It’s not the end of the world

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, April 10, 2005

Here’s the first thing you need to know about the new NBC new miniseries “Revelations”: It’s not as good as the book.

Actually, I wouldn’t really know that. I’ve just always wanted to say it.

This would be a good time to confess that I haven’t exactly read the biblical foretelling of the end of the world. It just seemed like kind of a bummer, so I thought I’d wait for the movie.

Apparently, I got a miniseries instead.

God is said to have created the world in seven days, but it’ll take six hours to destroy it. The dismantling begins at 9 p.m. Wednesday on KING-TV.

Taking a lesson from the Mel Gibson School of Turning Scripture Into Cash, NBC is taking its own kind of faith-based initiative right through the May sweeps, hoping to boost a season that has probably felt like the end of the world to network executives.

The series will fill the time slot normally occupied by “The West Wing,” which ended its sixth season last week. The first hour lines up the many characters needed to spark the end of time.

The believer is a globetrotting nun, Sister Josepha Montafiore, played by Natascha McElhone (“The Truman Show”). Equipped with high-tech video equipment, she’s out looking for signs that the end is near.

The nonbeliever is a Harvard scientist, Richard Massey, played by Bill Pullman (“Independence Day”). His daughter was kidnapped and killed by Satan worshippers.

This is where it gets weird.

The guy who killed Massey’s daughter is apparently Satan himself, except he goes by the name Isaiah Haden and is played by Michael Massee (“24”).

Meanwhile, a beautiful, blue-eyed baby is the only survivor from a ferry that capsizes in the Adriatic Sea during a storm. He’s found sitting on a piece of the floating wreckage.

Then there’s a rebellious teenage girl who wears low-rise jeans and has a washable tattoo on her waistline that upsets her father. She talks back to her dad, saying “Jesus Christ!” runs out of the house and gets struck by lightning.

Let that be a lesson, kids.

But this is where it gets really weird.

They say the teenager is in a persistent vegetative state. Though she’s unconscious and brain dead, the girl starts speaking in tongues and channeling messages from Massey’s dead daughter.

As the good vs. evil lines are drawn, Sister Josepha sets out to find Jesus – in the literal sense. She thinks he is either already on earth or on his way and will be “stalked by the Antichrist.”

It’s left to her to protect him and forestall the confrontation between good and evil.

For entertainment value, it’s an interesting ride through a supernatural mystery, sort of “The X Files” meets an M. Night Shyamalan flick.

To its credit, “Revelations” doesn’t point fingers. Apparently, we’re all responsible for messing up Creation. When a nun says the prophecy speaks of “famines and plagues and false prophets preaching hatred and intolerance,” it’s left up to the viewer to decide who the false prophets are.

As religion is forced more and more into our daily lives in the form of terrorism, moral values arguments and right-to-life controversies, it’s becoming less and less clear who the false prophets are.

“Young mothers are willing to go to marketplaces and blow themselves up in the name of religion,” Sister Josepha says in the “Revelations” premiere. “This is not religion. Nor is the retaliation that rains upon their children.”

Indeed, “Revelations” doesn’t appear to have many answers, instead hinging on one critical question: When before has every living thing stood so clearly on the brink of instant and simultaneous annihilation?

Have a nice day.

Columnist Victor Balta: 425-339-3455 or vbalta@heraldnet.com.