Tom Cruise Show: Summer's Best TV

The best original television series of the summer so far is not a series in the usual sense. Rather, it's the series of recent television appearances by Tom Cruise that can be referred to collectively as The Tom Cruise Show.

Something very interesting is happening to one of the world's top box office stars of the last twenty years and it's playing out on TV. The man seems to be increasingly animated and agitated, and after his testy turn with Matt Lauer on the Friday, June 24 edition of NBC's Today show, one can only wonder what's coming next. Is he having a meltdown? Is he overworked? Is he kidding?

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An attack such as this -- put forth with little provocation during the taping of a major broadcast network program -- invites the question: Where is Cruise coming from in all this? It is not unreasonable to assume that his ferocity is fueled by his experiences with Scientology,

Cruise has been everywhere in recent days busily promoting his movie War of the Worlds (which opens June 29), fielding questions about his whirlwind courtship of and engagement to Katie Holmes and, at times, talking about Scientology, the controversial church to which he has belonged since the mid-'80s. But the appearances that propelled his promotional tour into the stuff of unforgettable television were his hour-long interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show in May, which was repeated last week, and his two-part chat with Matt Lauer on Today on Friday, June 24 and Monday, June 27.

Tension on the Today Show

During the first Today segment Cruise became extremely terse when Lauer brought up his much-publicized comments about actress Brooke Shields a few weeks back. (Cruise openly criticized Shields for writing in her recent autobiography that antidepressants helped her recover from a debilitating bout of postpartum depression.) Cruise the movie star suddenly saw fit to condemn psychiatry and slam the use of mind-altering drugs of any kind. He also took a shot or two at Lauer's credibility as a journalist, though it is unclear if this was his intent. During a discussion of the drug Ritalin a suddenly arrogant Cruise said Lauer was "glib" and that he "should be a little bit more responsible in knowing what [Ritalin] is." He was not at all the friendly fellow viewers usually see during his televised interviews.

Cruise's Friday appearance on Today certainly revealed a side of the actor not exposed during his visit to Oprah, in which Ms. Winfrey smiled and praised and fawned over and over again, despite being perpetually if playfully pushed about by Cruise throughout the hour. I didn't see this show the first time around, so it was new to me last week. All I knew going in was what I had read and heard in the media after it first aired: That Cruise jumped up and down on Oprah's big butterscotch couch declaring his love for Holmes. That he did, but Cruise's performance on the show was so much more than that.

Seemingly incapable of responding to Winfrey's questions and flatteries in clear, complete sentences (despite more than two decades of press interviews), Cruise repeatedly giggled and guffawed and stood up and dropped to one knee throughout the show. As for the pushing parts, Cruise many times grabbed the seated Oprah's hands in his own and shook her around, something a gentleman should never do to a woman who is wearing a skirt and sitting on a big couch right in front of a television camera. He wasn't just bouncy about Holmes, as the media had said over and over again since May. He was bouncy, period.

Holmes Only Has Eyes for Cruise

Toward the end of the show, Holmes made a not so surprising surprise appearance and delivered her own strange performance, largely keeping her eyes on Cruise and whispering "I love you" while paying little attention to the studio audience or the camera (and, hence, millions of home viewers). That's not what an appearance on a television talk show is all about, especially when one has a big-budget movie of one's own coming to theaters. (At the time this show first aired, Holmes' Batman Begins had not yet arrived in theaters.)

I can't explain why Cruise and Holmes have been acting the way they have, kissing and cooing and grandly expressing their feelings for each other whenever a camera has been present. Their public behavior is nothing at all like that of so many of the other current celebrity couples in love, including Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, three high profile twosomes who act so normal in public that their private lives are becoming less interesting by the day.

The personal motivations behind Cruise's public behavior are nobody's business as long as he's happily promoting a movie project or showing off his latest love interest. But he crossed the line on Today when he challenged medical treatments that do help people as well as an entire profession dedicated to helping the mentally and physically ill. Are we supposed to believe that Cruise is an authority on these subjects simply because he's a movie star or because he's a Scientologist?

The Thespian and the Thetan

An attack such as this -- put forth with little provocation during the taping of a major broadcast network program -- invites the question: Where is Cruise coming from in all this? It is not unreasonable to assume that his ferocity is fueled by his experiences with Scientology, though only Cruise knows for sure. Still, with all of his recent talk about his religion, it has become almost impossible to separate the thespian from the thetan.

What is a thetan, you ask? It's something like a soul or a spirit. Numerous Web sites can provide further details. I'm not an expert on the subject. I only know what I read in respectable publications, many of which say on the following: As first put forth by the late science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, the background of Scientology is centered on a being named Xenu who ruled an alliance of 76 overcrowded planets 75 million years ago. Those planets included Earth, then known as Teegeeack. Xenu brought billions of inhabitants from these worlds to Teegeeack and violently exterminated them, releasing their souls, or thetans, into the atmosphere. The thetans remained here and have moved from human to human through the millennia, causing all kinds of trouble for their hosts, meaning all of us. Over time, via secret procedures, and at considerable expense, the Church of Scientology purges thetans from its loyal followers, including many Hollywood celebrities.

Perhaps millions of people, myself included, have been misinformed. Maybe Scientology isn't as weird as it sounds. If so, it's nothing that can't be cleared up during an uncensored interview with leaders from the Church on a respected news program. Such an interview could put the history and teachings of Scientology in proper context. The questions would be simple. What exactly is a thetan? What was Xenu's story? Why is Scientology classified as a religion rather than a belief? What goes on behind closed doors at Scientology centers? Why does it all cost so much money?

These aren't unreasonable questions given the passion with which major stars speak of Scientology and the way that passion spills over into conversations and interviews about other topics. The only people who can give clear, honest, direct answers to these questions are officials within the Church of Scientology, perhaps in tandem with the Church's most high profile supporter. Now that would make for a sensational edition of The Tom Cruise Show.