Saving Grace – Grace in danger, but can’t save her friend

by Ivey West

Grace

I talked last week about how this show takes chances and explores themes that others wouldn’t touch. This week is another example of the same, tackling not one but two brutal crimes, and a couple of sick minor ones along the way. The cast, as per usual, does a great job with the material.

Um … The hell? Last week, Grace was borrowing shirts from Ham’s place. Now they were in some kind of break at the beginning of the episode? Did I miss something? Seems like TNT is running things all kinds of out of order (Not unlike what they did with the first season of Leverage). Unless I’m completely remembering things wrong, this just feels a little off to me.

I really liked how Grace was able to help Kylie remember her address. It was a nice little call back to the scene with Clay a couple of weeks ago. The rest of her family, despite the throwaway line by Capt. Perry, was noticeably absent, especially considering that they were in peril just a couple of weeks ago.

The fight between Bobby and Ham was overkill. I get Ham being justifiably irrational, but Bobby not so much. You’d think that both of them could act with more maturity (though, as I mentioned, Ham gets a pass). Speaking of that scene, why did Bobby get engaged? Are we actually going to see more of that arc, or is it just going to sit on the sidelines?

Earl’s portion of the story played out in an interesting way. Him venting at the Dog early, and then finding comfort in his later conversation with the Dog showed that he had himself a little crisis of faith for a quick moment. Was this the first time we saw God in the form of a dog? The “Army of Angels” he brought in to help was nice, especially when the gust of wind connected all of the characters, but I truthfully expected to see Earl interact with Ham or Rhetta at some point.

I haven’t talked about the core of this story, and I won’t other than to say to say that it was two very horrific stories that involved two very incredible performances. The producers continue push the envelope with some great storytelling, and the actors, Holly Hunter in particular, constantly show up to play on game day.