The Sun‘s Matthew Oshinsky chimes in on TNT’s new cougar drama, Saving Grace.
CC watched the televised premier last night. We lost patience for the show after about five seconds, but we stuck around anyway.
The “character shaping” here is obvious and heavy handed, and super cliche: sex + drugs + rock-n-roll = you’re going to hell. After all the sex (including a desperate blow job, which, we all know are never good) and drugs and drunk driving homicide you still don’t think Grace needs to be saved, she kicks a bottle of Jack Daniel’s onto a Bible that her Catholic priest brother gave her one scene prior.
[On a side note, I don't think situating an alcoholic--which is probably her number one issue, in reality an illness that will lead to the promotion of all her other problems--next to a priest (who, chances are, either is a pedophile or at the very least works for an organization that has harbored and protected pedophiles for centuries) as a rubric of moral rectitude isn't the most lucid narrative device.]
Furthermore, the show’s unsubstantiated assertion that heaven and hell exist and we’re all either going one way or the other is enough to turn off anyone who has even the slightest inclination to believe in a less polarizing afterlife.
And juuuust in case there are still a few of you who think Grace is, hey, like you and me and we all have a few days we’d rather forget, we find out that Grace’s sister died in the Oklahoma City bombing, and not because of a mere fateful coincidence; NO; it’s because Grace flaked on babysitting for her sister the day before, so her sister ended up at the federal building on the day of the bombing.
For realz, writers? This sex-crime solving officer is not only responsible for the drunken mowing down of a death row inmate, she also helped a terrorist win?
We kinda hope the show bites it. Or at least gives us our money back.
Still, this is the kind of double fuckover show that apologizes for its own raciness (super skin, hot sex, and on at least two occasions, the word “shit”) by moralizing that these are all things that need to be corrected in society. It would kind of be like starting a show about an out and proud homo and showing all the graphic hand-holding and disco-dancing that homo’s are known for, all the while asking its central character to go to learn-to-be-straight camp.
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[...] Holy Shit If you ever wanna get a glimpse into the minds of your average, channel surfing, hifalutin,’ Focus On The Family joinin’, GWB voting, Americans: check out the TNT messageboards! Especially the one for the new series, Saving Grace, which we reviewed this morning. [...]