For quirky `Joan,' God is in the details

By Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff, 9/26/2003

That God. Such a pain. Always sneaking up on Joan at unexpected moments, provoking her with outlandish requests and smarty-pants exit lines. Doesn't He, She, or It have anything better to do than stalk a rebellious teenage girl who just wants to put on her headphones and listen to Pink? "Joan of Arcadia" is a curious new family series in which the Almighty is a human character. Or to be precise, God is a host of characters, appearing only to Joan (Amber Tamblyn) in the guise of many people. In tonight's premiere, at 8 on Channel 4, He materializes as a handsome young man who looks like Christian Slater, telling Joan, "I've known you since before you were born. . . . I'm God." Later on, He takes the form of a no-nonsense cafeteria lady, urging Joan to heed His wishes. And next week, He makes a giddy cameo as a street cleaner, immodestly noting, "Free will is one of my better innovations."

The show's setup has some charm, especially since Joan's reactions are anything but beatific. A young woman hungry for independence, she tries to outwit God and challenge Him on his weaknesses, such as they are. "Are you being snippy?" she asks the young hunk. "God is snippy," she says to herself in eye-rolling disbelief. Some viewers may find this treatment of God sacrilegious, but the alternative -- reverence and submission -- would be much less fun. The minute the chats between God and Joan lose their light, bantering touch, the series will become too Sunday morning -- or too "Breaking the Waves" -- to be Friday night entertainment. The show's theme song, not surprisingly, is Joan Osborne's "One of Us," which asks, "What if God was one of us/ Just a slob like one of us?" But the series' tone will only work if it stays more droll than Osborne's wistful querying.

As "Joan of Arcadia" expands out from Joan's conversations with God, it has less potential. Joan's father, Will Girardi (Joe Mantegna), is the police chief, and each episode will include subplots involving his investigations. Tonight, there's a serial killer loose in town; next week, it's a question of arson. These story lines don't naturally intersect with Joan's high school traumas regarding boys and boredom, and they belong on another show, say "Law & Order."

Also, Joan's brother Kevin (Jason Ritter, John Ritter's son) is disabled -- a car accident left him a paraplegic. He has a massive chip on his shoulder, and the show spends too much time teaching him lessons about making do and getting over it. Kevin's disability also leads to tonight's worst scene, in which Joan's mother, Helen (Mary Steenburgen), verbally attacks a priest in a parking lot because God has made her child suffer. It's lacking in subtlety, to say the least, and it points to the very worst that prime time spirituality has to offer.

What will develop out of Joan's relationship with God? Why has He chosen her? The writers don't seem to know where to go with their amusing situation, and by the end of next week's episode, God is still being cagey about His purpose. He does issue a mandate to Joan, though, to "do better, do your best," which could be a bad sign for the direction of the show. Is "Joan of Arcadia" going to become preachy and offer perfunctory solutions for life's complicated challenges? Will God be healing Joan's angst and Kevin's crisis with simplistic directives? Let's hope not, because feel-good series don't usually feel good so much as irrelevant.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.