"Saving Grace": The Beginning of the End for an Underappreciated TNT Drama - Ed Martin - MediaBizBloggers

While all eyes are on the final few episodes of ABC's Lost, during which television's most mysterious and maddening mythology will finally be explained, another ambitious serialized drama that has raised many of the same spiritual and philosophical questions as that lunatic island adventure is also methodically moving toward its long-awaited conclusion.

TNT's Saving Grace, which returns from its mid-season break tonight with the first of its final nine episodes, has since its July 2007 premiere put into play basic questions about faith, religion, spirituality and the timeless conflict between good and evil. Wisely, it has done so within the relatively simple structure of the procedural crime drama, ensuring that viewers who may not care to wrangle with the larger issues at hand can focus instead on compelling detective stories in each episode, played out in the environs of Oklahoma City, an area not often seen in scripted prime time television entertainment.

Holly Hunter stars as OCPD detective Grace Anadarko, a chillingly competent middle-aged woman even more self-destructive and tireless than Edie Falco's drug-abusing Jackie Peyton on Showtime's Nurse Jackie. Grace perpetually plunges into the most harrowing of homicide investigations, often putting her life on the line, while struggling with more demons than the Winchester brothers on The CW's Supernatural. She smokes too much, drinks too much and engages in countless one-night stands, sometimes with co-workers, presumably to numb the pain of a life filled with terror and tragedy, including childhood sexual abuse and the death of her beloved sister in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building. In the series opener, Grace drove while drunk, struck a man (who turned out to be a convict with whom she would share a spiritual connection until the time of his execution) and, after asking God for help, was visited by an angel named Earl, who has remained in her life since that fateful night. It would seem that Earl is a guardian angel, but he works in ways as mysterious as Jacob, the Man in Black and virtually everyone else of any significance on Lost. Unlike the characters on that show, all of whom deliberately refuse to provide straight answers to questions, Earl is at a sincere loss to explain why he does the things he does or why Grace should take his advice.

Throughout the course of the series' three seasons Grace has accepted Earl and learned to live with the seeming ambiguity of his involvement in her life, but that changed at the end of last August's mid-season cliffhanger, when Grace and another woman frequently visited by Earl both fell off the roof of a twelve-story building in front of dozens of horrified onlookers and survived with barely a scratch. Now known around the city as the Angel Cop, an overwhelmed Grace is more determined than ever to get in God's face and demand answers to her mounting questions. Meanwhile, a brooding stranger who appears to be a dark angel has appeared in Oklahoma City following Grace's fall. He claims to be a writer researching a book about how darkness always follows such miracles. A simple Internet search reveals to Grace and her friend Rhetta that he is much more than that. Presumably, his presence will enhance the drama to come as Grace finally learns the details of God's plan for her.

For some strange reason, Saving Grace is rarely spoken of with the same unrestrained joy that critics express when discussing the many extraordinary dramas on basic cable television. Had it arrived a year or two sooner it might have made a bigger splash, in that it has been as much of a content boundary pusher as FX's legendarily adult The Shield and Nip/Tuck, and perhaps even bolder than those shows given the unprecedented candor with which it has explored religious themes and its singular effort to remind us that the trauma of terrible events (such as the Oklahoma City bombing) far outlasts the media coverage and public awareness that follows them.

Unfortunately for Ms. Hunter, who is also an executive producer of Saving Grace, she entered the arena of dramatic series television in what would seem to be an Emmy winning role at the same time that Glenn Close began her searing portrayal of lethal attorney Patty Hewes on FX's Damages. With all due respect to Ms. Close, it would be a shame to see Saving Grace come and go without Hunter receiving some kind of industry recognition for thoroughly inhabiting so physically and emotionally challenging a part. (I suspect that Close will not be honored with a third consecutive Emmy as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series this September, but that doesn't mean Hunter will take home the award. Rather, it looks to be Juliana Margulies' year given her outstanding work on CBS' addictive freshman hit The Good Wife.) Hunter's talented co-stars also deserve some recognition as this very fine series winds down, especially Laura San Giacomo as forensics expert Rhetta Rodriguez, Kenneth Johnson as Detective Ham Dewey and Lorraine Toussaint as Captain Kate Perry. They'll all be missed.