By Chris Ryall
July 8, 2003
Look at that image right above. See the smiling, happy family, with patriarch Joe Mantegna and his wife Mary Steenburgen? And those three smiling, happy kids? Ahh, yes, another happy CBS family show, right? Not so far.
Rather, in JOAN OF ARCADIA, Mantegna is featured as Will Girardim, the new chief of police in Arcadia, California (a relatively banal area that would never be the focal point of a show if it didn't help complete said show's punny title). Mantegna is trying to keep his family together and at the same time stop a brutal serial killer from adding to his body count.
His family has seen their share of trouble, too. He and his wife Helen have seen their eldest son Kevin recently crippled in a car accident and deal with his depression. Meanwhile, middle child Joan (Amber Tamblyn) has been hearing voices in the middle of the night. And their youngest, 15-year-old Luke, is the typical television computer geek -- he's 15, yes, but he references obscure physicists; he talks about the principles of thermodynamics and the theory of relativity (he agrees with both) and he even has a large poster of disabled physicist Stephen Hawking on his wall. And we're given all of this in the first half-hour.
Yes, the show is an hour long, but unfortunately, CBS's screener tape only had the first 35 minutes or so, meaning this will be an abridged review. Maybe things really got exciting in the last 20 minutes; it's possible. Because the first 30 were, pardon the expression, hella dull.
Joan wakes up to bad dreams of dead bodies; these bodies turn out to be real--young female victims of what could be a serial killer. Mantegna's police chief is new and enthusiastic and saddled with a bumbling police force (they stood near the body for an hour and yet never noticed big, muddy footprints at the scene, and they covered the body with a blanket, thereby corrupting the whole crime scene), so he shows up to assist.
Meanwhile, back at his house, his wife Helen does her best to get the family ready for the day. She fixes a nice breakfast but refuses to be a typical 50s-style wife--Steenburgen's too smart an actor to settle for that, anyway--and she does her best to convince her crippled son to find a job, rejoin the world, do his best. Joan notices a man outside her window, watching her, and she alerts her family, who are fast as can be to dismiss this as an attention-getting ploy. Evidently there's no good reason a police chief stalking a female-killing serial killer should think a strange man in his yard is anything to take seriously.
Riding public transportation to school, Joan then sees a strange man staring at her from the back of the bus, but she forgets about him as soon as she spots, like, this cute boy and stuff. This boy, who appears roughly her age, follows her off the bus and talks to her -- he describes every detail about her family's life (proving his powers and at the same time giving us a quick summary of who's who on the show, allowing the staff writers to coast a little on character development). He's, like, God, you see. He says he's been watching Joan ("I've known you since before you were born") and needs her to do some things, like take a job at the Village Bookstore. He says he only appeared to her as a young hottie to get her attention and because she can relate to this visage--next time, he'll look totally different. She tells God she has a "little crush" on him and then decides maybe he's crazy, so she ignored his directive.
At lunch that day, the black lunch lady asks her why she hasn't taken the job yet -- she's God, too! So, convinced, Joan appeals to the bookstore owner to hire her. He has a bad attitude and doesn't want to deal with kids, but she's plucky, y'see, so two minutes later, he's left her the keys to the store and ran home to deal with a crisis there. Walking around the store (giving the show one of a few opportunities to go WB on us, that is, giving a little montage of scenes set to some anonymous modern rock track. I half-expect the end of the show to run a "tonight's episode of JOAN OF ARCADIA featured music by EVANESCENCE and JOHN MAYER" announcement), Joan sees an open book with a picture of Joan of Arc being burned at the stake. Then she realizes it's getting late, so she runs out.
It's now raining, and an older guy with an umbrella approaches her, asking her if she wants to share the umbrella. She's relieved to see that God's here again. Only, this guy then tries to force her into his old beater car, so she breaks free and runs off. When she tries telling her family about this, they again don't believe her. It IS odd that she tells them that a man "followed her" but doesn't say that he tried to force her into his car. When she describes his shoes, finally, her father realizes they match the tracks found at the crime scenes.
In bed that night, Joan hears more voices in her head, calling her. But she wakes and it's now her eldest brother calling her, thanking her for getting a job to help inspire him to do the same. Joan falls back to sleep. Lightning crackles overhead.
And that's all we got. So there's still no sense of what Joan's "mission" is to be, or if her fate will end up the same as her ancient namesake. (Her show's fate seems destined to follow that path, anyway, if it doesn't get a bit more lively. For everything I describes that happened in the first 30 minutes, it all happened so...slowly.) The show really does feel like a CBS executive's version of a WB show. But maybe the premise and the show will be a bit more exciting after the set-up is complete--that happens occasionally with shows. Regardless, if faced with a Friday night at home, I'd push a teen to watch this over ABC's TGIF line-up. Even though, God help us, IM'ing your friends would be more exciting than either option.
CBS's JOAN OF ARCADIA airs this Fall on Fridays at 8:00 PM.
Next Week: UPN's THE MULLETS
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