By Curt Schleier

SAVING GRACE returns to the air for a brief run of original episodes and to remind us how good television can be.  For those who may have missed this intense series when it debuted late last summer, it stars Holly Hunter as Grace Hanadarko, a troubled Oklahoma City P.D. detective, who lost both father and sister to the 1995 Murrah Federal Building bombing.  Personally, it’s been pretty much down hill for her since then.

The drinking and promiscuity provided Grace respite from dark memories.  But it’s not much of a life when your best friend is Jack Daniels and the only thing a stranger has to say to get you in bed is “hello.”  But all is not lost.  For one thing, Hanadarko is a heck of a cop, who cares about her job and justice.

Perhaps that’s why God sent her Earl (Leon Rippy), a last chance angel, whose mission is to redeem her.  She resists him mightily, but Earl doesn’t say good-bye.  He hangs in there, but it’s tough-going, even for an angel.


In this episode, a school bus crashes, killing three kids and injuring many others.  There are indications that the bus should not have been out on the road, so Grace goes to the depot to investigate even though tornado warnings are posted.

But Mark Taylor (Henry Silver), the bus company’s owner, isn’t very cooperative.  He’s up on a ladder fixing something and trying to do his best to ignore Grace, who is in no mood for baloney.  To rattle his cage she rattles the ladder:  “Three kids are dead,” she tells him.  “Do you think I give a shit if you fall?”

Taylor claims his innocence and refers Grace to the office manager who signed off on the repairs.  But before she can, the tornado hits and the bus depot is wrecked. Taking part in rescue efforts, Grace and fire fighter Randy McCurtain (Jason London) find a seriously wounded woman.  She’s in bad shape, so McCurtain goes off to get additional assistance leaving Grace with the woman.  But he never makes it.  He’s knocked unconscious by falling debris, so no one knows that Grace and injured women are trapped in the farthest reaches of the depot.

The woman turns out to be the office manager and Taylor’s sister, Dorothy.  When Dorothy discovers the consequences of what she’d done, she admits her mistake.  She’d falsified records because her brother feared they’d lose a key contract if they took that bus out of service.  Dorothy tells Grace to leave.  She, Dorothy, deserves to die anyway.  But Grace won’t go.   “You’ll be all right as long as the tornadoes don’t know your name is Dorothy,” she says.  Not that she has much choice. Her escape route has been blocked off.

At one point Earl appears and Grace rushes to embrace him, momentarily believing he will save them.  But when he tells her he can’t interfere, she pushes him away in the manner he always does.  Earl is there to save her soul, not her body.

Meanwhile, Leon Cooley (Bokeem Woodbine), a death row inmate and another one of Earl’s clients, has found religion He declares himself a Muslim and is surprised when Earl still appears to him.  He believed Earl to be a Christian angel, and assumed he’d fly away once he, Leon, converted.  But the show is determinedly not about religion, but about faith and being a good, righteous person.  Earl will stick with Cooley as he reached for redemption in any faith.

Within this generally superior episode there are a couple of things that bare special mention.  First, the tornado special effects were outstanding.  The little I know about the subject is that CG effects are expensive; as a viewer I appreciate the producers’ willingness to spend the extra cash and pay attention to this little detail.


Also, there was a moment when the father of one of the dead school children rushes into the police squad room filled with anger and pain.  He wants his daughter’s body, but the police can’t release it yet.  So he lashes out at one of the cops, Ham Dewey (Kenneth Johnson), pushing him hard.  I thought for sure the guy was going to get his ass kicked.  Dewey has a temper, and the room was filed with cops.

But nothing happened. The guy pushed Dewey again and again and again.  Dewey just let him vent, until the father just began to cry and the two hugged.  It doesn’t read as well as it played out on the screen, but the moment was a rare one, honest, touching, simple yet elegant.  And it was another reason for to recommend Saving Grace as one of the best shows on TV.