Review of "The Chosen"

Once upon a time, when the world was young, before (ISC)^2 was constrained from doing such things, (ISC)^2 researched the performance of candidates who had taken various training courses and seminars before writing the CISSP exam.  These were the days before ISO had sent out a decree saying that you were not allowed to do such things, if you were certified, in terms of your own certification program.

In those days, there was a man who had his own CISSP seminars.  He was well spoken, and entertaining.  In addition, his courses were two days long, instead of eight.  They were probably cheaper, too.  And he was, as I say, an entertaining speaker.  So entertaining, that the attendees very much enjoyed his courses.  And it wasn't until they came to take the exam, that they found out that it would have been better to them, 20% better in fact, had they never taken a course at all, rather than taking his.

I was reminded of this by the first episode of "The Chosen."  Now I don't want to say that "The Chosen" is a terrible video series.  I am enjoying it, as a very entertaining fictional series.  As far as I have been able to watch it, it does seem to be getting better.  "Better" being defined as, there is some similarity between what is happening in the video, and the stories in the Bible.  But that's not the case with the first episode.

Gloria's family had a saying about sewing a coat around a button.  The saying was meant to indicate that someone had taken a very minor point, and created something enormous based on the minor point.  Other people might say something about majoring on the minors, or building a mountain out of a mole hill.  This is what happens in the first episode of "The Chosen."  Based on a single reference in a single verse in scripture, to the effect that Jesus had "dispossessed" seven demons out of Mary Magdalene, we get an entire backstory of Mary Magdalene.  We get a rather confused backstory, starting out when she's about six or seven years old, involving a doll, and a piece of scripture, written on a slip of paper, which gets put into the doll.  We get an indication of a difficult life.  We get some kind of implication of a possible sexual assault and a possible suicide attempt.  We get an awful lot of stuff, basically indicating a hard life, but with very little basis in any kind of fact or scriptural reference.

And then we get a big finish.  We get music.  We get all the tricks of the cinematic trade, relying on everything that Hollywood knows about pushing buttons.  We get our buttons pushed, big time.  We get a huge emotional finish.  It's a very satisfying emotional finish, since those are some of the emotional buttons that are being pushed.  And it's not until you come down from the huge emotional finish, and actually think about what you have been shown, in totality (if you ever do such analysis) (and, after all, why should you?), that we realize that we haven't actually been taught much of anything.  There is no theological point to be made.  There is no sin that has been forgiven.  There is no repentance.  There is no indication of any reason for such a choice.  We get shown a difficult life, and then an indication that the life will no longer be difficult.  Said indication basically is based on swelling music and some close-ups.  And some button pushing.

So, the first episode of "The Chosen" is, pretty much, a dead loss.  At least, in theological terms, and even personal terms.  In historical terms, what we are presented is probably not too terribly accurate.  In terms of the dialogue, it's not going to be accurate at all.  People in that century didn't speak that way.  They didn't have those terms of references.  They didn't use those kinds of phrases.  Those phrases are modern inventions, with modern references.  And the theology?  Well, what theology?  We are given some interesting possibilities, in terms of storytelling, but not from the scriptures themselves.  Whatever the scriptures themselves tell us, it doesn't get told to us here.  At least not in the first episode.  And people are using the series for Bible studies.  In one such Bible study, not referring to the Bible, but to "The Chosen," the leader of the study asked us what similarities there were between the four people who were chosen.  And, of course, my immediate reaction was, they were all written by the same script writer.  Of course there are going to be similarities, try though script writer might, to create diverse characters.  (And, yes, I do recognize that the script writer tried mightily to create a diverse character.  Neuro diverse, as we would say today.)

As I say, later on, the scripts for the episodes do start to make some additional references to scripture.  Some.  Not a heck of a lot.  Possibly as little as a single verse, as a reference, to a half hour of script writing, or episode creation.  In some of the later episodes, up to a dozen verses might be used as the basis for an hour long episode.  (In one half-hour episode, there isn't a single relevant reference to any scripture.  It's all made up out of the whole cloth.)

At the same time that I was watching "The Chosen," I was also watching episodes of "Supergirl," and for much the same reason.  "Supergirl" was shot in Vancouver and, even though the camera crew takes great pains never to show the North Shore mountains ("National City" is supposed to be on a plain), when you've lived in the city all your life, you can get a mean game of "spot the Vancouver location!" going.  In the same way, in "The Chosen," you can play "spot the Bible verse," trying to find the vestige of scripture that led to this episode.  If you *really* know your gospels, you can even see foreshadowings, indicating that *this* character, in a couple of episodes (or a season or two: "The Chosen" is not very fast-paced), will end up being involved in *that* verse.