TNT's "Saving Grace": Godsend or Gobsmacked?

I'm writing this post to start a discussion. For those without cable, feel free to move on to more conventional fare. For those who've seen either of the first two episodes of "Saving Grace" on TNT (third one coming tonight), I'd welcome your views.

The show--headlining Holly Hunter--seems to me a tremendously mixed bag. The two episodes I've watched so far on Tivo seem to showcase all of the most cynical Hollywood dreck turned up on full, and yet... there's plenty of more interesting spiritual content.

Let's start with a few easy swipes. Holly Hunter is billed in all of the trailers, plus half of the media hype on the show, as bringing 'feistiness' to it. Uh, yeah... and your point would be?

Anyone who's seen Holly Hunter in anything knows she could bring 'feistiness' to reading the phone book. She virtually defines 'feistiness'. It would have said about as much if George Lucas had observed that casting Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi brought gravitas to that role (or any other) or that Christopher Walken has brought creepiness to virtually everything he's ever been in. So what? She's a type. The show needs to be more than that to keep my attention.

Another quick swipe: the show obviously intends to tap into a spiritually interested audience and yet the content is far more mature than most secular shows I've seen. Yeah, I know God's interest is in reaching sinners, not the righteous, but really... Does Ms. Hunter's character need to be a wildly alcoholic (bourbon in the morning), chain-smoking, hair-trigger, perennially angry, pistol-waving, rule-breaking, drunk-Porsche-driving, vehicular-homicide-committing fight-hungry, marriage-busting nymphomaniac slut who swears and lies at virtually every opportunity in order to make the very basic point that she--like the rest of us--is desperately in need of a savior?

It all has struck me as overkill--a way to get in all of the skin and violence and craziness Hollywood usually gets in but under a spiritual headline, covering all of their bases. I think they started with the edginess and worked back to the spiritual rather than the other way around.

The show has also struck me--and here's where I'm handicapped by my geography and some of my mid-continent readers may be able to weigh in more authoritatively--that the show's setting in semi-rural Oklahoma is more than a bit grafted on. The characters seem caricature-ish--like Manhattanites or denizens of Los Angeles told to affect Oklahoma mannerisms, which is probably closer to the truth than the idea that the show was written, staffed and directed by Oklahoma natives. Again, please weigh in, even if you're from say, Arkansas or Nebraska. I'm totally disqualified to comment on this one by virtue of my proximity to Harvard Yard and Beacon Hill. It just doesn't ring true somehow and I can't put my finger on it.

Finally (or rather, not finally--I billed this as a discussion and I meant it), the show is totally anemic in its theology--a point that even an agnostic or skeptic couldn't fail to notice. The version of God we're treated to is a kind of Unitarian, progressive, kumbaya blur-the-edges all-around nice guy who doesn't make any distinctions whatsoever between the world's major religions and doesn't stand for or against anything in particular other than nudging Ms. Hunter's character (Grace) away from her insanely over-the-top lifestyle of compulsive licentiousness.

About the closest we get to anything remotely Trinitarian or orthodox (or even boring mainstream Christian for that matter) is a brief visit with her brother (a Catholic priest) who sits in front of a half-veiled out-of-focus crucifix. Grace's sister wears a crucifix and goes to Mass but always talks in vague terms about 'God'. We don't seen an identifiable evangelical at all, which seems odd. Improbably for those characters and those settings, the name 'Jesus', much less 'Christ' is never mentioned. Both names, it seems, are more dangerous in TNT's view than any of the blue language we get from Grace herself... which is disappointing.

One other note: maybe it's just me, but I can't help seeing most television and film these days as derivative. It doesn't take long to come up with the mash-up one-liner. I thought I'd had a semi-original insight in observing that the high concept of 'Saving...' was Closer Touched by an Angel with a dash of CSI. No such luck.

Lest this sound completely negative, it isn't. I plan to watch episode three. Despite all of the show's problems, I'm rooting for Grace to be saved, even if it's a terribly hesitant-to-speak-its- name, watered-down theist version of what I would hope for her character. I'm captivated by the death-row inmate (I won't spoil it by revealing how he knows Grace). And I'm definitely amused by the angel; without the self-deprecating Earl, the whole thing would fail completely.

Your thoughts?