Why Theo?

This is Jenni writing this and I’d like to make it clear, first, that the opinions expressed here are my own. Audrey gave me her blessing to write Theo into JABB and wrote a few of his lines. But the reasons for his being there are all mine, crazy as they may be. I realize writing a character like Theo into a fictional, humorous newsletter is somewhat odd. So I felt it necessary to explain why I had done it. Here goes…

In TBAA’s final episode we were introduced to Zack who ended up being God. Except for some minor issues, I was happy with the finale. I would have liked to have seen more Andrew scenes and I would definitely have liked to see Zack and Andrew meet. But then with in a month’s time the actor who played Zack was hauled into court for statutory rape. The finale was effectively ruined for me. Further, whenever I watched TBAA reruns and anyone mentioned God I thought of Zack. Yuck. I needed to associate TBAA’s God with something other than an accused actor. And whenever JABB mentioned God I wanted our readers to associate that with something separate from Zack. So after a couple of months I decided to write in Theo.

Theo was originally supposed to be named Jack because that is a nickname a friend and I used when we were discussing “TV God” (God as presented in movies and TV shows, not the real God but one that potentially bore similarities). But it occurred to me that that was only one letter away from Zack. So I picked Theo because I like the name and because it means God. In addition, I made a point to describe Theo in a way that made him almost the opposite of Zack. And so Theo was given dark, dark hair and “dark skin” (my idea was that Theo would look Middle-Eastern but by being vague I wanted to allow others to see him as Native American, African, Mexican, etc. I basically didn’t want to peg him as looking like a part of any specific race or ethnicity since God is above all those distinctions.)

I chose to allude to ideas raised in the TBAA finale, mainly that God works as an AOD in very serious situations. I did this because I thought it was a beautiful idea and wanted to have something of what the TBAA writers left, even if I couldn’t accept what their Zack had become.

I realize there are problems giving God a human body and physical appearance. All I can say to that is that this is a newsletter, not holy scripture. If you’re Christian and want to believe I wrote Theo to be Jesus, who has a physical form, go right ahead. If you want to believe I was striving for more of a Lord Krishna-type vibe, be my guest. But in actuality my personal beliefs nor the doctrine of organized religion didn’t enter into this much. At least not intentionally. Basically my only goals were to make it clear that when JABB refers to God (which isn’t very often but nonetheless…) we are not meaning Zack. And also I wanted to write in a scene between Andrew and God since there wasn’t one in TBAA. And finally, it was the easiest way I could think of to fit “Andrew, I am your Father” into JABB. J That’s it. I wouldn’t expect Theo to make any return appearances on JABB but you never know!