Jesus, season 1, episode 21.

[active_apathy]

Tradition has it that today (please adjust for local time) is the anniversary of the second-last episode of Jesus, season 1. (They keep saying there'll be Jesus, season 2, but no-one knows the hour or the day on which the universe's executive producer will announce the renewal. There are, however, rumours that the've decided to keep the second season on hold until Fred Phelps and Anne Rice have left the writing team.)

In this episode, Jesus confronts his team about how he'll be betrayed (the camera settles foreshadowingly on Judas), and how they'll each turn away from him. Following this, there's a fight scene in a garden, and Judas kisses Jesus. (Fanservice for the Iscariot/Christ shippers? Perhaps. He could've just pointed.) Jesus is arrested, and says nothing throughout a brief interrogation scene. Following this, the Roman governor is forced to order the execution lest there be a riot, which fades into the carrying of the cross and the crucifixion itself, with Jesus' emo rant at God played over the top.

The episode does have its problems - Judas' suicide, for example, feels rushed, and removes any possibility of an arc where he deals with the results of his actions. Pilate - we have to get his name from the credits - could be developed more, instead of being the one-dimensional Roman governor who doesn't want to kill the self-insert character of the universe's executive producer.

In the final minutes of the episode, there's a montage of the apostles meeting Jesus for the first time, intercut with their denials of him. In the final scene, Jesus slumps down, hanging from nails that the viewer would almost believe were real. In an anachronistic departure from historical crucifixion procedure, the One True Cross has "PERGETVR" written on it by the Romans, informing the gathered crowd that the episode has a cliffhanger ending.

Will he escape? (No.) Will he survive? (Also unlikely.) Will he return as a zombie? Come back on Egg Day for the exciting finale of Jesus, season 1.

Comments

[aurora-z.livejournal.com]

The character of Mary Magdalene was cut because the actress who played her didn't like the ~direction the producers were taking the character.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

So that was why! I'd heard it was because Judas was getting more money.

[aurora-z.livejournal.com]

There were some salary disputes, mostly because Mary wanted the cast to all stick together (like the cast of Friends) but she felt like Judas went behind their backs to get a higher salary.

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

Didn't he also demand a 30 piece set of the custom silverware they used in the dinner scene?

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

I thought he just slipped them into a bag when the set dresser wasn't looking.

[antrobus178.livejournal.com]

I just can't get into this series. I sort of followed Old Testament when it was still going, but once it spun off into Jesus I sort of lost interest.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

I think it was the themes of zero-tolerance justice and godly vengeance that really did it - you just can't raze Sodom to the ground or turn the faithful to salt in a family timeslot, so there was a pretty big element missing for the earlier fans.

[miladygrey.livejournal.com]

Well, you realize that the whole season was co-written by four different writers, a couple of whom never even met the others. You have to accept that there'll be some shaky plot points and such when that kind of thing happens.

There's a rumor that there might be an actual love interest in Season 2! Though the spoilers I've found don't seem to know her name, she's just the Bride of Christ. I hope the Jesus/Peter and Jesus/Judas shippers don't automatically hate her.

Or, you know, they might just scrap the idea of S2 entirely and go directly to their new project, about some guy named Paul who likes to talk about Jesus. I hear there will be shipwrecks!

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

You know that whole martyr scene was totally cribbed from the long-cancelled Valhalla!, right? Odin wants his undead sacrifice back, Jesus!

[matgb]

Completely OT.

Where is the l'il Marvin favicon? It was you showed me how to do that, now he's gone.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

I changed my layout to modify the updated Flexible Squares instead of hacking the new features in myself every time LJ decided to change something, and I haven't put it back yet.

[matgb]

Makes sense--I need some way of keeping track to when they change the basic Expressive sheet so I can update mine.

Assuming I stay here--I'm playing around with Dreamwidth, and there's a little "url for custom favicon" box in the basic customisation section. How cool is that?