State of Grace.
Sep. 21st, 2011 02:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eleanorjaneI've been mainlining Saving Grace recently, because Jamie mentioned he'd been enjoying it (it's finally airing here, four years after it began and one year after it was cancelled in the US). Mostly I'm hearing everything as if it were said in Holly Hunter's gorgeous voice at the moment, but I also have thinky thoughts.
Saving Grace is set in Oklahoma City, and focuses on a squad of homicide detectives in the OCPD. The main character is Detective Grace Hanadarko, played by Holly Hunter. She's backed up by her partner, Detective Ham(ilton) Dewey, and Detectives Butch Ada and Bobby Stillwater, and her bosses Lt Yukon and Capt Perry. She has a large and dysfunctional family, and she's a fucking mess. She drinks heavily (although she's not written as an alcoholic, she definitely has an alcohol problem), she sleeps with lots of people she shouldn't, and the show is quite judgemental of this. On the other hand, it's quite clear that her lifestyle isn't full of healthy choices, and that she's not healthy.
In the pilot episode, she hits a pedestrian while driving, and kills him. In desperation she asks for God's help, and God sends her a "last-chance angel" - Earl, who looks like he's fifty or sixty, is folksy and non-threatening, and likes chewing tobacco. Earl reverses the accident, and proceeds to interfere with her life in a passive way, trying to prod her into questioning her life, healing, finding God, and so on.
I am ambivalent about the show, for a number of reasons.
Early on, Earl says to Grace quite baldly that she's going to Hell. Now, this could be because of the life she took - the pedestrian she killed while driving drunk - but that feels somewhat like entrapment, as it becomes clear that Earl's the one that set the accident up in the first place. It was Grace that made the bad choices, but Earl lined up the pins for her to knock down. Or, it could be because of something bad she's done that we don't yet know about, but even by the end of the first season we don't see anything warranting a fate that extreme.
What the show is clearly implying is that she's going to hell because of her lifestyle - that her smoking, her drinking, her sleeping around (including adultery) all morally outweigh the good she does - and she does a lot of good; she's a passionate defender of people who didn't get justice, and she's compassionate and caring and very very giving.
But, you know, she fucked a few guys, so she's going to hell.
I really hope it's just a misfire on the storytelling, and that she's doomed to hell for a better reason than that, because if Earl's God is that petty, I can't like him any more.
Some other unrelated dot points:
* Bailey Chase, who plays Butch Ada, is the hottest thing I've seen all year. Castle watchers would recognise him as Will Sorenson, Beckett's FBI agent ex-boyfriend, and he absolutely smoulders in Saving Grace. Gnnrgh.
* The show has a real sense of 'place'; it'd be easy for it to feel like just another procedural, but it's so clearly set somewhere very specific, and not just the generic NYC of 95% of the other procedurals out there. I've never been to Oklahoma, but after watching a dozen episodes, I almost feel like I know it.
* Grace's family is awesomely drawn; they're huge (so far we've seen her mother, aunt, grandfather, one sister, four brothers, two brothers-in-law, and a nephew; her father, and another sister, died in the McVeigh bombing) and messed-up in a lot of ways, but they feel extremely realistic. There's definitely a very clear sense that a lot of them don't like each other, but they definitely love each other.
* Grace herself is awesome, and absolutely the reason I'm still watching. She's incredibly brave, she's strong, she's funny, and she's got rough edges that are fascinating to watch. She has very good reasons to be very angry at the Catholic Church, and the push-pull of her relationship with Earl is interesting.
And most of all I love the fact that she's an "older" woman (ie over 40) who is still absolutely allowed to be sexy; she has a lot of sex on the show, she has chemistry with just about everyone, from her boss to her best friend the pathologist and everyone in between, and she is clearly presented as someone who is attractive both physically and regardless of her looks. It's rare to find in TV land, and I really, really appreciate it.
Okay, that wasn't ALL THE THOUGHTS, but it was at least some of them.
Saving Grace is set in Oklahoma City, and focuses on a squad of homicide detectives in the OCPD. The main character is Detective Grace Hanadarko, played by Holly Hunter. She's backed up by her partner, Detective Ham(ilton) Dewey, and Detectives Butch Ada and Bobby Stillwater, and her bosses Lt Yukon and Capt Perry. She has a large and dysfunctional family, and she's a fucking mess. She drinks heavily (although she's not written as an alcoholic, she definitely has an alcohol problem), she sleeps with lots of people she shouldn't, and the show is quite judgemental of this. On the other hand, it's quite clear that her lifestyle isn't full of healthy choices, and that she's not healthy.
In the pilot episode, she hits a pedestrian while driving, and kills him. In desperation she asks for God's help, and God sends her a "last-chance angel" - Earl, who looks like he's fifty or sixty, is folksy and non-threatening, and likes chewing tobacco. Earl reverses the accident, and proceeds to interfere with her life in a passive way, trying to prod her into questioning her life, healing, finding God, and so on.
I am ambivalent about the show, for a number of reasons.
Early on, Earl says to Grace quite baldly that she's going to Hell. Now, this could be because of the life she took - the pedestrian she killed while driving drunk - but that feels somewhat like entrapment, as it becomes clear that Earl's the one that set the accident up in the first place. It was Grace that made the bad choices, but Earl lined up the pins for her to knock down. Or, it could be because of something bad she's done that we don't yet know about, but even by the end of the first season we don't see anything warranting a fate that extreme.
What the show is clearly implying is that she's going to hell because of her lifestyle - that her smoking, her drinking, her sleeping around (including adultery) all morally outweigh the good she does - and she does a lot of good; she's a passionate defender of people who didn't get justice, and she's compassionate and caring and very very giving.
But, you know, she fucked a few guys, so she's going to hell.
I really hope it's just a misfire on the storytelling, and that she's doomed to hell for a better reason than that, because if Earl's God is that petty, I can't like him any more.
Some other unrelated dot points:
* Bailey Chase, who plays Butch Ada, is the hottest thing I've seen all year. Castle watchers would recognise him as Will Sorenson, Beckett's FBI agent ex-boyfriend, and he absolutely smoulders in Saving Grace. Gnnrgh.
* The show has a real sense of 'place'; it'd be easy for it to feel like just another procedural, but it's so clearly set somewhere very specific, and not just the generic NYC of 95% of the other procedurals out there. I've never been to Oklahoma, but after watching a dozen episodes, I almost feel like I know it.
* Grace's family is awesomely drawn; they're huge (so far we've seen her mother, aunt, grandfather, one sister, four brothers, two brothers-in-law, and a nephew; her father, and another sister, died in the McVeigh bombing) and messed-up in a lot of ways, but they feel extremely realistic. There's definitely a very clear sense that a lot of them don't like each other, but they definitely love each other.
* Grace herself is awesome, and absolutely the reason I'm still watching. She's incredibly brave, she's strong, she's funny, and she's got rough edges that are fascinating to watch. She has very good reasons to be very angry at the Catholic Church, and the push-pull of her relationship with Earl is interesting.
And most of all I love the fact that she's an "older" woman (ie over 40) who is still absolutely allowed to be sexy; she has a lot of sex on the show, she has chemistry with just about everyone, from her boss to her best friend the pathologist and everyone in between, and she is clearly presented as someone who is attractive both physically and regardless of her looks. It's rare to find in TV land, and I really, really appreciate it.
Okay, that wasn't ALL THE THOUGHTS, but it was at least some of them.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-20 04:51 pm (UTC)And before that, as Graham, from BtVS.