michael-603-10752

I only discovered this at Season 2 so I'm playing catchup.

I don't want to just say how it affected me...it was moving to tears, and the experience of a lifetime. But I want to acknowledge the details I saw that made it so accessible and understandable/relatable.

• It was in modern-day language...it didn't need the contrived historical accuracy of language and custom. The colloquialisms were modern.

• The fact that there were jews and various cultures almost faded as important to the story...more important were families and friends, and qualities like respect, trust, and faith.

• It explored the thoughts and feelings of the disciples to enable to audience to understand how an actual person would react and struggle with changing their paradigms.

• It showed Jesus as the actual "son of man" a real person with one significant difference...a faith in god...including his habit of looking to this environment and others for inspiration...god speaks to him through the circumstances and actions of others.

• His disciples play out an excellent illustration of the burdens of man...fear, distrust, suspicion, racial bias, control, etc. And the struggles of a Simon who wishes to establish a leadership system to control and silence those with "small" issues.

There are so many lessons in this for everyone it is a gift for the ages.

Thank you.

I've seen David Morse do a lot of good work in other movies, but I think the work he did in this series was his best. The character has so many complexities and he was so believable in this part that he was minute to minute uplifting and hopeless. This series must have been before it's time. The story, direction, and characters are outstanding, but it landed in an era that had not yet learned to appreciate these more complex transformational plots and the character David Morse portrayed.

Far from the old action-hero role, his character hangs out in the sinner-redeeming space that most of us identify with more easily. How do people who have suffered a monstrous failure in life and realized they've been a bad father too, recover and find meaning and a reason to go on?

I don't think Morse ever got the praise and acknowledgment he deserved for this work.

But the over-arching creator of this transformational tale is David Koepp. He's a master with a long history of blockbusters and many works that have garnered more acclaim than this TV series. The fact that he hasn't returned to TV that often speaks for the lack of praise and acknowledgement for his work in this medium. Hack was created as a palette for transformational tales for every character on the show - the priest, his wife, his ex-partner, and everyone else he had any meaningful interaction with were transformed by his singular commitment to helping (redemption).

There are certain things that someone like David Koepp just has to do to express the depth of his mastery of his art and I would argue that Hack better than any other work is a showcase for Koepp's mastery, creativity, and sensitivity. I would have easily gone 25 seasons on this masterpiece.