REVIEW: The Chosen (Season One)

Six praises and seven criticisms, but what is the final answer?

Quick facts…

• The Chosen is an online TV drama series roughly depicting the life of Jesus Christ’s disciples and Jesus himself.

• It has completed two seasons and is promoting its third currently.

• The show is free to watch. It has been mostly crowd-funded, breaking records and raising over $40 million, which continues to fund new seasons.

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The question of bias

My expectations for The Chosen were almost rock bottom. When I decided to give the first season a shot, it was for research only.

When I was young I loved the idea of quality Christian entertainment because it helped me understand the Bible stories and picture them in my mind’s eye. Even if they were clearly exaggerated or simplified, I thought it was an important victory for God to have representation in mass media. The older I get, the more I hate the idea. I wish that people got all of their information from the most thoughtful sources only, and avoided things that cause confusion by watering down the Bible. Maybe I’ve stopped sympathizing with all those people who were like I once was and could use a first step toward accepting the believability of the Bible. I’ve had to reconsider that attitude after watching The Chosen.

Even well-intentioned Christians who create a dramatized version of Jesus agitate me these days. I think it’s because of how wary I’ve become of stereotypes, traditions, and assumptions that border on (and sometimes cross into) sacrilege. Changing details about a story can do harm, especially since ignorant people will assume whatever version they saw is the most plausible. And I don’t trust them to be free from bias.

A disclaimer

Everyone told me the show’s creators were good people who wanted viewers to read their own Bibles and not trust the show’s depictions. I figured this was a marketing ploy in some obscure interview, and that 90% of people who watched would be under the impression that it was a faithful retelling of Gospel accounts. I was wrong about that, because the first episode has a clear disclaimer that the story has been changed, condensed, and combined to make for better TV, and it does indeed say that viewers should read their own Bibles. That softened my attitude pretty quickly, and I felt comfortable letting nitpicks slide. Directly advocating for personal Bible study is the best message the show could possibly give, even if the rest ended up kinda bad.

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Six things The Chosen does great

1. Pacing. By telling only a small part of the Gospel story in a bunch of long 40-60 minute episodes, the creators give us time to absorb the “status quo” of 1st Century Israel. We aren’t leaping into a crazy old land of strange customs, we’re getting to know the land and understand the cynicism and drudgery of it all.

2. Contrast. By focusing on the “side characters” and imagining the circumstances around their normal lives before Jesus, we appreciate their transformation much more. Every character can have a serious “arc” not just because the rules of TV drama demands it, but because the entire point of Christianity is that humans can have narrative arcs—and that Jesus of Nazareth is what causes them.

3. Anticipation. A tremendous sense of anticipation builds around Jesus as we see people encounter him. We have time to forget about him, and when we see him, we know something powerful is going to happen. He is a superhero in disguise.

4. Inspiration. This may be the only show in history where the climax of episodes is usually a moment of beauty, hope, reconciliation, and growth as a person, not escalating stakes of pain, doubt, misery, and struggle. It reverses the drama formula by building up a series of increasingly profound blessings, not fears.

5. Music. The music is tremendous. It may be the strongest point in the show. From the theme song to the background score, the show creator himself has said that the musicians and editors transformed his small vision into something contagious and spiritual. I completely agree, and found myself falling for every trick in the musical bag—feeling joy, sorrow, anxiousness, and other emotions right on cue.

6. Storytelling. When the story adheres to the Biblical account and allows us to relive what it might have been like to encounter Jesus in the real world, my skepticism breaks apart and I find myself in tears, yearning for a chance to meet him myself in a situation, cheering for those who answer his calling. I didn’t think it would happen, but it did, and more often than I would care to admit.

Seven things The Chosen does terribly

1. Writing. It’s written like a stage play, not TV. When you write for a stage play you have to say everything out loud because you don’t have close-ups, music, and other tricks to convey how somebody feels. Dialogue is stilted, on-the-nose, and awkward. The bigger problem is that Bible quotations feel the fakest of all. You simply don’t believe that these are real people having genuine conversations. It feels like they are actors reading Bible verses to each other.

2. Performances. The accents in the show are all over the place and often quite bad. People randomly sound Spanish or French, not Near Eastern. The Romans are flatly American and cartoonish, and do not convey classic Roman poise or Stoicism. In fact, every character in the show is sensitive, wearing their feelings on their sleeve, blurting things out. This also reeks of stage plays, not TV.

3. Mixing. Plenty of lines are drowned out by the music and inaudible, which does not seem like it was seems a directorial choice, but done in editing to hide the bad acting or bad writing. Between the stilted writing, bad acting, and unclear mixing, I actually had to turn on subtitles just to figure out what people were saying. Music can do a lot of heavy lifting, but it’s a bad sign when it replaces actual dialogue and drowns out a scene.

   

4. Backwardness. A deeper criticism of the show is its jarring backwardness when it comes to 1st Century, Rome-occupied Israel. For reasons I think I’ve figured out by now, the show portrays the Roman military as disorganized, sniveling, stressed, and afraid to commit violence, which are all the very opposite of what made Rome the greatest military in history. Meanwhile, Jewish men from every walk of life (broke fishermen and esteemed Pharisees alike) and are portrayed as totally enslaved to their wives and mothers. Women are constantly bossing their husbands or sons around, and the men shruggingly or jokingly kowtow. These women are not even in the Bible accounts, but here they act as the moral pillars of society, the conscience of their husbands, the voice of reason, the ones who set the daily agenda—the only thing holding the world together while the men drink, argue, and waste their days in meaningless occupations they hate. A dozen times throughout the first season, I waited for the man in the scene to slap his wife, assert his authority, or at least remind her that God put the husband above the wife. Not because that’s what I like to see, but just because the believability of the scene is killed the moment a married man in a patriarchal society accepts that kind of treatment in his own home. Even Jesus—known as a rabbi with his own disciples, already doing miracles that are causing public stirs—quietly helps prepare fish in the kitchen without anyone thinking it strange. I’ll give my theory on this in my conclusion.

5. Silliness. Related to the previous problem, the show tries to humanize Jesus by making him silly. He acts like a fool in front of kids to make them giggle, dances around, cracks sarcastic jokes at his own disciple’s expense, and casually blasphemes.¹ Why do the writers feel the need to go this far? They practically turn him into a party clown at times. At times of great spiritual significance, mixed in with profound quotations from the Gospels, he adds one-liners and breaks the tension. The show seems afraid to linger on powerful dialogue, even though it works fantastically every time they do respect the Gospel account and leave their fictional humor out of it.

6. Popery. It took a few episodes for me to realize that the show is written to pander to Catholics at the cost of the biblical narrative. It’s a great idea to follow Peter (who was called Simon initially) and the disciples on their path to encountering Jesus, but that’s not actually what happens. We learn almost nothing about John, “whom Jesus loved” (John 13:23) while Peter is showcased as the obvious leader of the group, the one with initiative, the power to persuade people, the willingness to scheme and organize, and the one with a fascinating family life that takes up so many scenes with completely fictional nonsense. An entire scene is dedicated to Jesus visiting Peter’s wife just to tell her that Peter is the special chosen one from among his disciples, the most gifted disciple, and that she is amazing simply for recognizing his potential. It makes one sick. For Peter to be a loudmouth, an instigator, and a self-assumed leader is realistic, but for Jesus to highly regard him and care about his marriage is backwards. Jesus is the one who told his followers that they should not even return home to bury their dead (Luke 9:60) and that a man’s enemies will be those in his own household (Matthew 10:36). Peter is the most rebuked, insulted, and disrespected by Jesus in the Gospels, but the show is clearly building up to the notion that Peter is the one who receives the “keys of the kingdom”, reinforcing Roman Catholic anti-Christian blasphemy.

7. Mary-Vision. Even with these issues at the front of my mind, I was not prepared for the sheer audacity of the Catholic propaganda surrounding Jesus’ mother Mary. I have no problem with Jesus being loving and kind to his mother, but The Chosen jumps into the deep end of Catholic/Orthodox heresy by endorsing the idea that Mary has a mystical power to persuade Jesus to do what she asks. At first I was confused when Mary asked Jesus to do her a favor and the camera switched to a POV of Jesus, with Mary’s face centered and everything around it blurry and indistinct as she says “please”. I thought perhaps they would keep this motif going for everyone who begged something of Jesus, and that it would show his sensitivity and willingness to hear the prayers of sinners. But it never happened again, until the next time his mother made a special request. A powerful nauseas feeling took over as I realized what they were slipping into the show. This is Mary worship, teaching that we can pray to Mary to intercede on our behalf to Jesus, as a mediator. “Marian devotions” and the “Immaculate Heart of Mary”, and the blasphemous elevation of Mary is not just flawed doctrine, it is Satanic; a central pillar of the Beast System. The show alludes to it subtly, so that uninformed people would only notice it subconsciously, but this makes it no less offensive.

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Conclusion

Based on Season One, having weighed the good and the bad, I do not recommend The Chosen. Neither for the average Christian, nor for the average unbeliever. If a person is already well-established in correct doctrine and history, and prepared to immediately reject the heresy and misrepresentation in the show as it surfaces, its virtues can stand tall and be applauded; yet only with those reservations clearly stated. However, if this show is sneaking toward a Roman Catholic retelling of the Gospels—which it seems to be—these problems cannot be overlooked as harmless mistakes or a Christ-like willingness to put aside differences. Ecumenism is Satanic, and The Chosen’s decision to pander to Catholicism is not just unfortunate, but disastrous. To endorse the show would be to endorse the methodology of the show, which is to compromise the truth with lies, and Christ with Rome. We would not accept a depiction of Jesus as a homosexual or an idolator, so why should we accept a depiction of him as a blaspheming clown enslaved to his mother?

In the show they completely cut out the real recorded dialogue of Jesus toward his mother, because Catholics hate to acknowledge the real relationship between them. They replaced it with their mystical Mary-Vision. Here’s what he actually said:

Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come. (John 2:4)

He doesn’t even call her mother. Many translations try to soften this dialogue by having Jesus say “What do you want from me?” or “What is your concern with me”, but the King James is closest to the original Greek, where Jesus distances himself from Mary entirely as if she were just a woman who he was not beholden to.

Some of you will not understand why this matters. Do you think I’m making too big a deal about it? Read this entry from a Catholic source on their attitude about Mary and her status in the Kingdom of God. Here’s a snippet:

Our Lady [Mary] was created literally "Full of Grace" as the Archangel Gabriel declared at the Annunciation, meaning that her soul was literally adorned with all of the virtues at the moment of her conception, as well as all the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit.

This fullness of grace is said to emanate from the center of her being—her heart—understood both physically and spiritually. It is Mary's heart, in its unspoiled created perfection, that is the source and wellspring of her purity . . . therefore her heart is called Immaculate.

Our Lord took His sacred humanity from the flesh and blood of his Blessed Mother; Christ's heart is taken from her heart. At Calvary, the perfect hearts of Jesus and Mary were united for the salvation of mankind. And this is why the Two Hearts are honored together. [Emphasis mine]

Jesus and Mary’s hearts were “united” on the cross for the “salvation of mankind”? Meaning that Mary is also responsible for our salvation? Truly, God will judge the Roman Catholic Church for this blasphemy on the Day of the Lord!

There is another factor to this backward depiction of women in Christ’s day, and it is also not accidental. Both Jews and Catholics are today famous for their matriarchal cultures, where mothers and wives dominate the lives of their sons and husbands. For some reason, Jews today count their Jewishness on their mother’s side, defying the Biblical method of tracing lineage through the fathers. The Chosen seems to import stereotypes of Jewishness from our current day and project them backward into the first century, where they become ridiculous. This also accounts for the levity and sarcasm at inappropriate times, and the inappropriate jokes about God.

It is a travesty to see so much good will, hard work, and potential poisoned by the infiltration of blasphemy. There is a war for Christianity happening today, and those who want to compromise the truth for popularity are in grave danger. The Chosen may be a shining beacon of Christian morality compared to the filth and distraction we find across the Internet, but they also crossed lines that nobody has the right to, and they need to be accountable for it. We should have higher standards when it comes to the Gospel. It would be wonderful if the producers of The Chosen steered far away from these initial blunders and proved their commitment to Scripture, not demographics.

Note: I have not watched the creator commentaries. The show must be judged by its own merits without behind-the-scenes excuses or justifications.

I’m curious what you think. Please leave a comment:

1. At the wedding, during the time to dance, Jesus says “not even God could help with that” in reference to his disciple Andrew’s inability to dance. This scene combines an insult, sarcasm, jolly dancing, blaspheming, and backward priorities all in one.