Minor Sinning Detour

O.k. well it’s been a while since my last Bible book review entry, so I figured I should give an update as to why it is taking me so long to finish Deuteronomy.  I have an extremely large fanbase of devoted readers who must be simply waiting on pins and needles for my next book review, after all.  FYI my definition of “extremely large fanbase” is anywhere between 2 and 5 avid readers.  And my definition of “avid reader” is someone who moseys on over here when they are really bored, sometime within a couple/few days after I notify them that I have updated this.  It’s quite a staggeringly large and devoted fanbase to keep happy, so it gets tough sometimes.

Anyway what the gosh diddly darn heck is taking me so long??  The answer is that I am trying to think where my excuse starts.  Actually I think what happened is that I got legitimately super busy with work and Christmas shopping both at the same time in early December.  By then I was like 1/3 of the way through Deuteronomy and I got totally sidetracked.  Then Christmas break came along, which meant a week plus a couple days of sheer blissful NON-work, which would be the perfect time for me to catch back up on my bible studies again, right?  Err … it kinda didn’t happen.  I had another important life event come up, which is that I suddenly felt compelled to start watching every single episode in existence of Castle.  You know, the t.v. show.

Look, I’m not trying to claim that this excuse is not embarrassing.  First off, a much more proper excuse would be that I was busy volunteering at a food kitchen for the homeless or something so noble that it is worth temporarily ditching my Bible study project.  But I’m sorry o.k., we are just going to have to deal with reality here: I am a real sinner.  I like to delude myself into feeling slightly better about that due to giving money donations to Family Giving Tree and Second Harvest instead.  Heh.

So let’s just go straight to my second level of embarrassment, which is my choice in mindless entertainment.  Castle is in its 4th season now and I only started watching a couple months ago because Chuck moved away from Mondays and I didn’t have any other t.v. show to watch on Monday.  I certainly do NOT watch all that Dancing with the Stars or Bachelor bullshit, I can’t handle that.  Or 2 1/2 Men, umm, NO thank you.  I refuse to watch CBS for the most part, as I find it to be generally terrible.  So I started watching Castle because it’s actually quite similar to Chuck in a lot of ways, and has a LOT of overlapping fanbase.  I found it to be pretty o.k., but I had to get a good 10 episodes in before I finally decided that I cared enough about it to go back and watch the pilot episode to help fill in the backstory.  So I watched the pilot, and then I was like weellll, lemme just watch one more ep to see where this goes.  And one more, and ooonnne more, and then it turned into every single episode of all three previous seasons.  I won’t do the exact math for you, but rest assured that it’s a lot of episodes and most of this occurred over Christmas break (though in my defense, season 1 was short, only 10 eps).

I’m not trying to claim it’s the greatest show out there if you’re looking at it holistically, because it’s certainly not.  It’s a “case of the week” show and I HATE case of the week shows.  And the cases are many times ridiculous, convoluted, and/or contrived enough to be reminiscent of Scooby Doo plotlines, I’ll be honest with you.  BUT, there are a few things this show does really, EXTREMELY well:

• Great characters
• Great cast
• Funny, does NOT take itself seriously most of the time (which is why they are able to get away with the Scooby Doo plotlines)
• Nathan Fillion (endlessly charming, funny, cute, favorite of sci-fi nerds around the world due to the great but short-lived Firefly)
• Chemistry between the two leads is on FIYAH.  I didn’t know who the hell the lead actress was and she never seemed interesting to me before I actually started watching it, but she is actually good for the most part, and she has crazy chemistry with the lovely Nathan Fillion.
• I should also emphasize that when I say it has a great cast, I mean ALL the characters, including the supporting characters too, even though I’m only focusing on the two leads here.

This show is the ultimate proof of the fact that I generally care way less about plot than I do the character development and characters themselves.  It’s the exact reason I never was into the Law & Order shows – cause ALL you got with those were the cases of the week.  You didn’t learn SHIT about the recurring characters.  How boring is that!?  No thank you, I’ll watch the true-crime shows like 48 Hours Mystery and Forensic Files when I want to learn about creepy murder cases (which is actually quite often but I’m into true stories only).  On Castle I don’t give a CRAP about most of the cases, but I keep watching largely because of exactly what the LORD above would NOT approve of: I am waiting and waiting and waiting for Castle and Beckett to finally hook it up and make out and have fake t.v. pre-marital fornication.  That is a SIN OF WHOREDOM just like in Moab!!  It is so sinful that God will SMITE these characters with the pestilence and he will smite me with fire for enjoying it, even though it’s all just simulated for television.

Anyway I am finally getting back to Deuteronomy now, don’t worry.  I still have 2/3 of it to go and we’ll see if any of it is nearly as entertaining as my sinful Castle detour.  Spoiler Alert: It probably won’t be.