Joan of Arcadia 5/21/04 - season finale (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Sun]

Well, I guess this show got hit with the reset button has the year has been medically explained away by Joan contracting Lyme disease, which can cause the symptoms she experienced this season (culminating with hallucinations). Joan is confused, tries to seek solace with Adam, but he can't give her the understanding she needs. Joan, at this point, has let her faith subside. With Joan being treated for her affliction, will she be willing to do incredibly strange acts to help out a situation?

Will is utterly confused because he keeps seeing a mother who was shot by her son in a hostage situation at the sheriff's station, and passed away. Then at the hospital, the mother shows up as a recovering patient, giving Will advice on matters. Later Will's partner at the sheriff's department confirms that the mother died on the scene, and this befuddles Will. So it would seem Will is having conversations with God now.

Helen's weird dreams drive her to go to church, and she meets the priest who she met earlier in the season (as she seeked answers for why God let Kevin suffer his accident). Helen gets a talk on consolation and desolation, and the ebb and flow of life's ups and downs.

Luke and Grace finally hash it out, Grace claiming she wasn't into Luke, and Luke throwing out his scientific ponderings and giving into the lunacy that is love. They finally give into the impulse and share a passionate kiss.

This episode had that whacked out feeling as Joan's condition caused her to see all sorts of strange things, I almost got that "The Ring" vibe to the episode during Joan's scenes.

 

[Chris]

Did not care for this at all. :frowning: I enjoyed this season and found this episode to be a major downer for everything that went on this season.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

A brilliant episode. It isn't neccessarily the reset button. This show is too smart to pretend the previous year hadn't happened. What this episode did was filter the events of the previous year through a new perspective. Adam, who was always portrayed as being so much more thoughtful and surreal, couldn't make the leap to think on Joan's level. The father faced the uncertainty of the universe without having Joan spill her beans at all. And the mother is opening herself to a broader view that could give her the anwsers she's looking for. Meanwhile, Luke and Grace find their own sort of awkward happiness - and Luke campaigns for love over logic.

If it weren't for the fact that they'd have lost a good portion of their religiously devout audience segment, it would have been perhaps more daring for all of the events to have been a hallucination from the Lyme's disease. Joan would have to grapple with the loss of purpose that God conviently provided. And she would have had to come to terms with who she was in the aftermath. Even if her godly work was all a mind trip, it indelibly shaped the person she has become.

But the direction they took was the perfect balance between negating God and giving her the happy ending. The last shot, of teen God standing vigil over her bed as she sleeps, was the perfect closing. What Mrs. Girardi said was true, but it's nice to see that even when God has pulled away, He still cares about the outcome.


Of all the mind fuck episodes I've seen, this is the only one to pull that trick to any sort of purpose - and to reconstruct a firm grasp of the new reality in its wake.

The only thing that took me out of the episode was that I couldn't seperate Debra Mooney's portrayal of the dead mother from her role as Edna on Everwood.

 

[Rick Guynn]

I think that is what they are looking at anyway... as she thinks it has all been a hallucination.

You have to remember, that the whole message in this episode was to learn to 'see in the dark' 'God' told Joan this, Helen said it toward the end of the episode. It's a process of learning self-reliance, which is oddly ironic as some sects of Christianity would preach that you need to rely on God for everything. It was an interesting message for the show.

RG

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

A good, consistently well-written family show that in its finale episode appears to have become many intervals more intellegent. It raised questions I thought the series would never raise. Whether they follow up on it is another thing.


The other jarring thing, besides Debra Mooney, was the special effects. Thus far, all of the effects have been subtle - even old school. God changed in cut-away and the like. Until the season finale, nothing was done that couldn't have been done (from a technical standpoint) in the "I Love Lucy" era. It was quite a departure.

Were the "Shining" creepy twins really God, or were they the hallucination. And if so, why did they lead her in the right direction when an established God (the mascot) led her astray with the three legged race.

 

[Patrick_S]

That’s wrong; the mother died in the hospital after Will interviewed her.

I really enjoyed this season and hope they can keep up the quality work next year.

 

[Patrick Sun]

I stand corrected. I was actually typing out a synopsis of the opening of the episode for somewhere else while the scenes between Will and the mother and then his partner played out on the TV in the background for me.

 

[Ken Chan]

Seemed to me that they were the only real ones, plus TeenBoyGod at the end, as far as Joan goes. Everything else was Joan's imagination. Since God knows about Joan's illness (and in fact, what's going to happen to her) it's a "clear" message about seeing double.

 

[Rick Guynn]

I agree, I thought that was very well done.

RG