God Friended Me (Sundays at 8:00 on CBS; Premieres September 30)
Have you been craving the sappy, saccharine, shallow melodrama of Touched By An Angel since it went off the air fifteen years ago? Did you grow up loving Highway to Heaven? A modern answer to these bygone soap arrives this fall on (obviously) Sunday nights, the witless God Friended Me, which is for sure the worst-titled new show of the fall, and maybe the most inoffensive and bland as well.
You'd think for a series about a young black man receiving signs (digitally, of course, because it's 2018 and who has time for analog prophecy?) from a mysterious internet-based God account, there would be a religious bent or a dogma preached or something. But God Friended Me is so dedicated to being neutral, to leaving questions open, that it becomes what its protagonist rails against. Miles has all the hallmarks of what non-millennials think millennials are like: he's an atheist with a podcast and a strained relationship with his father. When he's one day friended by a Facebook account claiming to be God (by the way, people Miles' age would be much more likely to spend their time on Instagram or Twitter than Facebook, but I guess God DM'ed Me doesn't have the same ring), Miles starts to see the connections between people and open his eyes to the world.
But what's frustrating about God Friended Me, and ultimately is its biggest issue, is that it doesn't commit. About halfway through the pilot, Miles has a conversation with his sister and another suggested friend, Cara, about Cara's beliefs. She says she's agnostic, and Miles goes off on her about not committing to believing in God or not, to being religious or not. He calls it a cop-out. Well, so is this show, using that same logic. It doesn't commit to being a full-on Christian soap, and as meta as that is considering this agnostic conversation, it's also just as much a cop-out. By leaving open the possibility to its protagonist that this could all be explained away by sophisticated hacking or coincidence or luck is kind of not what the likely audience for a series with God in the title is signing up for. These folks are going to want angels earning their wings or this Facebook God showing hints of a grand design. And to the point of this being a TV show, it's just not the most entertaining or original way to go about this subject matter. It's skeptic vs. believer, coming of age, all these usual tropes in the guise of Christianity to get Middle America tuned in. But they'll be frustrated by the lack of true faith of many of the characters, while the whole celestial-being-living-in-our-devices motif will likely turn off those on the coasts. It's a weird lose-lose situation for the show that could have been solved by going one way or the other.
Beyond that, it's just full of plot holes and contrivances. Like if this really is God communicating through Facebook, why are they sending a friend request? Why not just add yourself to Miles' page and message him or whatever? Why only play games through digital means (turning up the smart thermostat, playing music on loop, sending friend suggestions)? Maybe it's being set up to really not be God... in which case, bye-bye to all the Middle American Christians who tuned in for something specifically spiritual or religious. It's just confusing and silly.
If you are going to tune in, do it for Brandon Michael Hall (The Mayor), who's a really magnetic presence, infusing Miles with just the right amount of false bravado and damage to be believable, even when his circumstances and reactions to them are not.
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