By Curt Schleier

It’s no secret that the cable networks run most of their original series over the summer, while their broadcast brethren are knee-deep in re-runs.  Sometimes these shows turn out – how to put this delicately? -- not to be as good as the networks had hoped.  From this year’s crop, TNT’s HEARTLAND comes to mind.  But most often, they’re better than okay – consider DAMAGES and MAD MEN. 

It’s very rare that you get extremes – though this summer saw the premiere of two newbies at the complete opposite ends of the quality spectrum. HBO’s JOHN FROM CINNCINATTI was mind numbing, and wasted its potential (not to mention HBO’s money).  I don’t think the adjective bad begins to describe it.  Unfathomable is better.

And then there was SAVING GRACE, which was in my view superb.  If it manages to maintain its first-season quality in the coming seasons, it will rank with some of the best series in the history of television.  It manages to entertain while it examines deep moral issues – all without being preachy. It is textured, extremely well written and the acting – particularly Holly Hunter – is equal to anything you’ll see anywhere in terms of both quality and intensity.

Language of Angels was the season finale.  It starts with Grace (Hunter) in a familiar position – in bed with someone she just met.  They’ve played games and she is happily tied up – until her phone rings.  When she tells him that she’s cop and it’s probably an important call he skips out leaving her tied up.


When Grace’s partner, Ham Dewey (Kenneth Johnson), comes to find out why she hasn’t picked up the phone, he finds her laid out naked.  He’s angry, not shocked.  It’s not like he hasn’t seen it before.  In fact, when he’s not home with his wife, he can frequently be found in that very same bed.  And he’s angry because he clearly thought he was the only one who could mess around. So he skips out, too.  And Earl, the last chance angel who has fought for her soul, can’t help either.  God doesn’t allow him to interfere.  Besides he’s happy just to have her tied down so she has to listen.

Eventually, though, Ham returns.  There was a brutal murder, of a young woman, and Grace’s fellow Oklahoma City PD investigators need her help.  When she gets to the scene, hours after everyone else has left, she knows what happened.  Yesterday was not the first time she brought a stranger home.  Eleven years earlier, drunk, not knowing what she was doing, not thinking, perhaps not caring, she’d done it too.  Only that time the guy took out a knife and cut her.  He must have panicked and ran. Grace was so drunk, she wasn’t sure what happened.  All she knows is that when she woke up, he was gone leaving behind his knife and a bottle of beer with his fingerprints on them.

But he was clean.  He’d never committed a crime or been finger printed.  So she’s lived with the shame and a scar all these years until now.  Smart police work gets the man, but it’s Grace’s willingness to expose her secret that gets him to confess.  She’s in the interview room with her colleagues watching while the dirt bag recalls their meeting, taunting her.  But she gets the last laugh when he confesses.

There’s a subplot involving her nephew, the son of her late sister.  Hoping to be cook, he’d pulled a prank on an unattractive girl at his school.  He smashed a pie in her face and then posted the film on the web.  Grace told him he’d committed assault and the girl could press charges.  She put him sit in a cell for a while, and when he was properly contrite told him “I can handle stupid.  What I can’t handle is mean and violent.”


Whether it was the way she handled her nephew or her willingness to come to grips with her past isn’t clear.  But whatever it was, Earl was pleased.  You made a little progress today, he told, her, and God has plans for you.

“Your life’s going to get a little bumpy.”

I’m not an angel, but listen to what I tell you.  You have to catch up ion any episodes you missed.  Pray that TNT has one of those all-day retrospectives where they broadcast every episode over the course of a day.  Or spring for the twenty bucks or whatever it costs when the DVD comes out. 

Because if Grace’s life gets a little bumpier, our lives are going to be a lot more fun.