It’s difficult at times to know what to make of Saving Grace. An undeniable star vehicle, the show revolves around Holly Hunter’s Grace Hanadarko, an Oklahoma City police detective who is perhaps a little too fond of booze, drugs and sex and not at all fond of God or any of the trappings of religion.
Now, since I live in Oklahoma City myself, I do get an undeniable thrill from hearing familiar names and places mentioned and just feeling like I’m even vaguely connected to a program in this way, an unusual feeling for a long time Oklahoma resident to be sure. When we make it on to television, it’s usually disaster footage on CNN, as we wait for the current president to come and survey the damage.
As such, I feel a certain sense of protectiveness about the terrible situations which my city and the surrounding area has experienced over the past few years. The Murrah building is often used as a side note, the obligatory disaster reference of choice before the attack on the Twin Towers. And rarely will a tornado movie or story not at least make reference to Oklahoma, unless it’s sending someone to Oz (or the O.Z., of course).
So it’s not surprising that such elements would be instrumental in a program set in this area. In fact, the Murrah bombing is a pivotal part of her character’s sense of anger at God and at herself in general, as she lost a sister in the disaster who had gone to the Social Security office to pick up an ID for her newborn son on the morning of April 19th, a day later than she had planned because Grace herself had been unable to babysit the previous day. Her own anger and guilt only served to amplify the emotional impact of the bombing, as like most police officers in the area would have, she had worked in the half-destroyed building, searching for survivors, finally turning much of her anger upward.
More than bitter, Grace is aggressively promiscuous, sleeping not only with her married partner on the force, but also other friends, acquaintances, random strangers she meets at the bar, and basically anyone who seems to catch her attention without demanding too much of it.
Complicating Grace’s life is one fateful night, when she ran over a stranger in a drunken stupor and in her shock and grief, called out to God for help. Answering the call was Earl, a scruffy, long-haired angel who looks as though he was recruited out of a truck stop. As it turned out, the man she had run over had not truly been hurt, but instead a the vision of another soul, that of a death row convict whom Earl had also taken under his angelic wing.
Once he had entered her life, Earl stated his intentions for saving Grace. Perhaps most of all, saving her from herself. But rather than being grateful or transformed by Earl’s appearance, Grace instead pointedly refused his efforts at helping her find a different path, fighting his attempts at salvation as though she had a front row seat to see Carrie after she got to Hell and wasn’t about to miss it.
Grace’s all out determination to thwart her own salvation define her character in the best and worst of ways. She is strong, bull-headedly stubborn when it comes to investigating crimes and doing her duties, but she’s also stubborn to the point of absurdity when it comes to her personal angelic companion. It’s like Touched by an Angel on acid, where even in the face of a divine being the rage and pain that drives Grace’s self-destructive behaviors will not be cowed.
Despite her rather blatant shortcomings, Grace is not depicted as a bad person. She is a good friend, a good cop, a good aunt to her sister’s orphaned son. And her slow acceptance of Earl’s presence in her life speaks to a need deep within herself to accept what he is offering.
In the most recent episode, Grace found herself in the obligatory and incredibly unrealistic Oklahoma tornados. Crawling through the ruins of a building she finds a woman unwittingly responsible for a terrible school bus crash. Needless to say, the storytelling is not subtle, or particularly believable, but the ideas raised by Saving Grace are intriguing almost despite itself. Having fought hard, and been willing to risk her own life trying to save the woman, just so she could face charges for her crime, Grace instead helped the woman to confess her sin, to take responsibility for what she had done and in the end, even if her life couldn’t be saved, Earl was there to let Grace know that it was more than the woman’s life Grace had helped to save.
Putting a face on the idea of a divinity is always tricky when it comes to storytelling. It must by necessity be enigmatic and careful to not deviate too far from commonly accepted expectations to seem believable. Earl comes across as the everyman angel, accepting the inherent troubles and weaknesses of those he seeks to help with the patience of knowing that it’s those traits which call for his presence in the first place. Like an angelic officer of the law, he’s doing his duty, constrained by other responsibilities and other regulations as he goes about trying to police the souls he has been entrusted with.
He’s not as effective in this role as the constantly changing faces of God seen in the short-lived Joan of Arcadia, where the form of Joan’s divine visitor was constantly changing, a literal ‘everyman’ who had different facets and goals depending on which form had been taken. The angel sent to people as their last chance at redemption, it’s constantly unclear whether his choice of assignment is because he’s very good at his job, or very bad at it. And the combination of an inept angel and a highly resistant soul make up the underlying dynamic of the series, which manages at times to be insightful enough to be interesting, while frustrating enough to grate a nerve or two.
I don’t think anyone truly believes that Grace won’t be saved in the end. And yet she has been so thoroughly defined by her multitude of sins, it’s tough to see how the show could survive or be driven by her if she were too willing to forsake them. If she does not, however, then the conceit of Earl’s presence in her life would be without purpose.
It’s hard to say how the show will find it’s way while Grace steadfastly refuses to find her own, and yet make the risks being taken by this type of storytelling seem worthwhile in the end. Even so, for those times when it tries too hard, or misses the mark, Grace is without question a unique character, with a story likewise uniquely tailored to fit an unusual location. Perhaps I’m biased, for the city as well as for such staunchly female driven dramas, but I’m strapped in for the ride, happy to see hardships that we’ve endured make their way onto this kind of format as more than a movie of the week or sensationalized plot point.
And as with Grace herself, I can hope for the best while simultaneously bracing myself for the inevitable shortcomings.
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