Living Biblically - General Discussion

[paulvdb]

CBS Nixes Summer Burn Off for "Living Biblically"

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Repeats of "NCIS: New Orleans" will instead fill the Monday, 9:00/8:00c hour until "Salvation" takes over on June 25.

[Trini]

:-/

[hnygrl]

Loved the show. Mourned it the day it aired. There was no way in this Anti-God/Anti-Christian/anything that's against what I am for is evil society a show about living strictly by the Bible was going to see the light of day on network television for long.

Should've been on Cable TV. Their mistake was trying to go network. Who knows? Maybe a cable network will pick it up?

[SmithW6079]

23 hours ago, hnygrl said:

There was no way in this Anti-God/Anti-Christian/anything that's against what I am for is evil society a show about living strictly by the Bible was going to see the light of day on network television for long.

None of those things is true, except that the show wasn't on for very long.

The trouble is, it wasn't a very good show. The main character and his wife and the priest and rabbi were fine, but the workplace characters and situations were bad.

The main character's quest for faith wasn't mocked; in fact, his journey was presented respectfully. 

If you want to blame someone for the show's demise, blame the people of faith who couldn't be bothered to watch. But maybe that was because the protagonist was Catholic, not an evangelical Christian.

[paulvdb]

CBS to Burn Off Comedies "Me, Myself & I," "Living Biblically" on Saturday Nights Beginning July 7

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Look for back-to-back episodes of each series starting at 8:00/7:00c and 9:00/8:00c, respectively.

[possibilities]

I liked the show and I'm not a Christian.

[Trini]

22 hours ago, SmithW6079 said:

If you want to blame someone for the show's demise, blame the people of faith who couldn't be bothered to watch. But maybe that was because the protagonist was Catholic, not an evangelical Christian.

Who says they didn't? But this was made for CBS, so it would always be aiming for a wide audience.

I thought the show had potential with its premise, but it was squandered with mediocre writing. They were a few standouts in the cast, however.

[Trini]

Descriptions for the last 5 episodes, if anyone is interested (or if they get pulled from the schedule again):

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"Never Let Loyalty Leave You" - Father Gene gets jealous when he finds out that Chip attended Vince's Baptist church to see another side of religion. Loretta Devine guest stars as Vince's Aunt Estelle.

"Submit to Thy Husband" - When Chip suggests that Leslie quit her job to stay home when the baby is born, she assumes it's his attempt to get her to submit to him based on a bible verse. Loretta Devine guest stars as Vince's Aunt Estelle.

"Thou Shalt Not Covet" - The "God Squad" warns Chip not to covet a journalism award that he and Vince are both up for.

"It Is Better to Give than to Receive" - Chip tries to persuade his unenthusiastic officemates to rebuild a house for charity.

"David and Goliath" - Chip decides to take on his corporate bosses after he is fired trying to get a recently-fired Ms. Meadows re-hired.

Edited June 22, 2018 by Trini

[Trini]

So CBS did actually start the burn-off last Saturday.

I was planning on watching the episodes online, but even though they seem to be up on CBS.com, I'm getting the error message that the episodes are unavailable. Anyone else getting this? I'm not sure if it's just my computer.

[SoMuchTV]

13 hours ago, Trini said:

So CBS did actually start the burn-off last Saturday.

I was planning on watching the episodes online, but even though they seem to be up on CBS.com, I'm getting the error message that the episodes are unavailable. Anyone else getting this? I'm not sure if it's just my computer.

Did you try to watch with the Firefox browser, by any chance?  I got a message like that when I tried to access Me Myself & I, which would have been from the same air date.  Apparently Firefox by default is doing something that some sites identify as an ad blocker.  There was some fine print or a link or something about how to turn it off or get around it, but I just ended up using a different browser.

[Trini]

9 hours ago, SoMuchTV said:

Did you try to watch with the Firefox browser, by any chance? 

Yes, it's not working with Safari either. Hmmm.

[ItCouldBeWorse]

I just watched with Chrome.

[possibilities]

Firefox has become a real pain in the ass because it does prevent quite a few sites from operating properly. When that happens, Chrome always works just fine, in my experience.

[OtterMommy]

Because the air dates keep changing for the remaining episodes of this show and the traffic in this forum is low, I'm moving all the episode threads into this All Episode thread.

[SmithW6079]

While I was originally sorry to read about the show's cancellation, the burn-off episodes have convinced me it was the right decision. They were just awful. I was embarrassed for Chip in the black church episode because he was so clueless and rude, and in the last one, all of a sudden Sara Gilbert's character is back? Or were the episodes shown out of order?

Camryn Manheim's character was so unpleasant to watch, and what was the point of introducing the abrasive security guard? Sorry, but the editor-in-chief and staff writers would not be hanging out with him.

[sonyab]

On 7/17/2018 at 1:54 AM, SmithW6079 said:

 I was embarrassed for Chip in the black church episode because he was so clueless and rude,

I don't think he meant to be rude. He never been to that type of church before. Where everyone was singing and dancing.  He was really getting into it.

Edited July 22, 2018 by sonyab

[ItCouldBeWorse]

On 7/22/2018 at 8:02 AM, sonyab said:

I don't think he meant to be rude. He never been to that type of church before. Where everyone was singing and dancing.  He was really getting into it.

I was embarrassed that the Rabbi was hitting on non-Jewish women right and left.  They really made his character so ridiculous.  Perhaps he should have spent less time in bars and more time with his wife before she cheated on him (not that it's his fault that she cheated, but still) or sought some insight into why he preferred to hang out with Gene rather than be home with his wife.

[SmithW6079]

On 4/10/2018 at 9:14 AM, JudyObscure said:

Their apartment is the most cluttered set in TV sit-com land and that includes "Everybody loves Raymond's" house and Big Bang Penny's apartment.

I actually liked that about their apartment. It definitely wasn't a "House Beautiful" staging.

On 7/22/2018 at 8:02 AM, sonyab said:

I don't think he meant to be rude. He never been to that type of church before. Where everyone was singing and dancing.  He was really getting into it.

I understand getting into it, but he overstepped his bounds when he grabbed the mike from the preacher and kept asking for "amens."

18 hours ago, ItCouldBeWorse said:

I was embarrassed that the Rabbi was hitting on non-Jewish women right and left.  They really made his character so ridiculous.  Perhaps he should have spent less time in bars and more time with his wife before she cheated on him (not that it's his fault that she cheated, but still) or sought some insight into why he preferred to hang out with Gene rather than be home with his wife.

Well, maybe his wife was a harridan, and he didn't want to spend time with her.

Was this past Saturday's episode the last one? Because it was awful. I hated the Ms. Meadows character. And why do they call her Ms. Meadows? They called her boss, the publisher's son, by his first name. She was just such an unpleasant character, I couldn't see why they would go to bat for her.

If it was the last episode, at least it went out on a kind of happy ending -- they're having boy and girl twins -- although I kept wondering if Leslie was far enough along to have an ultrasound that determines the sex of the baby.

I kind of hated that this show came up with "God squad" and pushed it as though it was something original. There was a column called "The God Squad" written by a priest and a rabbi in my local paper for years.

I liked Jay R. Ferguson when he was in "The Real O'Neals." I hope he finds another show.

[Trini]

*2 months later*

Oh hey, so the CBS website is working with my browser again; so I watched "Never Let Loyalty Leave You". I'll watch and comment on the last four episodes soon-ish.

So I thought this one was the least cringeworthy so far -- not that there wasn't still cringey things -- but I did chuckle a few times. Same problems are still there - lame and predictable jokes and plots; the priest and rabbi acting ridiculous. But I thought the new setting and characters introduced here were a welcome change. Maybe Chip can expand his God Squad to include Vince's church!

From the other episode descriptions, it feels like it's all downhill from here, though.

[Trini]

Again, I'm not expecting a sitcom to be deep, but they could probably mine some more/better comedy if they did more than scratch the surface of some of these Biblical concepts.

Re: "Thou Shalt Not Covet" - the story of Joeseph and his brothers is more complicated than them coveting a coat; it wasn't really about the coat itself, like they stated in the show. I'm pretty sure they got the Biblical concept of coveting wrong, too.

David Krumholtz deserved way better than the crap writing that made him the butt of every joke.

2 more episodes to go....

[Trini]

So I've decided the best things about this show was Jay Ferguson, Tony Rock, and the apartment set. I think we've covered everything else that was bad!