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January 26, 2006
The Book Of Daniel
Posted at January 26, 2006 06:15 AM in Television .
E! Online said it best: “And on the 18th day, NBC smited the The Book of Daniel.”
Yes, the Book of Daniel has been dropped from NBC’s Friday night lineup. I believe this Friday’s airing will be the last of it. Though there were many protests waged against NBC and its airing of the show by Reverend James Dobson's Focus on the Family, on some level I believe that was not the sole nail in Daniel’s coffin.
After watching a few airings, I found myself cringing at times because some issues addressed were a little over the top. I loved Cheryl’s performance, no doubt, but bringing up the gay son’s homosexuality at the dinner table, every single time, and making it an issue, all of the time, was just a little over the top for me. At some point folks just have to deal with it and move on. Here, it was constantly dredged up over and over and over again. The issue grew plenty tiring.
I know the Christian groups against the show highlighted the show’s creator and executive producer, Jack Kenny, as a “practicing homosexual,” but at some point we, as homosexuals, have to stop ham boning ourselves with stereotypes. Watching the show became for me very similar to watching a bad Stepping Fletcher routine.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe Kenny owes me anything and is
free to express his creativity in any way he sees fit, he just lost me
and I finally gave up on the show last Friday. There were just way too many subplots and I needed to see a story.
NBC reps did not elaborate on why the show was cancelled, but Kenny
confirmed the show’s demise in a posting on the network's Website.
“Unfortunately, due to many reasons, The Book of Daniel will no longer
be aired on NBC on Friday nights,” wrote Kenny. “I just wanted to say
‘thank you’ to all of you who supported the show. There were many
wonderful, talented people who contributed to its success--and I do
mean success. "Whatever the outcome, I feel that I accomplished what I
set out to do: A solid family drama, with lots of humor, that honestly
explored the lives of the Webster family. Good, flawed people, who
loved each other no matter what...and there was always a lot of
'what'!” Certainly, there was “a lot of ‘what’” and it was that “what”
that troubled me. Not to mention, what was the story line?
Shows like Daniel, unfortunately, are not the stuff of network television. Since I am not fond of network television these days, primarily because network execs seem to think – and contribute to the idea – that Americans are stupid and reality TV is fast becoming the Dish of the Day. Additionally, to point out a flaw in fundamentalist thinking, they are not complaining about shows like Desperate Housewives which to me, is far from being a show depicting strong family values. This causes me to become a bit suspect and I have very little respect for their inconsistencies.
Described as a cross between Six Feet Under and Joan of Arcadia,
Daniel did receive generally favorable reviews from critics. TV Guide's
Matt Roush hailed it as “darkly comedic and richly entertaining,” while
Robert Blanco of USA Today praised the show as “witty, earnest,
intelligent, overdone, overly ambitious, wildly entertaining and
superbly cast.” Honestly, it was superbly cast and considering it was
given a limited number of airings – six or nine I believe – perhaps, if
given more time, the show would have settled down and all of those subplots might have been spanned across an
entire season making it a little more digestable. As it was, I found myself constantly reaching for the bottle of Tums.
According to Nielsen Media Research, the show did attract 6.9
million viewers for its back-to-back episode debut January 6, but those
numbers dipped to 5.8 million viewers after its fourth and final airing
last Friday. As far as I'm concerned, 5.8 million viewers is a pretty impressive number. It means there is, or was, a market for this kind of show. Unfortunately, in today's corporate view of the world, 5.8 million is not a significant number, particularly if you can't make money from advertisers, the bread and butter of network TV.
According to E! Online, the writing was on the wall last weekend, when, speaking to members of the Television Critics Association, NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly said the show was “not quite pulling the numbers we were hoping for. t's having a tough time finding an audience.” He also lamented the dearth of advertisers.
“Had NBC not had to eat millions of dollars each time it aired, [the network] would have kept Daniel alive,” a jubilant Donald E. Wildmon, founder of the Mississippi-based AFA, said in a press release. “But when the sponsors dropped the program, NBC decided it didn't want to continue the fight.
“This shows the average American that he doesn't have to simply sit back and take the trash being offered on TV, but he can get involved and fight back with his pocketbook.”
I love E!’s parting shot equally well, “So much for turning the other cheek...or the channel.”
Source: NBC Closes Book on "Daniel"