TV Review: Miracle Workers Work A Comical Miracle
Note: I love God, and I pray everyday. Proceed to review!
Let’s be frank! At least once, we have all said, “God has given up on us. He is gone!” Well, Miracle Workers, premiering February 12 on TBS, has heard you. The hilarious comedy takes your embittered, “no faith heart” and adds humor to your jadedness. In doing so, Miracle Workers takes the idea of Heaven and turns it into a weird, celestial version of The Office.
I will warn you that if you are overly-protective of God’s image, you will not like this show. Yet, if you believe the Big Guy Upstairs has a self-deprecating humor, then you will enjoy it. I say this because God, in this show, is portrayed as a loser. He is the dumb,“screw-up” in his family of creators and feels emotionally done with the creation that has given him the most shame during family dinner: humanity. Now, the notion that God thinks Earth sucks is not new and can even be hinted at in the Bible. #NoahsArc Yet, creator Simon Rich’s lighthearted approach to this extremely dark sentiment makes Miracle Workers work.
Steve Buscemi plays God, and he is gloriously slacker. Never in my life did I think I would say, “Get you s**t together, God?” Yet, it is a quote you will think as the limited series progresses. For all his good intentions, he has really bad ideas, but, luckily, he has created good people to help him through; at least in Heaven an administration works. Thus, you fall in love with Daniel Radcliffe’s Craig, Geraldine Visnawathan’s Eliza, Karan Soni’s Sanjay, and Lolly Adefope’s Rosie because they really have God’s back and humanity’s.
Daniel Radcliffe is too lovable as Craig. At Heaven INC. he, literally, gets so excited to answer people’s prayers, even ones as simple as finding your other glove. He becomes the beating heart of the series in his desperation to convince God that earth is worth saving. Joining him is Visnawathan’s Eliza whom is coolly sadistic. If God has bad ideas on how to help humanity, she has the strangest, most violent ones. Meanwhile, Adefope’s Rosie is the stiff-lipped wisdom to God’s lack of knowledge, and Soni’s Sanjay is an arrogant archangel learning humility as he joins the effort to save/ redeem humanity in God’s eyes. How do they do this? By making two “impossible” people fall in love.
Through Jon Bass’ Sam and Sasha Compère’s Laura we see how hard it is to make destiny, especially for love, happen because life is always happening first. When you really think about it; there is so much happening on this earth at every second. Seven billion lives are living right now, and trying to figure what that means to them. As the series progresses, Craig, Eliza, Rosie, and Sanjay learn that being God is not easy because making the impossible possible is not hard. For them, if you really want to make something you want happen, you can cause a typhoon or make a person’s appendix burst at just the right time. Yet, they learn it can be the cost of the price that matters more than the product.
I LOVED Miracle Workers. It was sweetly deranged, but I know some might not like God being portrayed as a fool, while others will love the idea. Still, no matter what, Buscemi makes God kind, loving, and so innocent that his surrounding creations say, “Really?” This higher being believes jellybeans are a punishment tool. Yet, ironically, through his sadness for earth, the characters surrounding him teach viewer to hope for it again. At the end of the day, your grandmother may die, your “Youtubing” boyfriend can have the emotional capacities of a 5 year old, and a meteor can be headed straight for earth, but, at least, you loved. That’s good enough, right? Watch the TBS limited series, Miracle Workers, on February 12 at 10:30 pm.
