So, I really was hoping that I could finish this series of commentaries with a very positive review, but unfortunately, I just couldn't. I felt as if last night's episode was a "recap" of several episodes which I had somehow missed. They tried to jam so much into that two hour time slot, which of course meant not giving due time to any of the events. The only event that actually got a lot of time was the one which was unnecessary to draw out, and that was the carrying of the cross. I didn't think they would ever let that scene come to a close.
The scene where Jesus was whipped was gruesome enough, though not nearly as gruesome and horrifying as the actual activity would have been. The crucifixion scene was also brutal, but I felt the message behind the sacrifice and death was minimized, at best, and altogether lost, at worst. And the resurrection scene both totally misrepresented the accounts of the scripture, and proved very anticlimactic. The one event to which this whole miniseries was supposedly leading us, was portrayed with such brevity and underwhelming fanfare that I could only shake my head in disbelief that they wasted all that time and money to tell a story with no true meaning or purpose.
The events that followed - the "last hour fillers", as I call them - were so distorted, disorganized, and boring, that I found myself begging for the end to finally come. Peter showed us that when you can't decide which mode of baptism is correct, just play it safe, and use them all. Ananias baptized "Paul" of Tarsus (don't even get me started on that one) without spending any time teaching him the whos, whats, and whys of Christ, and then Paul immediately sets into a recital of 1 Corinthians 13 which sounded as impersonal as it would if he were reading it at a wedding - and they all seemed to understand what he meant without any relative context at all!
Honestly, there were so many other problems and concerns I had with it, but what point would be served to belabor them. I will end this simply by saying that I hope and pray that some soul(s), that until now was lost to God, has since found Him due to the message presented in this miniseries, no matter how problematic I found it to be.
