Word: joans
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Throughout religious history, getting spoken to by God has not been a sign of fun times ahead. Abraham had to agree to kill his son. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. On CBS's Joan of Arcadia (Fridays, 8 p.m. E.T.), God appears to a teenage girl and commands her ... to take AP chemistry...
...made Arcadia the rare TV show about spirituality to win over both audiences and critics. Whereas its predecessors have been either panned but popular marshmallow halos (Highway to Heaven) or controversial, swiftly canceled critical darlings (Nothing Sacred), Arcadia has avoided, Goldilocks-style, going too soft or too hard. Joan (Amber Tamblyn) is an average, nonreligious teen with whom the Lord decides to strike up a friendship, manifesting himself (and herself) in persons from a TV anchorman to a cafeteria lunch lady. Joan has a heart-wrenching family situation--a brother who's been partially paralyzed in a car accident...
...above all, Arcadia has managed to skate between preachiness and blasphemy by taking the religion out of God, literally. The show's creator, Barbara Hall, gave the writers a list of 10 "commandments" ("God cannot directly intervene"; "Everyone is allowed to say no to God, including Joan"). The third dictum is "God can never identify one religion as being right." This is probably an impossible rule to follow--some people believe in a God who is quite particular about which religion is right, and by the fourth episode God alludes to having told Noah to build the Ark. But mostly...
...dotcom bust. Staggering budget deficits. A hellzapoppin' gubernatorial recall. What other misfortune could happen to California? Well, Joan Didion, who was born and raised there, could write an elegantly acerbic book arguing that the sustaining myths by which the state defines itself are false, self-deluding and corrupt. Where I Was From (Knopf; 226 pages) is that book, and Governor-elect Schwarzenegger, for one, can give thanks that it was written too soon to include...
...DIED. JOAN KROC, 75, a railroad worker's daughter who became a philanthropist known for her generous, often anonymous donations to causes ranging from youth programs to famine relief; of brain cancer; in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. The widow of McDonald's owner Ray Kroc, she took control of baseball's San Diego Padres after his death in 1984 (when they won the National League pennant) and ran the team for six years...