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(WARNING: Major SPOILER ALERT – Season 4, Episode 3)
In THE CHOSEN Season 3, Episode 3, the celebrated miniseries on the life of Jesus, Dallas Jenkins gives his endearing star, Jonathon Roumie, an attractive quirk. At home in Nazareth for Rosh Hashanah, Jesus is invited to join some other adult men in a pick-up game of trigon, a simple ball game of toss and catch. It turns out that Jesus is hopelessly uncoordinated…a comforting thought for those of us who got used to getting picked second-to-last during high school gym class!
It is in everyday scenes like this one, or the relaxed bottle episode in Season 1 called “Jesus Loves the Little Children” that THE CHOSEN really shines. There must have been many such simple moments in the life of Our Savior, very much a man of the first-century Holy Land in spite of His ineffable divinity. And even though these additions are nowhere to be found in Scripture, indulging the gift of childlike imagination may lead us closer to Christ than many a headier pursuit.
But as much as I have enjoyed THE CHOSEN, I do have a criticism to make. As they progress into later seasons, many TV shows develop the strange tendency to introduce heightened and lurid moments into their story lines, apparently for cheap dramatic effect. I did not expect Dallas Jenkins to resort to this kind of emotional manipulation, so it was with great indignation that I watched the closing moments of Season 4: Episode 3, “Moon to Blood.”
This episode highlights the tender moment during which Thomas presents Ramah with a touching betrothal gift—a miniature sundial in an appropriate first-century gift box, which will represent their love “until the end of time.” If you didn’t feel a hint of foreboding creeping into the meadow, it’s probably because you haven’t read enough of the four Gospels to know that there is no Ramah mentioned within those pages. But for those who know a little Scripture, I am sure that many saw the romantic sundial scene as a Romeo-and-Juliet-style prelude to her inevitable death.
I had thought for a while that the series had doomed one of its invented female characters from the start. At first, I had suspected Eden would be the sacrifice, especially when one of the Romans taunted Simon by asking about her early in the series. But Ramah’s death must have been too tempting for the writers determined to give “doubting” Thomas a compelling backstory. In the final panicked scene of 4:3, when Quintus goes berserk in a crowd of Jesus’s Jewish followers, Ramah is in the wrong place at the wrong time. She crumbles beneath the sudden eviscerating swipe of the Roman’s sword, and the episode ends with the too-classic overhead shot of horrified onlookers clustered around the young woman’s body.
As other commentators have pointed out, Ramah didn’t need to die to resolve the problem of her absence from Scripture. She could have decided, with agonies of soul, that her duty lay with her unhappy father Kafni rather than Thomas. She could have changed over time—couples do, sometimes—and decided that life on the road wasn’t really her calling. Dallas Jenkins could even have included the stabbing scene (let the director have a little fun!) and sent her home to recuperate.
But it turns out that Dallas Jenkins is not immune from the grandstanding temptations of more secular-minded moviemakers who like to follow up euphoric romances with head-on collisions, car accidents, and catastrophic explosions. Unlucky Ramah, having just stowed her precious love-token under her pillow, clearly has to die, so that the bereaved Apostle can throw himself headlong upon her lifeless (but still very lovely) corpse.
There’s Scripture, folks…and there’s Hollywood. Sometimes Hollywood drops the ball and disappoints us. But praise God, Jesus never does!
