Joan of Arcadia (2003-2005)

Joan of Arcadia is an American television fantasy/family drama telling the story of teenager Joan Girardi who sees and speaks with God and performs tasks she is given.

This show is awesome.  No wonder they cancelled it.

A lot of people have different perspectives about God and this show included that.  They had athiests, priests, nuns (and ex-nuns)...and then there's Joan.

Living in Arcadia (haha the play on Joan of Arc) she thinks she's going crazy because God appears to her in different forms of people.  There's old lady God, goth kid God, kindergartener God, etc.  It's actually really cool.

Each week, God appears and tells Joan to do something.  Nothing really hard or out of the blue but ordinary things like:  sign up for an advanced class, study for this next history test, or help your mom out with laundry.  None of these tasks are too far-fetched, but as the episode goes on Joan gets to see the outcome of her actions.  (which again, was super awesome and mind-blowing!)

Because she signed up for an advanced class, she found new friends in serious need of help.  Because she studied for a history test, she gave her teacher a reason to believe in himself again and not retire pre-maturely.  Because she helped her mom with laundry, she appreciated all her mom does around the house and on top of that still holds down a full time job.

I understand that a lot of people won't even give this show a chance because it involves God.  Which is sad and probably why it eventually got cancelled.  TV today just doesn't mean anything anymore.  There are few shows out there that are strictly about family values and a general person's moral compass.

So at the end of the series Joan finds out that she will be tested in some way and to believe everything that happened over the past two years to be true.  And that's it.  That's the end.

I'm not sure if the writers knew they were being cancelled or not, but they left a serious gap in the story.  Some new guy comes into the weekly plot and everyone likes him except Joan and she doesn't know why.  He gives her a weird look and that's about all we get.  No explanation of who he is, what he wants or why he came to Arcadia.  It was a disappointing ending to a great series.

But overall, your religious views aside, you should totally give this show a chance.  Some episodes were better than others (like all tv shows) but most of them give the viewer something to think about.

I totally miss old tv :(