“I Need Backup! Harvard Didn’t Prepare Me for This!”
February 20, 2009, 7:46 am
Posted by Cathleen Kaveny
I know the New York Archdiocese is trying to encourage people to go to confession. Probably not like this.
A 30 Rock episode in which Alec Baldwin’s character, thoroughly lapsed Catholic Jack, tries to go to confession. There’s a nice Princeton–Harvard rivalry there. Except, of course, that Catholic priests don’t normally get their seminary training at HDS. He needs a good, tough Franciscan.
Cathy: Was this part of the same show? Pretty good. I have to start watching “30 Rock.”
http://www.religionnews.com/index.php?/rnsblog/hallowed_be_my_reservation/
I have no must-see TV appts except for “24.”
Yes! The best episode is when Liz hallucinates Oprah!
What church is that? (Churches?) Any New Yorkers recognize it?
My favorite part of that scene is when he confesses that he once claimed to be God in a deposition, a reference to his great scene in the movie Malice.
For fine religious scenes on television, I think few match the several seconds on the show RESCUE ME in which our Irish-American firefighter remarks about Sunday Mass “For half an hour each week, I knew everything was going to come out all right”.
He also it was who dragged his confessor out of the confessional when he made mention to some family member of whatever it was our hero had confessed. After punching him to the ground, he shouted “You’re not my cousin; you’re my priest!”.
I asked people at my parish if they saw the episode. Few did.
I wondered whether or not anyone would claim that the show insulted Hispanics because the list of pregnant women to receive a blessing during the prayer service never went past “Alvarez”.
I am also surprised that Shoutin’ Bill Donohue didn’t release a statement about the “30 Rock” episode. You’d think he would have since he released a statement four years ago about the short-lived NBC sitcom “Committed” when characters did not know what to do with the Eucharist.
Yes. 30 Rock is the most critically acclaimed show that nobody is watching.
I think it was so over the top–and clearly not reality based–that it’s hard to take it as a serious portrayal of Catholics. No one goes to church, for hours, on “St. Valentine’s Day.”
Plus, everyone gets made fun of in that show–blind people too.
Now Selma Hayek was in Dogma–yes indeedy.
Though the “Buddy Jesus” was quite an invention.
Fr. Shawn,
Actually, Shoutin’ Bill Donohue did weight in. Click here:
http://www.catholicleague.org/chatterbox.php
and scroll down to February 13, “’30 Rock’s’ Jabs.” I’m not sure if Donohue is trying to be sarcastic or snarky (or both). He offers NBC president Jeff Zucker’s email and invites readers to email Zucker and thank him for his portrayal of Latino Catholics.
It’s time for a resurrection of “Nothing Sacred” ….. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_Sacred_(TV_series).
A group of us petitioned ABC to at least make the full series, including the unreleased final segments, available on tape (there were pre-DVD days), but we never even got the satisfaction of a reply.
I’ve had a bad taste for ABC ever since.