Faith-based initiatives in ratings game

Now that we have a new pope, might the day be nearing when we get our first TV pope? I’m picturing a show called “The Vatican” (ethereal theme song, white smoke billowing from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel, establishing shot of St. Peter’s Square, montage of the new pope in his various costumes saying Mass and meeting dignitaries as the opening credits roll).

I see the show on NBC, replacing another series about a sacred institution, “The West Wing.” Who wants to fantasize into the West Wing anymore -- you just picture men in dark suits muttering, Karl Rove crunching the numbers from polls on Iraq war fatigue. Having left the show seasons ago, I checked back in for “The West Wing’s” season finale earlier this month. I was impressed by the production but felt, also, that the prospect of Jimmy Smits replacing Martin Sheen as president was as exciting as the Al Gore candidacy of 2000.

I’d prefer Smits as my lead in “The Vatican.” Meanwhile “Revelations,” the show that has actually replaced “The West Wing” the last six weeks of the TV season, gave us Act II on Wednesday night, when Dr. Richard Massey (Bill Pullman) and Sister Josepha Montafiore (Natascha McElhone) found themselves in Greece, trying to locate the so-called “miracle child” that is or isn’t the second coming of Christ.

On a show that’s basically a grudge match between God and Satan, with the End of Days at hand, it was a good week, dramatically, for Satan. This is a show that loves its villain. Consider: One of his minions was played by Fred Durst of the band Limp Bizkit, albeit in a brief appearance as a paparazzo stalking Massey.

When I caught his name on the opening credits, I thought I was being “Punk’d.” By the end of the episode, Massey was either dead or alive under the rubble of a ruined church (probably alive, as he appeared in scenes from next week) and Satan appeared to have added two supermodels to his posse. Where there’s Durst, there’s usually a model or two not far behind.

Perhaps NBC didn’t intend it this way, but the network, by making this swap, is suggesting that religion is hotter right now than politics. It might even be true. “Revelations” is an unintentionally silly show at times, with scary -- some would say reactionary -- theological overtones. But the debut did a fairly boffo 15.6 million viewers; this week it was down to 11.8 million, although the show is so far bringing in stronger ratings among 18- to 49-year-olds than “The West Wing” averaged this season, and it’s going up against Fox’s “American Idol.”

The conclave on “American Idol,” besides being televised and sponsored by Coke, is much less secretive than the one surrounding the selection of a new pope. The latter played out as truly great drama this week, with stunning visuals, even as the event took place, for the first time, under the incessant gaze of an electronic media swarm.

With the death of Pope John Paul II and the election of his successor, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, cable news has introduced a new kind of talking head: the pundit priest. The pundit priest is able to play the game of instant analysis as readily as the senator or congresswoman on Capitol Hill.

“Unlike previous conclaves, there really is no front-runner,” Father David O’Connell, president of Catholic University, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Monday. O’Connell was in-studio, breaking down then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s morning Mass in the way we’ve become accustomed to postgame analysis of a State of the Union address. While some saw Ratzinger’s homily as a campaign speech, O’Connell saw it as a swan song from a humble servant of God, his sermon an affirmation of Pope John Paul II’s philosophy and ideology but “an indication on his part that he really doesn’t want the job.”

But then Ratzinger got it, and it was impossible not to be mesmerized by the pomp and spectacle in St. Peter’s Square on Tuesday morning, the white smoke issuing from the Sistine Chapel, the bells ringing, the crowd shots, Ratzinger emerging finally to greet the masses from a balcony, his ornate robes juxtaposed against a face that conveys a certain tired humility.

It was all very grand-scale -- too undeniable even for news coverage to get in the way of. The verbiage, for once, fell away, the moment all about imagery. It’s how I see “The Vatican” beginning. True, eventually you’d have to get into the church’s hard-line position vis-a-vis certain contemporary social issues, and network TV has never been too inclined to graft modern-day politics onto real religious institutions (recall the brief, controversial ride of ABC’s “Nothing Sacred,” about the liberal leader of a Catholic parish in Chicago who runs afoul of conservative doctrine on issues like abortion).

Variety reported that Fox pushed back to May 15 an episode of “The Simpsons” in which Bart gets expelled from Springfield Elementary and ends up in Catholic school, while the New York Daily News reported that ABC and the producers of “Desperate Housewives” edited “Catholics” out of a funeral scene in which Bree (Marcia Cross) says: “You have to hand it to the Catholics, they do grief better than anyone.”

Well, it’s true -- at least it has been on TV lately, where this week the Catholic Church also gave the world, for free, what networks pay millions trying to conjure: the great reveal.