Iraq and a hard place
Speaking of walking a thin line, Spike TV's "The Kill Point" (9 p.m. Sundays) struggles with a similar problem, trying to get us to identify with a team of thieves who set out to hold up a bank and end up taking hostages instead. They've got their work cut out for them, too: As the robbers are leaving with the money, a female FBI agent pulls a gun on them (bad move, lady!), and the robbers shoot her up but good.
But maybe they're not such bad guys: Right after that, they take time out of their busy schedule to give the woman an emergency tracheotomy!
But she dies anyway, which means they are bad guys after all. In fact, they're pretty much dead to us when the head robber, played by John Leguizamo, steps into the street and delivers a charming soliloquy on his time in Iraq and how he's been mistreated since he got back. Ah, yes. The ever-popular "I've been screwed by The Man one too many times" card!
And who among us hasn't been screwed by The Man? We see empathy and concern spreading across the faces of the bystanders on the street. "Maybe these guys aren't so bad after all..."
But then, Leguizamo's character, Mr. Wolf, becomes enraged when the power inside the bank is turned off. (Yes, the other characters have names like Rabbit and Pig, and they're all shown in slo-mo striding into the bank. Can we please drop the "Reservoir Dogs" looting at long last? It's been over a decade, people.) Wolf decides that his assigned crisis negotiator (Donnie Wahlberg) isn't respecting his wishes. So he announces that he's going to kill one of the hostages. An old guy, too! Big, bad Wolf!
But then the power goes back on, just when the old guy's about to take a bullet in the head, and we remember that Wolf is probably just suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, the symptoms of which include general restlessness, emotional detachment, depression, aggressiveness and a compulsion to wax eloquent on the ultimate injustice of serving one's country and then losing one's health benefits and being treated like a common street thug. Plus, the negotiator discovers that Wolf was involved in some questionable situation in Iraq that earned him a dishonorable discharge or the like. Clearly we're about to learn that he was framed by his superior officers, and in fact, he's a hero who saved his men from peril...
Yawn. Anyway, back to "The Nine"... I mean, "Standoff." No, it's "The Kill Point" -- although, to be fair, "Standoff" would've packed all of these twists and this backstory into one episode. Even with lots of twitchy posttraumatic stress on display, "The Kill Point" feels like something of a retread. The moving soliloquy was a nice way of kicking our empathy up a notch, but it doesn't change the fact that we're still stuck in a bank. Why aren't we in Baghdad instead? You get the feeling that these writers could tackle a war story with flair. But another bank robbery? We've been stuck inside a bank before, and frankly, we'd rather use the ATM.
Amazing Grace
Time to press on and tackle our next off-kilter antihero played by a big-name actor or actress on a cable channel: Grace Hanadarko, a self-destructive Oklahoma detective played by Holly Hunter on "Saving Grace" (10 p.m. Mondays on TNT).
Like Leguizamo and Close, Hunter plays a character who needs to seek the help of a caring professional: Grace is angry, depressed, drinks and drives, sleeps with her married partner, and seems to have very little concern for anyone around her, outside of her young nephew. Even so, instead of pumping up the suspense with threats of one bleak outcome after another, "Saving Grace" is all about encouraging us to hope for its lead character's salvation, even as she dares us (and herself) to believe that she's beyond saving.
Compared to "Damages," "Saving Grace" looks like "Touched by an Angel," and Grace is touched by an angel -- albeit one who chews tobacco and chuckles and says things like, "I'm just FedEx deliverin' the message." (Is that an endorsement deal?) But even when Grace's angel, whose name is Earl (Leon Rippy), says things like "Are you ready to turn your life over to God?" (Is that an endorsement deal?) he almost sounds like he's joking. Of course, when he mentions that "there's a lotta people goin' to hell these days," he sounds dead serious -- and it's tough to disagree.
Even with the obvious dorkiness of guardian angels with big, shiny wings and a manipulatively heart-wrenching child abduction storyline in the pilot episode, "Saving Grace" is my second-favorite cable drama this summer ("Mad Men" being the obvious front-runner), thanks to the excellent cast (Kenny Johnson and Laura San Giacomo, among others), and the fact that Hunter plays Grace with so much authenticity and scratchy sweetness. Grace may be borderline and an alcoholic to boot, she may be reckless and selfish, but she also has a way with kids, feels an almost debilitating amount of empathy for crime victims, and stands up to bullies without fail. Hunter makes Grace feel real and lovable without overplaying her vulnerabilities or making her bluster seem like a front. It's a common miscalculation to suggest that tough female characters are just pretending to be tough. Grace has a lot of confidence and charm, and she also has some serious emotional problems, and Hunter pulls it all together with serious finesse.
"Saving Grace" is an odd bird, really, like some unholy offspring of FX and Lifetime, but its undeniable appeal highlights the weaknesses of both "Damages" and "The Kill Point." Where those two shows feature stories that can have only a limited number of outcomes, all of them unhappy, "Saving Grace" could wander anywhere at all, thanks to the strength of Grace as a character and the willingness of the writers to craft scenes that pull at viewers' hearts without making them roll their eyes.
Next page: Yet another big-name off-kilter antihero
