Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "mcgee-and-me"

There's a post over at Christ and Pop Culture that's being discussed at Speculative Faith today that's criticizing a single episode of McGee and Me, the Christian TV Cartoon series that was quite traumatic. I saw it and survived, even though the episode was a downbeat.

Before getting into the substance of this discussion, I have to say that posts like this are probably why a good deal Christian creators throw up their hands and say, "To heck" with writing for a Christian market.

Both Speculative Faith and Christ and Pop Culture spend a great deal of time taking secular programs that often seem to have many problems and finding what is good and redeeming about them. And there's nothing wrong with that in itself. I think it can actually be quite helpful. There's some good writing that goes on there and it can help us get a proper perspective on things.

But on the other hand, when we take take one half hour episode of one TV series (and yes, it's a series with multiple episodes) and shred the creators for blowing (in their opinion) one episode, I think that's ultimately counterproductive.

If you're a Christian who produces secular material, you have to include some positive thought provoking elements and have negative elements that stop short of blasphemy and you have praise. While if you propose to produce Christian art, your work can be totally dismissed and discounted if it doesn't have just the right combination of material and in one particular episode.

And what are parents to do? Throw out those McGee and Me shows and let the kids watch Ren and Stimpy instead? Okay, that's over the top. But maybe Sponge Bob Squarepants is the way for parents to go to avoid the theological errors and various imperfection of Christian producers of children's television. I'm sure they'll be no negative values communicated by going that route.

That said, let's take a look at the criticism of this particular episode.

In "The Big Lie", Nick, the hero of McGee and Me, told a gossiping lie that led to a kindly Native American man have his house trashed by bullies. Nick feels remorse over this. And how this is handled is the source of Dr. Noble's criticism as well as a cartoon short featuring McGee:

Rather than confide in his dad, Nick asks a hypothetical question: what if you said something wrong about someone and it could hurt them? His father offers ominous and prescient counsel, warning that the lie will hurt the person lied about and the liar, because, ”Not only will the truth eventually find him out, but the very fact that lying is a sin, well, that sin starts to cut off his relationship, his friendship, with God.” Even worse, ”If we lie and hurt another person, we hurt Jesus.” Nick’s dread only grows, and so he asks, “What do I do?” To which his father replies, “What do you think?”


The “biblical” lesson is that no matter how trivial a lie might be, once spoken, it begins a web of destruction and evil, consuming innocent people, cutting us off from God, and making an already-crucified Christ cry. Oh, wretched man that Nick is! Who or what will rescue him from this body of death? What can he do?


The only answer given: “What do you think?” That’s the most chilling part of this exchange. Nick is overwhelmed with guilt and fear, and his father’s response is to further explain the incomprehensible evil which he has committed, and then to tell him to just go figure it out.

So as I read this again, what occurred to me is that Dr. Noble's criticism seemed to be that Nick's father didn't spoonfeed him the solution to the problem.

Doing so would have been debatable parenting, but pretty lousy writing and drama. I would say it would be debatable parenting because the actor who played Nick was 12 years old and at some point, a child does need to take what has been taught and learn how to apply what they were taught to do.

Asking, "What do you think?" is actually better from a writing perspective. In doing this, the children watching and Nick were invited to think about what they should do rather than being told what they should do. It was an opportunity for discussion of how we respond to this. It's unfortunate that this opportunity wasn't used by Dr. Noble and his family but I can't fault the producers for that.

And Nick showed what he did by trying to prevent the attack (albeit too late) and making restitution and seeking forgiveness for what he had done. The question to his dad wasn't out of ignorance of what the right thing to do was.He just needed to find the courage to do it.

So in essence, the criticism of this episode is that it wasn't preachy enough. It didn't diagram all the answers into a nice neat package. But then again, those Christian film productions that do that also end up criticized for being poorly written because...they are.

As for the cartoon short that preceded Nick's talk with his dad, I'll admit that was dark, over the top dark as Noble explains about the story involving McGee (Nick's animated buddy);

McGee breaks a window unintentionally because some city planner thought it was a good idea to put a baseball diamond across the street from a glass shop. The authorities swoop down with swift and absurdly disproportionate justice to drag a small boy off to prison. Since the story ends so abruptly there’s no trial and no chance for McGee to admit to his lie, so in the world of the parable McGee must spend eternity with the guilt of his crime. The injustice is suspended indefinitely with no hope for redemption.

The one thing I'll say in defense of this is that it's set in the middle of the story when Nick in the previous scene had been feeling guilty about his lie. Since Nick is an artist and McGee is his character, it functions a lot like Doug Funny's fantasy sequences in Doug reflecting his mood at the moment rather than an ultimate answer to the question.

Again, the writers could have written a happier ending cartoon to go into the middle of the show that did not reflect Nick's mood, and to be fair, in later episodes, they did just that. However, there's something to be said to this approach for conveying the character's mood.

The later McGee cartoons are often more driven towards the kids at home or just being funny rather than worrying about accurately reflecting something a pre-teen boy's imagination might have actually produced. And who knows this may have been in response to criticism like that of Dr. Noble. Whether the series was better for the shift is a matter of debate.

In the end, "The Big Lie" was an episode that was about lying, but really the boastful lie added fuel to gossip already around the school about the old man who ends up the victim of this. And truth be told, gossip is something Christians don't take seriously enough. Pastors will tell you that gossip remains a huge issue in their church. McGee and Me addressed this in a way that was memorable and brought the point home.

Did they do it perfectly? Probably not. But, there are worse things kids could watch and I have to commend the producer's effort.

Of course, there's a bigger question of where grace was and how explicit it needs to be. Is there value to a program focusing on morality without bringing in the Gospel. I'll take a look at that another time.