[Saving Grace.] 1x01-1x02. (spoilers)

[delga]

 

                      

Holly Hunter in Saving Grace

Last week I watched a new show, Saving Grace. Holly Hunter blew my mind in Thirteen, and I'm always up for another crime show so I settled into watch.

I have no idea what the crime was. Some kid was into emo rock, a little girl got found, I don't even know how the two were connected. This week? Same deal. Someone stole a watch, he turned out to be the Captain's brother and was a drug addict or something, and then he shot him (the Captain, that is. That part ws pretty traumatic). As for the actual crime, someone died and was killed by his best friend who used to date [dead guy]'s wife.

So far, I'm guessing you're not convinced. I'm also guessing you have no idea what this show is about.

"Academy Award winner Holly Hunter, making her television series debut, stars in this TNT drama series about a police detective with an emotional crisis living in Oklahoma City. A respected officer, Grace Hanadarko can't seem to run her personal life with the same sort of finesse she has in the field. Can a unlikely divine stranger influence her to get her life back on track?"

source: tv.com

Grace is a wildcat. She drinks, she cusses, she sleeps around. Every morning when she gets out of the shower, she flashes the elderly guy next door. She drives, she smokes. She's sleeping with her (married) partner. Girl's a hell of a cop, but she's also a fuck up in many ways. She does not believe in God.

So one night she's driving along, drinking, smoking, generally all the kind of dumb ass things you want to do if you want to die. And she hits a guy, the guy is quite obviously going die. In comes Earl (Leon Rippy, Deadwood). Earl is an angel. Earl wants to save Grace's soul.

You learn other things long the way. She's also pretty tight with her team. She's boysie, she hangs with the guys, she's slept with at least two of them. Her best friend is a forensics tech, a woman with whom she grew up. She's the only one Grace tells about Earl, and not only does she believe Grace, but she starts to collect 'evidence' to prove the existence of the angel.

Grace is surrounded by believers.

The man Grace kills/not-kills is actually a prison inmate, another of Earl's charges. Grace comes from a family of fairly devout Catholics. Her brother is a priest, she has a young nephew. At the end of the first episode, we find out that her sister died in a fire only a short while after having her son. For various reasons of Grace's deinquency, Grace feels like this is in some way her own fault I'm not entirely on board, but I think the idea is that this is why she needs a 'last-chance angel' as the inmate calls Earl.

                      

Kenny Johnson (as Ham Tipton) and Holly Hunter (as Grace Hanadarko)

It is a quirky show, led by performance more than anything. Grace is hilarious, as is Earl, and their interactions are amusing. Holly Hunter takes what is, at times, an ugly character and makes her charming, a little desperate. You bat between being amused and being a little sad for her.

The momentum of the weekly case carries you through the episode, but really, the cases feel a lot like subplots. The real intrigue is in Grace and her interactions with the people around her, the way she plays them off one another. Some of the lighter moments come from her attitude on the job - kneeing a guy in the balls for hitting on her, bursting a guy's tyre to see if he has the murder weapon on hand. These little details clue us in to Grace: she's a good person, but she's fucked up, and she needs this guidance.

Of course, I've only seen two episodes so far, but it's a good watch, and Fox has ordered 13 episodes in full, so I'd like to see where this goes, and if they can keep up that fine balance between the light and the dark. We'll see next week, I guess.