Saving Grace
Starring: Holly Hunter, Kenny Johnson, Bailey Chase, Laura San Giacomo, Leon Rippy, Bokeem Woodbine
Created By: Nancy Miller
Premieres: Monday, July 14, 2008 at 10:00 pm EST on TNT
Having not seen the first season of Saving Grace, I had no idea what I was in for when I checked out the season 2 premiere episode. In a nutshell, Saving Grace centers on Grace Hanadarko (Holly Hunter), a tough as nails Oklahoma City homicide detective who tends to get emotionally involved in her work. While she excels at her career, her personal life is a total mess. She drinks too much, sleeps around and is battling a number of inner demons, one of which deals with the guilt she has over her sister’s death. The supernatural element to this show goes by the name of Earl (Leon Rippy). Earl is Grace’s angel. He shows up from time to time and tries to get her to straighten her life out.
Season 2 opens up with Grace running down a man with a gun. Again, having not seen this show, this opening scene was a pretty great little sample of what this woman is all about. A guy is shooting at her and rather than running from him, she runs straight at him. In the chase, a police dog is hurt and part of the episode involves following the status of the dogs wellbeing. As for the rest of the episode, I’m going to try to avoid major spoilers here but it does have to do with the priest that molested Grace, so if you don’t want to know where that little cliffhanger from last season picks up, here’s where you probably want to stop reading.
Ok, you’ve been warned! From what I understand, the first season left off with Grace finding out that the priest who molested her when she was a kid is still alive and retired in Tulsa. She goes off to find him and in the season premiere we get to see what happened there. Essentially, Grace kidnapped the man and is holding him against his will at her home. Naturally, she’s really pissed off and not sure how she wants to deal with the situation. That’s all I’m going to give up about that story arc but obviously, there’s a lot more to it than that and part of what makes the episode so good is trying to figure out whether or not Grace is going to give in to her anger.
I tend to watch a lot of USA shows during the summer so TNT’s Saving Grace was a bit of a change for me. Rather than the humorous, quirkiness of the characters in USA’s series, TNT’s Saving Grace’s lead character is much darker and emotionally flawed. It is for this reason that the show works. Grace might live her life constantly battling her inner demons, but she’s not unlikable and even though I couldn’t really relate to her, I found myself rooting for all the same.
