Characterization of God

God is portrayed with a very human personality, and does not appear to favor any one particular religion, saying there are "different ways to share the same truth."^[2] He quotes Bob Dylan, Emily Dickinson and the Beatles rather than any scripture or verses. The series examines God from a more metaphysical standpoint instead of a religious perspective.^[3]

God is also depicted as having a sharp sense of humor.^[4] In the episode "Touch Move", He tells Joan that He has to send her "down there". When Joan is worried He means Hell, He laughs and clarifies He meant the school basement.^[5] In another instance, He appears in the form of a woman exercising and says, "Why do people always try and discern my deeper meanings? This is the kind of thinking that starts wars."^[6]

Main cast

• Joe Mantegna as Will Girardi, the father of Joan, Kevin, and Luke. He moved his family from their home in Chicago when he was offered the job of Chief of Police in Arcadia, Maryland. After he busts wide open the internal corruption of the town of Arcadia's infrastructure, the Arcadia Police Department is disbanded and he becomes the Chief of Detectives of the Hogan County Sheriff's Department, which assumed the law enforcement responsibilities for the town. After the departure of Lt. Preston, Will serves as the acting head of the HCSD Arcadia Station. Mantegna had a development deal with CBS and liked the script, so he agreed to be part of the show.^[7] He was also involved in the casting of the other characters.^[8]
• Mary Steenburgen as Helen Girardi, Will's wife and mother of Kevin, Joan, Luke. An artist, Helen dropped out of art school after she was raped by an unknown perpetrator. She works as the secretary at Arcadia High School and becomes the art teacher in "State of Grace". She was raised in the Catholic faith but was never confirmed; after moving to Arcadia, she has considered going back to the Church.
• Amber Tamblyn as Joan Girardi, the middle child of the Girardi family who talks to God. He often gives her assignments or tasks that eventually have a (usually) positive outcome, but she is frequently exasperated by the randomness of the directives and God's refusal to answer any direct questions. She has an on-again, off-again romantic relationship with Adam Rove; the two break up in "Trial and Error". As seen in "Drive, He Said", Joan's middle name is Agnes, and her date of birth is November 24, 1987. She works part-time as a retail associate at a local bookstore.
• Jason Ritter as Kevin Girardi, the eldest child in the Girardi family. A year and a half before the events of the pilot, he became a paraplegic in a car accident after failing to stop a friend from drunk driving. A jock, he was supposed to attend the University of Arizona on a baseball scholarship prior to the accident. He initially works for the local newspaper as a fact checker; later, he pursues a career in journalism and becomes a local news anchor.
• Michael Welch as Luke Girardi, the youngest Girardi child. Luke is a science nerd and straight-A student. He has a brief romantic relationship with Glynis Figliola and later begins a relationship with Grace Polk.
• Chris Marquette as Adam Rove (Recurring Season 1;^{[note 1]} Regular Season 2), Joan's best friend and later boyfriend. Adam is the only child of Elizabeth (deceased) and Carl Rove. Adam is socially awkward and introverted but is also a talented artist and one of Helen's art students.
• Becky Wahlstrom as Grace Polk (Recurring Season 1;^{[note 2]} Regular Season 2), Adam and Joan's best friend and Luke's eventual girlfriend. The only child of Sarah and Rabbi Polanski, Grace is outspoken against all authority, with a particular distaste for school vice principal Gavin Price. She is highly intelligent despite her rebellious reputation. After years of putting it off, Grace finally has her bat mitzvah in "The Book of Questions".

Recurring cast

• David Burke as Father Ken Mallory, Helen's friend and pastor of a nearby church.
• Haylie Duff as Stevie Marx
• Patrick Fabian as Gavin Price, the vice principal of Arcadia High School who is unpopular among students.
• John Getz as District Attorney Gabe Fellowes, a corrupt public servant who is arrested during an investigation of corruption into the Arcadia city government.
• April Grace as Detective Toni Williams, as Will Girardi's partner on the Arcadia Police Department and later the Hogan County Sheriff's Department in season 1.
• Sprague Grayden as Judith Montgomery, Joan's friend from the summer psychiatric camp.
• Elaine Hendrix as Ms. Lischak, chemistry and physics teacher.
• Aaron Himelstein as Friedman, Luke's best friend.
• Wentworth Miller as Ryan Hunter, a young, charming dot com millionaire who also talks to God, but with his own sinister agenda.
• Derek Morgan as Hogan County Undersheriff Roy Roebuck. He previously served as head of the Arcadia Police Department Internal Affairs Division before being forced to transfer to the Arcadia Fire Department as the arson investigator. After the dissolution of the Arcadia city government, Roy became the Commanding Officer of the Hogan County Sheriff's Department Arcadia Station. He resigns after learning that two of his officers were corrupt and had murdered a witness.
• Erik Palladino as Lt. Michael Daghlian, the senior detective of the Arcadia PD under Chief Will Girardi. He is fired after removing evidence from an official report.
• Sydney Tamiia Poitier as Rebecca Askew, a reporter at the newspaper where Kevin works who becomes involved with him.
• Annie Potts as Lt. Lucy Preston, the former head of the Hogan County Sheriff's Department's Internal Affairs Division. She replaced Undersheriff Roy Roebuck as Commanding Officer of the Hogan County Sheriff's Department. She and Will quickly got close, both professionally and personally, but Will soon became uncomfortable with her methods of policing – and her apparent complicity in the death of Judith Montgomery's murderer. In "Romancing the Joan", Preston transfers to Washington, D.C. for a job with the United States Department of Justice.
• Kevin Rahm as Dana Tuchman, guidance counselor at Arcadia High School.
• Paul Sand as Rabbi Polanski, Grace's father.
• Mark Totty as Detective Carlisle, Will Girardi's junk food-addicted partner on the Hogan County Sheriff's Department.
• Mageina Tovah as Glynis Figliola, Luke's friend and one-time girlfriend.
• Constance Zimmer as Sister Lilly Watters, a former nun who helps advise Helen Girardi and dates Kevin.

Guest cast

• Michael Badalucco as Father Payne
• Hilary Duff as Dylan Samuels^[9]
• Alexis Dziena as Bonnie
• Louise Fletcher as Eva Garrison
• Cloris Leachman as Aunt Olive
• Shelley Long as Miss Candy
• Lauren Mayhew as Elle
• Armin Shimerman as Ronald Harbison
• Tyler James Williams as hallway boy^[9]

Incarnations of God

The many incarnations included:

Development

The idea for Joan of Arcadia took shape during Barbara Hall’s time as a producer on Chicago Hope in the mid-1990s and evolved while she was an executive producer on CBS drama Judging Amy.^[3] Hall said "the concept meshed her fascination with Joan of Arc...her longtime interest in physics and metaphysics, and her desire to use drama and comedy to explore the existence of God in a 'scary, not benign universe.'"^[3] Hall added, "I started thinking, what would it look like if God tried to contact a teenager today? I made the decision that God would have to come to a teenage girl visually. Joan of Arc heard voices, but kids today aren’t going to hear voices because you’d have to get the iPods off their heads.”^[11]

When Hall pitched the series to CBS, she and executives agreed they were not looking to make another Touched by an Angel.^[3] Among the differences between the former show and Joan is that the character of Joan is not religious and "the show’s tone is grittier.”^[3]

CBS greenlit the show in 2002 "when public discourse about spirituality seemed more gentle: post-9/11 prayer services rather than heated debates over 'The Passion of the Christ.'"^[12] The acquisition was made as part of an effort by the network, which was known for its adult-skewing shows, to appeal to younger viewers.^[3] Hall developed the series with Hart Hanson and Jim Hayman, her Judging Amy production associates.^[7]

As a guideline for the series’ writing staff, Hall wrote a list of "Ten Commandments of Joan of Arcadia", which enumerated what God can and cannot do in the show. These guidelines included points like, "God can never identify one religion as being right," "The job of every human being is to fulfill his or her true nature," "God's purpose for talking to Joan, and to everyone, is to get her (us) to recognize the interconnectedness of all things," and "the exact nature of God is a mystery, and the mystery can never be solved."^[7]

Filming

Though Arcadia itself is set in Maryland, the series was mostly filmed at various Los Angeles locations.^[3] Establishing shots of Arcadia's skyline and other outdoor scenes were filmed in the city of Wilmington, Delaware.^[13] Scenes at the fictional Arcadia High School were filmed at El Segundo High School in California.^[14]

Season 1 (2003–04)

Season 2 (2004–05)

Critical reception

Joan of Arcadia received widespread acclaim from critics. On review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, the first season has a rating of 92% based on 25 critics’ reviews,^[15] while Season 2 has a rating of 100% based on 5 reviews.^[16]

Greg Braxton of the Los Angeles Times said "the series is a veritable squeezebox of genres...[including] a family drama, a coming-of-age saga of a teenager, a high school drama and a gritty police show, all tossed together with a mix of fantasy and religion.”^[3] Robert Lloyd, also of the LA Times, said "the real miracle here is how deftly the show avoids the soggy cliches of redemption so many of its forerunners have embraced."^[17] Rob Owen of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called it "the best new broadcast series of the season,"^[18] and the Associated Press said the show has an "intelligent quirkiness."^[19]

James Poniewozik of Time wrote, "[The series'] marriage of the sacred and the mundane has made Arcadia the rare TV show about spirituality to win over both audiences and critics. Whereas its predecessors have been either panned but popular marshmallow halos (Highway to Heaven) or controversial, swiftly canceled critical darlings (Nothing Sacred), Arcadia has avoided, Goldilocks-style, going too soft or too hard.”^[20] He also noted that “by separating God from religion, Arcadia takes away what makes faith divisive—a reasonable goal for a major-network series that needs to draw a broad audience to thrive."^[20]

Melanie McFarland of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer said, "Only a few episodes into its season, 'Joan' has proved deserving of its growing reputation. It's alive with everything television so desperately lacks: genuine heart, wit devoid of crassness, dramatic situations mirroring so many of our realities that the Girardis sometimes feel more like neighbors than a television family.”^[21] Nancy Franklin of The New Yorker opined the show is "both thought through and open-ended, and it should prove especially rewarding for those who think that belief has more to do with asking questions than with getting answers."^[22]

Criticism of the series focused on the police procedural plots involving Will Girardi, which many said did not tonally fit with the show.^[4][17] Devin Gordon of Newsweek said that the series' cop drama and its fantasy elements felt like “two shows stitched awkwardly together."^[23] Tom Shales of The Washington Post said "the premiere suggests viewers are being asked to wade heart-deep into a drearily portentous muddle.”^[24]

Though critics were divided about the show's tone and plot elements,^[25][26] there was across the board praise for Amber Tamblyn.^[24][27][28] Poniewozik wrote, "If God, however, is simply asking Joan to do what all teens have to do—develop an identity—Arcadia works because Tamblyn reminds us so well how tough that job is. Joan may talk to God, but she has to do the work her own, mortal self, from accepting life's unfairness to finding her niche at school...Unlike most prime-time teens, Joan is neither a babe nor a brain, neither a Goody Two-Shoes nor a sarcastic rebel. She's the most extraordinarily average teen to crop up on a TV show in years—yet after a few episodes, you realize you would watch her story even if God stopped showing up.”^[20] Praise was also given for Mary Steenburgen^[17] and Jason Ritter, the latter of whom Robert Bianco of USA Today wrote, "Indeed, the often painfully realistic treatment of the familial anguish that swirls around Kevin (Ritter), who lost the use of his legs in an auto accident, is one of the show's greatest achievements.”^[4]

Critics have written retrospectively about the series. In 2015, Margaret Lyons of Vulture wrote, "Somehow Joan of Arcadia is one of vanishingly few shows to bring up two extremely common questions that shape the human condition: 'Is there a God?' and 'Am I a good person?' The answer to both is, it depends whom you ask. And you can only ask so many people in two seasons.”^[2]

Writing for IndieWire, Alison Willmore said "the show balanced [Joan's] missions with the mistakes a well-meaning but impulsive high school girl might make, allowing the show to also be a very fine portrait of life at a certain age."^[6]

Nielsen ratings

Joan of Arcadia debuted on the heels of Touched by an Angel, which had ended its nine-year run in April 2003. An estimated 12 million viewers tuned into the series premiere in September 2003.^[25] Though Joan was broadcast in the 8 p.m. time slot on Friday nights, a traditionally quiet night for TV, it became a modest hit for CBS and averaged 10.1 million viewers during its first season.^[31] The show regularly drew in young adult viewers for its time slot, which led to NBC changing the schedule for the competing comedy-drama series, Miss Match.^[11]

The following year, "viewership sank to 8 million, according to Nielsen Media Research,"^[31] despite continued critical acclaim which included three Emmy nominations.^[12] Partly at the request of the network, Barbara Hall introduced the character of Ryan, a menacing figure and amoral "tempter" (with The Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" as his musical motif) seemingly destined to cause a significant amount of conflict for the show's characters.^[31]