The Chosen, Seasons 1-4

Someone at my church loaned me the DVD set for Season 1 of this show, which dramatizes the gospels of Jesus Christ, and I enjoyed it so much that I went looking for more of it on disc. I saw a five-season boxed set available online for more money than I wanted to pay, but then I glanced at a shelf at Walmart and there were seasons 1-4 for considerably less. So I got the set and binge-watched Seasons 2-4, and this is what I think about it.

First, the show has a great cast, plays out on beautiful locations and has terrific production values. When it's hits, it hits hard, with big-picture faithfulness to the biblical witness and emotional beats that left me sobbing more than once. It also, unfortunately, embellishes the canonical story with fictional scenes that, I suppose, are intended to fill in gaps in the story and carry forward the parallel stories of Jesus, his followers and their families, the Roman authorities, and various Jewish people ranging from ambivalent supporters to deadly enemies of Jesus. Some of these extra scenes, more and more as the series goes on, feel to me like unnecessary padding and is sometimes downright dull, whereas the parts that emotionally grabbed me were pretty much all biblical material.

I gather this show started with a pilot that the creator, Dallas Jenkins, made as a video for his church, and the series developed from there, all crowd-funded. In a message Jenkins inserted into the Season 1 video set, he says he planned the show to get through Jesus' entire ministry, death and resurrection in eight seasons, but I think it's been trimmed down to seven seasons since then; five have been filmed so far.

The pilot, "The Shepherd," is a version of the Christmas story according to Luke 2, from the point of view of a lame shepherd who (in the film, not the gospel) is miraculously healed when the angels announce the Messiah's birth. I'd like it more if you actually saw and/or heard the angels' announcement. But you see a good deal of the potential for the series in this brief film.

Season 1 covers Jesus' ministry from healing the demon-possessed woman we will know as Mary Magdalene to Jesus' encounter with the woman at Jacob's well in Samaria. A broad thread running through this season's eight episodes is the Pharisee Nicodemus' recognition that Jesus is the Christ, which pays off with some of those powerful emotional moments I mentioned before. It also shows part of the process of Jesus' calling his 12 disciples, starting (when we first meet him) with "Little James" and Thaddeus, then collecting Andrew, Peter, "Big James" and John as well as Matthew the tax collector. It depicts some of Jesus' early, non-public miracles, such as healing Mary and filling the fishermen's nets, then moves on to his public miracles like changing water to wine at Cana (making a disciple of Thomas, a wine merchant) and healing the paralytic let down through the roof of Zebedee's house. It gives us Jesus' rooftop conference with Nicodemus (John 3), with his "For God so loved the world" statement and discussion of being born again, and he finally heals Simon (Peter)'s mother-in-law before leading his first half-dozen disciples to Samaria.

Like I said, the whole Nicodemus plot line sent me into fits of tears. Erick Avari, whom you may recall from such movies as Stargate, delivers a powerhouse performance as a man torn between following Jesus and remaining rooted in his scholarly position. Other cast members you may recognize are Yasmine Al-Bustami of NCIS: Hawai'i as Ramah, Thomas' woman friend and later fiance, Kirk B.R. Woller as Roman Centurion Gaius, Brandon Potter as the Roman praetor of Capernaum and Jonathan Roumie as Jesus, an actor I first spotted in Solo Mio; he also played an evangelist in Jesus Revolution.

In Season 2, Big James and John get their nickname "Sons of Thunder" when they ask Jesus to destroy some hostile Samaritans. Moving on from Samaria to Syria, Jesus makes disciples of Philip and Nathanael – the latter in another one of the scenes that gets me choked up. Conflict simmers between the disciples, particularly between Simon Peter and Matthew, whose background as a tax collector he particularly resents. In Jerusalem, Jesus heals another paralytic, the one who has spent years waiting for a chance to crawl into the Pool of Bethesda when its waters are stirred, and this gets the attention of Simon the Zealot, known as "Z" in this series and depicted as the second paralytic's estranged brother. Z, kind of a kung-fu disciple, follows Jesus and appoints himself as security chief.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned, a lot's going on among the Pharisees, with a couple of them investigating Jesus' activities and looking for a pretext to file charges against him. Their attitude in general seems to be to take offense at everything. I don't remmeber if it's in this season or not, but at one point a Hellenized Jew shows up at the temple to inform on Jesus and before he can get five words out of his mouth, the Pharisee questioning him gives him the what-for for wearing damask, a blended fabric, which isn't kosher. These stooges catch up with Jesus as he and his disciples are coming away from a big sermon and various miracles, and when one of them takes that hoity-toity tone with one of the witnesses, he shames them with a statement like, "He's healing us, and you're just tearing us down" – a moment that creates a spiritual crisis for one of the Pharisees, in what may be the most emotionally powerful non-canonical moment in the series.

Season 2 wraps up with preparations for Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, an occasion that brings Judas Iscariot into his circle. Season 3 introduces us to Jairus, a sympathetic synagogue offical whose daughter Jesus will eventually raise from the dead. Jesus sends the disciples out on a mission trip, two by two; he preaches at the synagogue in his hometown and is violently rejected by the townsfolk; he heals Veronica, the woman with a discharge of blood; he responsds to questioning by John the Baptist's disciples, offending the Pharisees once more; he heals a deaf-mute man; and he concludes the season by feeding the 5,000.

Season 4 depicts the birth and death of John the Baptist, with Paul Ben-Victor (Entourage, The Invisible Man) playing Herod. Simon confesses Jesus is the Christ and receives the name Peter. Richard Fancy, Elaine's boss on Seinfeld, appears as Caiaphas the high priest. Matthew and Peter are reconciled. Jesus heals the man born blind, but when the local praetor goes spare during a small-scale riot and stabs Ramah, Jesus doesn't heal her; her death becomes a sore point with Thomas. Jesus begins foretelling his death, and he heals the new praetor's (previously a centurion) son. Judas starts pilfering from the disciples' funds. After visiting Lazarus, Mary and Martha at Bethany, the group barely escapes being stoned in Jerusalem. They travel back to Bethany for Jesus to raise Lazarus from the dead, further upsetting Thomas. Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus' feet with costly perfume, which causes a Pharisee who earlier started sympathizing with Jesus to break with him and hardens Judas' resolve to betray him; and with a bit of preparation, Jesus enters Jerusalem riding on a donkey.

So far, season 1-4 of The Chosen. I've left out an awful lot, but this is enough of a synopsis to give you an idea of how the show is progressing. It looks like Season 5 stretches out Passion Week from Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on Sunday to his arrest in the garden on Thursday across eight episodes, which further suggests that Season 6 will be eight hours of Jesus' being tried, crucified and buried and Season 7 will cover from his resurrection to his ascension.

Whether or not it turns out that way, I have no complaints about the show except that, increasingly as it progresses, the plot drags as supplementary material is added to the biblically witnessed teachings and works of Jesus. My complaint isn't that it's doctrinally incorrect or tonally out of whack, just that it gets a little boring when it isn't laser-focused on what Jesus did and said – for when that focus is there, it's dynamite. Nicodemus' tears as he hid around the corner, at the end of Season 1, declining to follow Jesus on his travels, and the way Shmuel the Pharisee's world drops out from beneath his feet when Leander (I think that's his name) rebukes him for tearing down when Jesus is building up, are two exceptions – cases when something the show reads into the narrative hit hard. There's so much biblical material and I think focusing on that would be more to the show's advantage when it's actually the most gripping stuff.

Three Things That Made It For Me, as a TV dramatization: (1) Matthew being depicted as more or less Charlie Eppes from Numb3rs, with some additional OCD tics and possible signs of being on the autism spectrum; his characterization is a highlight of this fictionalization, with character growth as he breaks with his Roman protector, reconciles with his estranged parents, reconnects with his faith and becomes an evangelist. (2) John, also an evangelist, depicted as working out the opening of his gospel while sitting shiva for his brother, Big James. (3) Little James, depicted as suffering from a partial paralysis that Jesus never heals, and learning to bear this affliction faithfully despite the evidence all around him that he could indeed be healed. Yeah, yeah, there's a love story between Simon and his wife, and there's all the drama surrounding Thomas and Ramah, and of course I love the Nicodemus storyline in Season 1, and Z asking after Simon becomes Peter if that means he can have his name back and everybody in unison answering, "No," is legit hilarious; these are touches that show that faithfulness and a vivid imagination need not be kept apart. But sometimes the faithfulness is moving in and of itself.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Season 3

I was there when Happy Days jumped the shark. A little grade-school kid watching from a parsonage living room in Nebraska, via a signal captured by an aerial antenna that could be disrupted by as little as an air popper making popcorn in the next room – I almost said a microwave oven, but we didn't have one of those until the next parsonage – and when my little brother and I hung on everything the Fonz did. And later, the Duke boys and the Knight Rider. If you get what I'm saying, you know what kind of boys we were. But even we weren't so oblivious that we didn't recognize, when the Fonz literally jumped a shark (on water skis), what kind of proverb was in the making. And now I have lived to see a Star Trek series that I thought was very promising, in the first season or two, jumping so many sharks it was like skipping rocks. It could be argued that the selachid vaulting started in earnest with the penultimate episode of S2, "Subspace Rhapsody," where technobabble turned the Enterprise crew into the cast of a musical revue with plot and character points underscored by song and dance numbers.

And yet the show goes on, and the jumping of sharks continues regularly throughout this third season, and there are still two seasons of this series to come. Considered alongside the direction Picard and Discovery took in their final seasons, and the notoriously bad Star Trek: Section 31 TV movie, and the dismal failure of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy in one season flat (though a second season is still being produced at exorbitant expense), this almost suggests that somebody hates Star Trek with a holy passion and is purposefully augering it into the ground. Exhibits follow.

The season opens with "Hegemony, Part II," concluding the cliffhanger from the end of Season 2, in which several principal characters and a whole bunch of colonists were taken prisoner by the Gorn. This is actually one of the season's stronger episodes, with the Enterprises skirting the edge of violating a treaty with the Gorn to rescue the captives, while back in sickbay, Capt. Pike's girlfriend, Capt. Batel, receives an infusion of Number One's genetically modified Illyrian blood to help her combat the growth of Gorn eggs inside her body. This sets up a story arc that continues throughout the season.

"Wedding Bell Blues" features Rhys Darby of Flight of the Conchords as a version of the original series' capricious god-child, Trelane ("The Squire of Gothos"), and a voice cameo by John de Lancie suggesting that he might be a Q. It also introduces Cillian O'Sullivan as Roger Korby (TOS's "What Are Little Girls Made Of?") as Christine Chapel's new squeeze, a medical archaeologist. In this adventure, which definitely revs the speed boat engine if not actually jumping a shark, Spock is the first person who notices when Trelane, disguised as a bartender, changes reality to allow him and Christine to be a couple, then gets mad (like, threatening-people's-lives mad) when Spock and later others resist being played with like toys. It's kind of a fun episode, but it sets a pattern for this season of tampering with the show's characters, tone and genre every second or third episode – the kind of thing that can be a highlight of a season when it happens once every 26 episodes, but that destroys series continuity when it happens three or four times out of 10.

"Shuttle to Kenfori" is a "Star Trek does The Evil Dead" episode, in which Pike and M'Benga encounter zombies, basically, while searching an abandoned science lab for a flower that is supposed to help Batel with her Gorn problem. Of course the zombie outbreak has something to do with the flower, which does some kind of genetic jiggery-pokery, which rather paints M'Benga as a bit of a mad scientist and also, thanks to a Klingon character who hunts him down for revenge, reveals that he really did murder that Klingon ambassador in S2. He's a really morally compromised dude, and as Dr. Bashir's Little Sickbay or Horrors in DS9 so frequently demonstrates, the cure can be worse than the disease.

"A Space Adventure Hour" hits the ramp so hard that the water skier escapes from orbit, with La'An trying out a prototype of what (in the TNG era) will become standard equipment on a long-range starship: the holodeck. Why isn't it a thing before then? Behold: in trying to solve a pulp mystery, La'An gets stuck in the holodeck with no exit and no safety protocols. Meanwhile, characters in the whodunit wear faces of Star Trek principals, playing an over-the-top parody of TOS cast members and creatives. It's a surprisingly on-the-nose and not very kind parody of original Trek.

"Through the Lens of Time" is another horror episode, in which a young nurse named Gamble (recurring throughout the previous episodes of the season) takes it on the chin in a truly ghastly way while other characters, including Korby and Ortegas' younger, documentary filmmaker brother Beto, become trapped in what at first seems like an ancient, alien temple, but that might actually be something much more dangerous. Just thinking of Gamble getting his eyeballs fried out, then walking and talking like a living man even after his life signs cease, gives me the heebie-jeebies the way certain episodes of Doctor Who did. (Remember the one where you had to check whether somebody had a shadow or not?)

"The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail" finds Lt. James Kirk thrust into his first command when the U.S.S. Farragut gets attacked by a huge vessel that has the terrifying ability to open its jaws and, like, eat the Enterprise. Like, "Star Trek meets Mortal Engines." Assisted by some Enterprises who had beamed across to help before the chomp went down, Kirk struggles to find his footing in this crisis, but maybe the most memorable thing about the episode is who the scavengers turn out to be. It's kind of disturbing.

"What Is Starfleet?" is Beto's documentary, which at first seems very negative about the space force his sister serves in. It doesn't help Starfleet's optics that the Enterprise has been conned into assisting some alien scientists in what turns out to be an act of aggression against a neighboring planet and, also, involves the enslavement of a magnificent space creature. The remarkable thing about this episode is how much deleted material is preserved on the DVD; it could have been a feature-length installment.

"Four-and-a-Half Vulcans" is the episode teased before Season 3 debuted, in which Pike, Uhura, Chapel and La'An take a modified version of the alien serum that restored Spocks' Vulcan half in the S2 episode that most egregiously pissed me off ("Charades"). This allows them to temporarily become full-blooded Vulcans, which somehow magically alters their entire personalities (to say nothing of their hairstyles) despite none of them having ever undertaken the years of meditation, philosophical indoctrination and mental discipline that makes Vulcans the ice-cold SOBs they are. As ludicrous as it is, the episode makes a tiny, feeble attempt to explain this – something about how their Vulcanness really reflects Spock's perception of Vulcans – so it should come as no surprise to him that they are absolute, racist jerks who constantly remind Spock that he isn't even fully Vulcan. They basically become all of his childhood bullies. And then they just refuse to change back into humans at the end of the mission which, itself, isn't all that important for this story. Also oddly, La'An kind of becomes a Romulan. This is the kind of nonsense that Star Trek indulges in from time to time and that never fails to make me furious. As funny as this episode is in some of its details, it's built on a science fiction concept so stupid that it's unbearable to think about. In terms of shark jumping, this is the ski jump that launches the Fonz straight past the heliopause, into the interstellar void.

"Terrarium" is the episode that strands Ortegas on a moon, orbiting a gas giant on the wrong side of a wormhole, with a Gorn. There, despite her Gorn-related trauma (cf. "Hegemony, Part II"), she has to learn to make friends with the enemy in order to survive, while back on the Enterprise, it's a close-run thing whether the crew will be able to rescue her before either the wormhole collapses or they have to leave on a crucial mission. The Metrons (cf. TOS's "Arena") play a role in this, which I think is the biggest flaw in an otherwise all-right episode.

"New Life and New Civilizations" ties up the season as a whole, and particularly the plot threads regarding what Batel has become since she became fused with Gorn young'uns, Illyrian blood and that chimera flower from Kenfori, and what Gamble became on that planet with the temple-that-wasn't-really-a-temple. Before she commits herself to an eternity standing guard over a galactic demon prison, Batel and Pike share a lifetime together a la TNG's "The Inner Light," in what is maybe the most moving passage in this entire series to-date.

So, as I said, this show pulled increasingly steep shark jumps at least three times, and yet it goes on. I hear Season 4 will have an episode where the main cast gets turned into Muppets. So they're not done shooting the shark tank. Nevertheless, here are Three Highlights of This Season for Me – I won't say they "made it for me" because in the overall balance, I don't particularly care for this season of Trek, despite a couple of bright spots – (1) Patton Oswalt, as "Doug," a Vulcan who has embraced human behavior and who has somehow become irresistable to Number One, riffs with Spock in a series of hilarious outtakes. (2) "Terrarium" with its "infinite diversity in infinite combinations" theme of coming to a mutual understanding with your enemy, really represents what Star Trek has always been about. (3) The season finale's "Inner Light" interlude, which gives Batel and Pike the gift of a lifetime together that they can never really share. It hits emotionally, really hard.

Star Trek: Prodigy, Season 2

I've fallen way behind on my reviews of TV seasons that I watched on DVD. So here's a quick catch-up, starting with my favorite: Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2.

The second and, alas, last season of the animated series Prodigy is a breathtaking document of the Trek establishment's mixed-up priorities. This show should have been the one that kept going for years and years. It is, in my opinion, the best recent Star Trek series – my dad, who's been a Trekkie since the original series first aired, is of the same opinion. And it's definitely, hands down, the best animated Trek show ever. But it got canceled after only one season, and Season 2 only exists because it was in post-production at the time and there were contractual commitments, etc., etc. So, at least we got this. It's not perfect, but it's darn close.

The show continues the adventures of a group of misfit kids who, in Season 1, escaped from a slave planet on board a time-displaced Starfleet ship that they found deep in the mines. You may recall how they ended up becoming Starfleet cadets after saving the Federation from a disaster partly of their inadvertent making. Now we find cocky would-be captain Dal, science genius Rok Tahk, "percussive maintenance" specialist Jankom Pog, noncorporeal alien in a mechanical suit Zero and indestructible, verbally incomprehensible but increasingly anthropomorphic blob Murf joining a mission on Admiral Janeway's crew on a souped-up Starship Voyager, on a secret mission to find the missing Chakotay, while Gwyn tries to convince her people, the xenophobic Vau N'Akat of the planet Solum, to be open to first contact with aliens.

Naturally, everything goes disastrously wrong. In the season's two-part premiere, "Into the Breach," the meddling cadets prematurely take a ship through a time wormhole, inserting themselves into the wrong page of history. And though Gwyn connects with a kinder, gentler version of her Diviner dad, named Ilthuran, she faces a relentless enemy in the treacherous Ascentia, who is willing to mess with the fabric of reality to achieve her fanatic aims.

The season continues with "Who Saves the Saviors," in which Gwyn faces Ascencia in a ritual contest while the other cadets meet Chakotay in the Diviner's jail, inadvertently letting him escape in the Protostar in a way that disrupts the whole timeline and threatens Gwyn's very existence. "Temporal Mechanics 101" is about the cadets' efforts to rescue Gwyn, turning their ship into a time machine and taking her back to the Voyager. "Observer's Paradox" finds the kids struggling to understand mysterious messages telling them to stay together and "find me." In "Imposter Syndrome," they create holographic copies of themselves to cover for them while they sneak off on another ill-advised mission. Hilarity ensues. In "The Fast and the Curious," the kids are taken captive by a sentient computer that forces them to compete in a dangerous race, an encounter that leads to Zero's containment suit being disabled.

"Is There in Beauty No Truth?" introduces a planet of Medusans (Zero's people) who have found a way to assume bodily form. They offer Zero a chance to experience physical senses, but the gift comes with strings attached – like, his body will die if he ever leaves the planet. In the two-part episode "The Devourer of All Things," the kids learn that the sender of those mysterious messages was spacetime Traveler Wesley Crusher, and that their entire reality is threatened by terrifying monsters called the Loom who devour anything displaced in time. In another two-parter called "Last Flight of the Protostar," the kids find Chakotay marooned on a very strange planet with the Protostar, minus its warp core, and they work out a way to get it flying again.

"A Tribble Called Quest" finds the kids looking for a warp core ingredient on a planet infested with giant, carnivorous tribbles. In "Cracked Mirror," they find their way back to the Voyager, only to find it split between multiple, alternate timelines – including a Mirror Universe where Janeway and Chakotay are evil. In the two-parter "Ascension," Ascencia attacks Protostar and Voyager and is revealed to be holding Wesley captive, torturing temporal technology out of him to prepare a final attack on Starfleet. "Brink" is about a rescue mission to save both Wes and Ilthuran from Ascencia's clutches. "Touch of Grey" finds the kids threatened by a Loom that Ascencia has captured and enslaved. And the two-part episode "Ouroboros" ends the season, and the series, with the climactic struggle between Ascencia and everybody else, always with the Loom threatening to erase their entire reality.

That's super-oversimplified, but I highly recommend watching the whole season. There are frustrating bits where the characters, particularly Dal, seem to be letting you down, but bear in mind that in a half-hour episode format, all this is part of a larger, serialized story and the characters show real growth. Cast members include everybody from Season 1, plus (increasingly) Robert Beltran returning as Chakotay, Robert Picardo as the Doctor (from Voyager), Jason Alexander and Daveed Diggs as Janeway's bridge officers, Michaela Dietz as Vulcan cadet Maj'el, Ronny Cox as Admiral Jellico (reprising his Next Generation role), Gates McFadden as Beverly Crusher, Billy Campbell as one-time TNG character Okona, Eric Menyuk as two-time TNG guest The Traveler, and real-life science educator Erin Macdonald as a holographic version of herself.

It's tragic, I say, that this show didn't get the recognition it deserved as the strongest of the past decade's crop of Trek series, and that it couldn't go on longer. The characters' growth and chemistry together is lovely to witness. The dialogue is good. The stories are excellent. It's top-quality science fiction, structured for a Nickelodeon, kids' network audience but, perhaps as a consequence of that, highly satisfying for viewers of all ages. It's full of the optimism for the future that glows through the classic era of Trek, from the original series through Enterprise, and it makes good use of legacy characters without taking away from the hero kids' role in the forefront of the cast.

It has terrifying monsters, fiendish villains, rogues, creepy-crawlies and breathtaking, alien vistas. The Loom! The eels and leviathans on that sand planet with the vapor seas! Those bitey tribbles! That good-for-nothing Okona! That sentient computer with its deadly race course! Not to mention the Kazon and of course, Ascencia. It has characters who come to a tragic end, characters who suffer unimaginable agony, characters seen at their worst (such as the Bizarro versions of Janeway and Chakotay) ... but it also has people of all colors (including purple), sexes (including none) and body shapes (including none) aspiring to make the universe a better place for everybody. It's funny. It's a bit mind-bending, with all that temporal mechanics stuff. And it's a thrill ride from start to finish.

To put a point on it, here are Three Things That Made It For Me: (1) Putting life back into Chakotay after he's spent years marooned on an eel-infested sandbar. (2) Zero's heartbreaking taste of corporeal existence and what it costs him to sacrifice it for his friends. (3) Hard as it may be to believe, Wesley Crusher's role, suggesting some pretty interesting adventures he must have had since becoming one of those nearly omnipotent Travelers. Once again, this two-season series has my full endorsement.

591. Psalm of a Restless Night

A loose paraphrase of Psalm 6, titled "To the chief musician, with stringed instruments, on an eight-stringed harp." Not coincidentally, I wrote it around 2 a.m. Art: Child at Prayer by Eastman Johnson, c. 1873, public domain.

My bed dissolves in tears;
With sweat my pillow swims.
All night I groan with restless fears,
With vain designs and whims.
My eyes are sore with weary grief:
Lord, chasten not my unbelief!

Rebuke me not with ire;
Have mercy! I am weak.
Restore the bones Your holy fire
Has well-nigh brought to break!
Restore my soul—O Lord, how long?
Return with Your salvation strong!

For in the grave's dumb sleep
Who, Lord, will sing Your praise?
In death, who will remembrance keep
Of all Your gracious ways?
Depart from me, iniquity!
I cried, and God gave ear to me.

The Lord indeed has heard
My heart's despondent prayer:
He gives His never-failing word
To shoulder all my care.
Let all that troubles me retreat:
Before me stands the Mercy-Seat.

P.S. Here's an original tune to go with this hymn.

Fuze

Earlier this weekend, I drove a two-hour round trip – not in the usual direction – to see one of only two movies playing in my wider area that I was interested in seeing. It was a matter of timing whether I chose Over My Dead Body, a black comedy-action movie about a married couple trying to kill each other, or Fuze. Because I wanted to drive home in daylight, and OMDB's only matinee showing started too soon after I knocked off work on Friday, I ended up seeing Fuze.

It's not a coincidence that Fuze, besides being the title of this movie, is the British spelling of the part of a bomb that Wile E. Coyote lights before running for cover. You know, what we in the U.S. spell f-u-s-e. According to a screen card at the end of the film, it's also supposedly a charity that disarms bombs, but I can find no evidence that this is a real thing. In this movie, Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Anna Karenina, The Fall Guy) plays a U.K. Army major who heads a bomb disposal unit that gets called in when a construction dig in London unearths what appears to be an unexploded World War II bomb. Before his team can begin trying to disarm it, a whole square mile of London has to be evacuated – except for a gang of crooks who, right on cue – I mean that, as if they've been expecting an unexploded bomb to force the evacuation that day – seize the opportunity to drill a hole in the wall of a bank vault. The crooks include, no surprise, some shady characters, played by Sam Worthington (Avatar, Terminator Salvation) and Theo James (Divergent, The Time Traveler's Wife) among others, who get away by the skin of their teeth and then immediately turn on each other, all while one of the Army major's underlings plants an official seed of doubt about the bomb actually being of WW2 origin.

Double crosses, brutal violence, fast-moving police work and even faster-moving crooks escaping form the tissue of this movie, with characters switching which side they're are on (like, good or evil) in a manner that I guess was meant to be surprising or keep you guessing but that I saw coming from high orbit. I actually groaned to myself: "Don't tell me this guy is ... " But let's not spoil it for those of you who want to guess for yourselves. The only real surprise that kept me on the edge of my seat was whether the criminal masterminds were going to get away, and get rich. Your suspense is whether it's the kind of story where the crooks end up dead, or in handcuffs, or maybe getting away with their skin mostly intact but losing all the loot, or is there a "happy ending" for the bad guys and are we supposed to (cough) "stop your crying, it's a sign of the times" (sorry, Project Hail Mary) or will the movie actually try to sell us a reason to sympathize with them? Like, are the villains villains or not? Or are just some of them villains?

I'd like to say the movie settles these questions in a satisfying manner. However, what I walked away with, or rather drove away with (super conscious of what a long drive it was), was thoughts like, "What was the point of (spoiler redacted) doing such-and-so when he could have saved him having his hand smashed with a pipe wrench, or being shoved into the trunk of a car, or having a plastic bag pulled down over his head," etc., etc. – decisions that led to betrayals and vendettas and imminent danger of death and, for some characters, actual death, all of which (spoiler redacted) could have spared himself without costing him anything. But oh, well, it made the second half of the movie exciting and the pacing was such that you really had to be jaded with fast-paced excitement to even think these thoughts. But I thought them. And it took me out of the story, I'm sad to say. Also, the movie's narrative structure kind of falls apart at the end, explaining all the stuff that it couldn't explain to you earlier without spoiling its own surprises in a "10 years ago" epilogue, which in my opinion is a sign that the writer(s) didn't properly think the thing through.

There were, however, sufficient things that made the movie for me to enumerate three: (1) Aaron Taylor-Johnson's alpha-stud hunkiness, which actually hits a stratospheric level in the scene where he reprimands his too-curious-for-comfort underling for taking unacceptable risks. You see in his eyes a combination of tender concern for a pipsqueak who's really, objectively, a pain in the ass, along with a tortured remnant of some past trauma about which the characters who know him have been dropping whispered hints. You know how it goes. He made a mistake in Afghanistan and some people died – his people. The writing is obvious, indeed hackneyed, but ATJ's acting is legit. (2) Gugu Mbatha-Raw, playing a police superintendent, being so good at her job that it would be astonishing if the crooks got away with it, which I won't say whether they did or not. (3) Those end-of-the-movie titles, one of which delivers really disappointing tidings of what one of the main characters did with himself later on ... then goes, "Just kidding." Whew! An honorary mention: The army bomb disposal squad's alternative to saying "break a leg," which sounds grossly insubordinate when that pipsqueak corporal says it to his immediate superior. I guess when your job is disabling high explosives, you can do without words of encouragement like "Do your best" or "Good luck" but ... "Don't be shit"? Really?

Catechesis Warm-Up Songs, Part 6

The sixth and final "chief part" of Luther's Small Catechism addresses the Sacrament of the Altar, a.k.a. the Lord's Supper, a.k.a. the Eucharist, a.k.a. Holy Communion, a.k.a. The Mass. Luther's question-and-answer structure divides nicely into four units, which doesn't necessarily mean it will take that many classroom sessions to cover it, but I'm providing a hymn for each of the four anyway. It's a weighty subject, worthy of considerable meditation. So here are some songs that I hope will help prepare young minds for such a meditation. ART: The Last Supper by Jaume Huguet, 1470, public domain.

587. What Is the Sacrament?
Tune: ARFON, Welsh
(cf. "Chief of sinners though I be" and "What our Father does is well" in Australia's Lutheran Hymnal)

Cup of blessing which we bless,
Bread that harbors righteousness,
Be for me the highest good:
Jesus' body, Jesus' blood
Sacrificed, now seal to me
God's forgiveness, full and free!

Reason finds it grossly strange
That Christ would such meal arrange,
Giving that to eat and drink
From which dainty minds must shrink:
His true body, His true blood,
In and under earthly food!

But His word cannot be torn.
His Passover vow is sworn:
Holy flesh bared to the bone,
Veins laid open to atone.
Would you see your debts erased?
Hear His promise; open, taste!

God spoke on that festal night,
Pledging pardon and delight
In the bread that harbors love,
Vintage drawn from heav'n above:
God's own body, God's own blood,
Served in perfect servanthood.

588. What Does the Sacrament Do?
Tune: HERR JESU CHRIST, MEINS LEBENS LICHT, Leipzig, 1625
(cf. "Lord Jesus Christ, my Life, my Light")

O Flesh that purified the flails
Which tore You, Hands that blessed the nails
Which pierced You through, stretch out to me:
Your healing touch shall set me free.

Probe deep in me, corrupt and sore;
Uncleanness can abide no more.
With blood that seasoned vulgar wood,
Make white my stains, my foulness good.

Come, not to heart and soul alone,
But even to my flesh and bone:
My mouth with Your atonement feed,
That all my members may be freed.

And if I thus am reckoned pure,
I may count my redemption sure:
For where God's peace and pardon dwell,
Life and salvation camp as well.

589. How Does the Sacrament Do This?
Tune: O JESU CHRISTE, WAHRES LICHT, Nürnberg, 1676
(cf. "O Christ, our true and only Light")

Ask you how can it all be true
That our Lord's Supper claims to do?
Only keep Jesus' words in view:
"Given and shed to ransom you."

Strange things God says, let none deny:
Yet not one error, not one lie.
His word turns none and naught to yes
And reckons faith as righteousness.

Knowing that Christ does not deceive,
What He declares therefore believe,
And for His sacrifice's sake
Of His last testament partake.

Partake, believing, and obtain
That which no pow'r of yours can gain:
Forgiveness, drenched in offered blood;
God's very body, giv'n as food.

Then with that bread and in that cup,
A blessed fellowship you sup:
Communion with the saints above,
United in the Savior's love.

590. Who Receives the Sacrament Worthily?
Tune: MERTON by William H. Monk, 1861
(cf. "Hark! a thrilling voice is sounding")

Fasting, outward exercises,
And such discipline are fine:
Yet belief alone comprises
Worthiness with Christ to dine.

Some, who have His pledge forsaken
And His presence here denied,
Still have of this feast partaken
And eternally have died.

Christ is present, irrespective
Of what those who sup believe;
For His promise is effective:
What He pledges, we receive.

But the benefit is given
To the eater who perceives
In this bread the King of heaven,
Hung between two earthy thieves.

Yea, the cup of joy is ladled
From the blood He spilled for all,
When the Bridegroom's head was cradled
In a myrrh-anointed pall.

To His testament's believer
All things broken are made whole,
Faith alone the blest receiver
Of His promised PAID IN FULL.

Let us then with care and pleasure
Eat and drink what Christ declared,
That we may enjoy the treasure
That His kindness has prepared.

Catechesis Warm-Up Songs, Part 5

Part 5 of Luther's Small Catechism, at least the version used in my corner of Lutheranism for instruction in the faith, has to do with the Office of the Keys (the power to forgive and retain sins) and confession and absolution. So, as these two hymns emphasize, Christ at work through means, through men to whom He has delegated such wonderful authority, and sinners finding comfort for their burdened consciences. Basically, the nitty gritty of the gospel as Lutheranism faithfully teaches and confesses it. ART: Christ giving the Keys of Heaven by Peter Paul Rubens (†1640), public domain.

585. The Office of the Keys
Tune: TALLIS' CANON by Thomas Tallis, 1565
(cf. "All praise to Thee, my God, this night")

Christ gave the Office of the Keys
To set tormented souls at ease,
And flouters of the Law to spurn
Till in repentance they return.

We thank You, Lord, for calling men
To loose our sins; for surely when
They pardon us, we may believe
That Your forgiveness we receive.

Just so, we praise Your holy mind
That binds as well the sins they bind:
For he who on his own strength leans
Should fear indeed Your earthly means.

Through such means, Lord, toward us You reach:
Through hands that serve, through mouths that teach;
Therefore Your gifts, our Savior dear,
And You Yourself are always near.

586. Confession and Absolution
Tune: EVAN by William Henry Havergal, 1846
(cf. "Oh, that the Lord would guide my ways")

Cast off, O Lord, my heavy pall,
Sin's agonizing weight!
Oh, come, my Hope, my Life, my All:
Your pardon I await.

Unto Your servant I confess
The sins I know and feel;
Whate'er remains, let grace address,
Though it be dire and real.

And when he speaks the freeing word
My wounded conscience craves,
Help me believe what I have heard:
Your word that heals and saves.