David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. Tying down Holly Hunter
The season finale of “Saving Grace” certainly grabs your attention immediately: Our first image is of a naked Holly Hunter, as Grace Hanadarko handcuffed belly-down to her bed, with a guy she’s just picked up writing with lipstick on her bottom. The phone rings, she can’t reach it; she tells him she needs to answer it because she’s a cop, which flips him out and he bolts.
(This she-sure-can-pick-’em theme resonates throughout the episode.)
Her partner and sometime lover Ham (Kenny Johnson) bursts in on her; seeing her in such a position, he, too, angrily bolts.
Enter Earl (Leon Rippy), her good-ole-boy guardian angel/pest. He won’t help, either: “God’d throw a flag for interference,” he explains, though he just sort of seems to enjoy the situation. When she tells him she’s learned her lesson, “In your mind that means next time you hold the cuff key.” Hunter spends the first 10 minutes of the episode in this position.
From there, we’re off to solve the sadistic murder (there are no genteel murders on TV cop shows) of an attractive young woman (TV’s victim of choice), a crime that resonates with Grace for reasons we only fully discover during a pretty nicely staged interrogation scene at the end of the episode. Meanwhile, Rhetta (Laura San Giacomo) is trying to piece together the whole mystery behind Earl – she’s more interested in what his message may be than Grace.
Last scene is pretty bogus: Earl and Grace back on a mesa in the Grand Canyon, Earl giving a short what-have-we-learned-here speech then telling Grace (or, more importantly, viewers) that next season her life is gonna get even trickier. Oh, well, still, “Saving Grace” is a pretty good show when it avoids such hokum, and Hunter elevates the show and makes the most of a fascinating character.
- “Saving Grace:” 10 tonight, TNT.
(I know, I know: These last two entries should’ve been posted a lot earlier, but my recent near-death experience and the Emmys conspired to throw me off my schedule, not to mention the small matter of this 14-hour behemoth called “The War” coming up. Oh, and the whole fall season, too; there’s that as well. But I’m catching up.)