derogatory; take persons for whom religion is an important component of their lives. You will sometime hear some of these persons complain that relatively few characters on television are shown to be religious, and that the vast majority of Americans participate in some weekly form of worship but no one on TV does. Fine. So NBC comes out with a show about a priest who talks with Jesus. What could be more religious? The show presupposes that Christianity is the One True Faith and that Jesus is whom we all should be worshipping. Jesus is apparently a benevolent guy interested in the lives of people who worship Him. Did that make people happy?

You’d have thought NBC had aired a Saturday morning cartoon featuring a bomb-throwing Mohammed. Organized religious leaders cried sacrilege, and The Book of Daniel was taken off the air after four short weeks. I guess that’ll teach NBC to air a drama about religion. Now they’ll play it safe and probably fill that hour with another segment of Fear Factor. No one ever complains about Fear Factor. Shudder.

It is a classic case of be careful what you wish for. You want more religion on network television? Then be prepared for more characters that are religious, but flawed. A TV series about a religious character that is nice and inoffensive but sincere in his belief wouldn’t get to the pilot stage.

The current TV series that has dealt with religion the most is, hands down, The Simpsons. Next door neighbor Ned Flanders is described by Homer as a “Charlie Churchgoer”. Reverend Lovejoy has been the focus of several episodes, and Krusty the Klown’s Judaism has been addressed numerous times. For all of its noted mockery, religion is usually handled in a respectful manner, even if Reverend Lovejoy is a tad boring or Homer finds Apu’s statue of Gnisha amusing (Reverend Lovejoy once denigrated Hinduism as a “miscellaneous” religion; when Apu pointed out there were 700 million Hindus he replied with a condescending, “That’s super”).

The longest running family series of all time (by some measures) is the WB’s 7th Heaven, a show about a minister. It has been WB’s highest rated show of all time, even beating out the pagan Buffy the Vampire Slayer when it was on WB. The show is the working definition of white bread; I only checked it out many years ago for the former Star Trek co-stars (Stephen Collins from Star Trek I, Catherine Hicks from Star Trek IV).

Shows on weblets or Fox don’t really count, though. The three major networks have offered very little in the way of religious programming, and when they do religious groups are always offended (anyone remember Nothing Sacred?).

Me? I’d like to see a spin off of the South Park episode that featured the Super Best Friends: Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad, Krishna, Joseph Smith, Lao Tzu and Sea Man battling David Blaine. Oops, how did they get away with drawing Mohammad?