Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If any one doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor.
— G.K. Chesterton, “Heretics”
Within the course of about a week in May, two different television shows used the Catholic Eucharist in, shall we say, startling ways. Comedic effect? Shock? Character revelation?
Or, as some reacting to the scenes declared, straight-up anti-Catholic blasphemy?
Let’s take a look.
“Hacks,” in its fourth season on HBO Max, has been telling us the story of old-school comedian Deborah Vance (the brilliant Jean Smart) seeking to revive her career by teaming up with a young, annoying, woke writer (Hannah Einbinder) who tries to direct her toward an edgier, more “authentic” contemporary voice. Tensions and hijinks ensue.
In the episode in question, “D’Christening” (originally aired May 9) — Deborah and Ava travel to Seattle to her grandson’s Catholic baptism. We’ve known since the first season that Deborah, narcissistic and laser-focused on her career, has been a terrible mother, absent in every way, including emotionally
D.J.’s husband is Catholic, so she’s agreed to have the baby baptized in the Church, enraging Deborah, who hates the Church, for reasons, it’s implied, related to abuse — whether it touched her personally or it’s on principle, is not clear.
The congregation gathers in the church (First Methodist Church in Pasadena, by the way) with a crucifix hung for authenticity. The baby’s baptized, and we jump to Communion time in Mass. D.J. is an extraordinary minister of holy Communion distributing the host (Don’t ask, I don’t get it either, nor do I get her playing the “Jurassic Park” theme on the organ at the end), and the priest offers the chalice. Communicants approach, including the completely incensed Deborah, who feels betrayed and, true to form, must make everything — even a baptism — about her.
She hisses at her daughter who refuses her Communion, but then, enraged herself, shoves a host in her mother’s mouth. Deborah chokes, grabs the chalice, takes a sip, comments that it’s actually pretty good and tries to drink more. A tussle between her, the priest, and D.J. ensues in which the Precious Blood is spilled on the priest’s vestments.
“If you believe that magic,” Deborah spits, “you can get your guy to turn that back into water.”
Next, the airing of grievances. D.J. confronts Deborah about how she ruins and places herself at the center of everything. She wants something different for her child — a childhood supported by community in which people believe in something — not the nothing of Deborah’s worldview.
Now, D.J.’s claims to faith are not totally above board. She might go on about the mysteries of the “crazy, natural freaky hidden beauty” of the natural world, but also admits that the church crowd is the perfect market for her jewelry. And there, in that cravenness, mother and daughter bond again.
The “Hacks” scene garnered almost no commentary, but a scene in the Apple + series “Your Friends and Neighbors” was noticed a couple of weeks after its original May 15 air date. Advocacy group Catholic Vote, for one, has gone full-out condemning the scene in question, claiming it’s blasphemous, irrelevant to the plot and calling for boycotts and cancellation. Let’s see if they’re right.
“Your Friends and Neighbors” centers on hedge fund manager and wealthy New York City- suburb denizen Andrew Cooper, played by John Hamm. He’s divorced, partly because of his own emotional neglect of his marriage, but also because his wife Mel (Amanda Peet) cheated on him, and is now deeply involved with his best friend from college.
When we meet Coop he’s just lost his job, but for various reasons keeps that news to himself. Expenses mount, so Coop decides to start robbing his wealthy neighbors’ homes of expensive baubles they surely won’t miss. The show is a moderately entertaining, if not a successful mix of caper, social satire, relationship drama, and reflection on midlife.
So let’s talk about that scene. Coop and Mel, who themselves met as Princeton students, take their own daughter to the university for a visit. During the day, while she’s off doing her thing, they do their thing: revisiting old haunts, getting nostalgic, feeling regrets, and doing lots of shots. Mel also reveals something about herself as she steals a jar of jelly from a candy shop.
Happily inebriated, the couple breaks into a darkened church. Coop gets an idea. He tells Mel to wait in the pew and then goes to the front, opens the door of a little gold box and grabs the chalice inside and brings it to her. They hesitate, but then dig in — the hosts are individually wrapped in plastic. (This is one of the many clues that despite this scene being Catholic-coded, it doesn’t actually involve Catholic things: the church is a Presbyterian church in New York City and the “tabernacle” is unlocked). They proceed to dip the hosts in Mel’s stolen jam.
Pretty bad, eh? Seems like it. But let’s keep watching.
Coop, grinning, consumes the host. His face immediately falls. “I have to tell you something,” he says, and then, for the first time in perhaps years, he tells his once-wife (some of) the truth about his life. And for the first time in years, sitting in that pew, Coop and Mel express their sorrow for the ways they wronged each other during their marriage. They embrace, are interrupted by the priest, and flee.
It’s a scene that could obviously give offense. But was it intended to give offense? I don’t think so.
It seems to me to be intended to set the scene for a moment of long-absent honesty between two characters, to set them on a road toward (perhaps short-lived) reconciliation.
Now, could all of this be accomplished without characters doing violence to the Eucharist? Yes. Deborah and D.J. could have had much the same conversation inspired by a religious ceremony without Deborah mocking it by word and action. Coop and Mel could have been inspired to honesty by simply being present to each other in the church.
So why? What does this extra step bring to the storytelling and character development of these awful people?
Deborah Vance might harbor what she sees as righteous anger against Catholicism, but her actions at her grandson’s baptism aren’t presented as anything but a very dramatic and definitive expression of her narcissism — on which she is called out, not celebrated.
Coop and Mel are both, in their ways, selfish and amoral. We’ve seen them do nothing so far except enjoy their wealth and damage others, including their kids, through their selfish actions. These are not good people breaking into a church and making a transgressive toy out of the Eucharist. We’re not led to admire their actions.
What we’re led to, instead, is a rather startling moment in which this act leads to the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation. Which is what we say this sacrament is about, don’t we?
The creators of these scenes didn’t have to use the Eucharist to make their points, which is not about how false the Eucharist is, incidentally, but about the extent of one character’s emptiness and another pair’s brokenness. They could have used something else.
They could have. But they didn’t. And that’s exactly the point. They used this.
And what does that tell us? Perhaps this: that when we want to write a scene raising questions of meaning and truth and the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation, our intuitions still point us back to Catholicism, which, it seems, is still the Main Character.
