Sepinwall on TV: 'The Cleaner,' 'Saving Grace' reviews

Today's column reviews tonight's return of "Saving Grace" and tomorrow night's debut of "The Cleaner" on A&E:

The new A&E drama series "The Cleaner" (Tuesday at 10 p.m.) opens with a title crawl explaining that its hero, "extreme interventionist" William Banks (Benjamin Bratt), is "not a cop. He's not a superhero. He's just a man with a Calling."

The disclaimer seems designed to distinguish "The Cleaner," which travels in a grimy world filled with junkies, dealers and thieves, from the eleventy billion cop shows on the air right now. But at its heart, the show is just as much of a police procedural as your average "CSI" spin-off, albeit with a hair more emphasis on character.

In that way, it's not dissimilar to TNT's "Saving Grace," which returns tonight at 10. Both feature damaged heroes battling addictions and demons (Banks is a veteran of multiple 12-step programs, while Holly Hunter's Grace drinks, smokes and sleeps with the wrong men far too often), and both don't seem to trust that character alone will get people to watch.

To read the full thing, click here.

Haven't decided yet whether I'm going to individually blog either episode over the next two nights. Based on my press tour load -- Fox shows up today, beginning the busier broadcast network portion of the tour -- I would tend to doubt it, so feel free to use this post to discuss either one after they air. Click here to read the full post

Deus ex Marvina

Spoilers for, in order, "Top Chef," "Weeds" and "Saving Grace" coming up just as soon as I teach Casey the proper pretentious pronunciation of "coq au vin"...

"Top Chef" ditched the gimmicks last night and was much more interesting for it. Not that the roach coach challenges don't make for interesting TV, but this late in the competition, it's really time to see who has the serious cooking skills, and both challenges were more about pure kitchen talent than seeing who could work best within a set of artificial constraints. Not surprisingly, the top two in both challenges were Hung and Casey, who are clearly the two best chefs remaining. Hung has the best technical skills (even though he coasted for a lot of weeks when he didn't respect the challenge or the guest judge), Casey seems to have more artistry and a sophisticated palate (even though she's only been showing off both the last few weeks), while Dale has a penchant for crippling errors within some good ideas and Malarkey has been flying by the seat of his pants for a couple of months. (Not that Tre didn't deserve to go home for screwing up royally during Restaurant Wars, but it feels wrong that he's gone and Malarkey's in the top four.)

Interesting that in both the Quickfire and the Elimination, there was early talk of Casey's dish tasting the best, but Hung won the first for reasons unknown (the Le Cirque owner's joke about wanting to pick her because she's hot was skirting the edge of being charming, and only because he's an old European guy) and the second in part because she called her otherwise great dish coq au vin when it wasn't exactly that. I can see Colicchio's point -- if you order a dish off a restaurant menu, you should get the dish as named/described -- but I don't know that it's a worse sin than Hung's non-puffy potatoes. Still, Hung's got skills, and I look forward to seeing what the two of them make in the next two episodes, and what ways Dale and Brian choose to implode on the way to the finale.

I've been keeping up with "Weeds" all season but only feel compelled to write about it on occasion -- in this case, because the writers finally decided to send U-Turn to the crack den in the sky. With all due respect to Paige Kennedy's performance, I couldn't wait to be rid of the guy. I don't want Nancy's career to be completely consequence-free, but being an indentured servant to this psycho was too far to the other extreme, especially since I still don't quite understand how she and Conrad wound up in debt to him in the first place.

I look forward to the inevitable Nancy/Conrad/Heylia reconciliation, though the highlight of the series continues to be Doug vs. Celia. Doug demonstrated not only uncanny accuracy with the five-iron, as Matthew Modine noted, but had me laughing hysterically when he showed up at the construction site wearing the dirt weasel (or whatever it is) t-shirt. Why was Kevin Nealon so rarely this funny on SNL?

One downside to the episode was the arrival of Olsen Twin #1 (or #2, I forget) as Silas' latest love interest. I have no idea whether she was any good or not, because my eyes start to hurt anytime I look directly at the screen when she's on it. Anyone else have a similar reaction?

Speaking of people I'm sometimes afraid to look at, Holly Hunter spends the first 10 minutes or so of the "Saving Grace" finale showing off her toned glutes, but the episode's overall focus is on a different part of Grace's anatomy: the scar on her shoulder that's been the subject of so many ominous close-ups in the past. The revelation of how she got it doesn't exactly unlock the puzzle of Grace -- she was already engaging in reckless sexual behavior when Devil/Evil guy stabbed her, after all -- but the idea of Grace exposing herself emotionally, if not physically, to all of her co-workers with that interrogation is a positive step on her road to redemption. The first step towards solving a problem is admitting that you have onem, and all that.

Because the police story was tied so intimately to Grace -- a fact that was obvious long before she went into the interrogation room -- it was more compelling than previous cases have been, but that's a trick you can only pull once or twice a season, if that, before it gets old. (Last week's eeeevil druglord episode, which I didn't blog on, at least featured the awesome visual of Early flying in to stop Grace from going to The Light.) When the show comes back next year, I hope Nancy Miller and the other writers give up the ghost on the cop thing -- not necessarily by giving Grace a new career, but by making the cases at best a background detail as Grace deals with Earl, her family and all the men in her life. Because those procedural stories are as big a waste of Holly Hunter's time as they are mine.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Jarts of a whole

As I said below, feel free to keep talking about the "Entourage" finale in the "Conchords" post. Spoilers for "My Boys" and "Saving Grace" coming up just as soon as I stop for directions...

Last night's "My Boys" didn't have anything nearly as egregious as the over-the-top "Sex and the City" lampooning, but also nothing nearly as brilliant as the douchebag intervention. Still, a good episode, and as someone who made the city-to-suburb shift a few years back, I could relate to the various factions of the party. Mike, Brendan and Kenny competing for Hot Mom felt a little odd, if only because it's so rare to see the guys trying to sabotage each other like that, but the payoff with Bobby getting The Vouch was unexpected, and it was nice to see Mrs. Gaffigan again as Mrs. Andy.

Having ditched the Disapproving Black Captain back in episode two, "Saving Grace" showed a willingness to embrace another cliche: the minority supporting character who only gets storylines about being a minority. After doing little but exposition in the early episodes, Bobby finally gets a subplot of his own, and naturally it involves the murder of a Native American. Ham, Butch and the other guys are defined by their relationships with Grace; Bobby's defined by being the token. I did like the scenes with Grace and her "Geepaw" -- and, connected to that, the establishment of Grace's sister Paige as the seeming wet blanket who's really the most admirable member of the family -- and I'm intrigued by Butchie throwing his hat back into the ring with Grace. (Between Butch, Ham and Henry, is there a guy in that office Grace hasn't had sex with? Oh, that's right: Bobby.) Still don't care about the police stuff, but the interpersonal material is working very well.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Hairy situations

Cable catch-up time, with spoilers on, in order, "Californication," "Saving Grace," "My Boys," "The Bronx Is Burning" and, as promised long ago without fulfillment, "Top Chef," coming up just as soon as I get a plastic surgery consultation...

After last week's kerfuffle over my pan of the "Californication" pilot, I decided to give the show at least one more episode to prove me wrong. Sorry to say, Duchovny fans, but I'm out. This was a retread of all the things I disliked about the pilot (women throwing themselves at Hank with little provocation, Hank acting like a 12-year-old boy in a way we're obviously meant to find charming, an unexpected ongoing focus on pubic hair), and now we've added in the "Studio 60" Problem: we're told Hank's this brilliant writer, but his first blog entry (penned in an Apple product placement scene that makes all the Mac love on HBO seem tasteful and subdued) was a smarmy cliche-fest. I'm glad for showkiller Paula Marshall that she's kept herself in such good shape, but I don't think I need to see any more "Californication." I think it would be a badly-written show with any leading man, but maybe a different actor would be able to find the appealing side of Hank instead of playing him as a one-note, self-satisfied douche. I really like the actress who plays his daughter and look forward to her popping up in something else.

As a counterexample to Duchovny on "Californication," I give you Holly Hunter on "Saving Grace." Here's another self-destructive, substance-abusing, middle-aged person who sublimates her pain by having lots of sex with her many willing suitors, but I both like her and understand her appeal to the opposite sex (even though Holly Hunter herself needs to spend a few weeks following Dr. Nick's steady gorging process, combined with assal horizontology). That's a credit to Hunter's performance. There's a thin line between charming rogue and irritating jerk; she stays on the right side of it in a way that Duchovny can't or won't.

That said, I'm falling out of love with "Saving Grace" as a whole, thanks to the police stuff. There's a weird epidemic going on in TV right now -- both with current series and a lot of the fall pilots -- of cop shows with interesting, original leads and completely uninspired procedural stories. I understand that cop shows are more instantly commercial, which is why Grace or, say, that immortal guy from "New Amsterdam" carry a badge and gun, but the genre's so oversaturated right now that almost no one can find anything original to do with the cases. The Oklahoma setting provides a small amount of novelty -- not going to see a story about bull seed on "Cold Case," I don't think -- but not enough to keep me from zoning out until Grace heads to the bar or her love shack.

Good casting in the latest episode of Frances Fisher as the cool aunt Grace has modeled herself after, but did I miss a previous reference to her father having died in the Oklahoma City bombing? I know she lost her sister (or sister-in-law?), but this seemed like new info.

Speaking of potentially new info (or yet another example of how I need to pay closer attention), "My Boys" revealed for the first time (maybe) that Kenny runs a sports memorabilia shop, which answers the final question of how PJ knows all her boys. (Andy's her brother, Brendan and Stephanie went to school with her, Bobby's a rival beat writer and Mike used to work for the Cubs.) Mike and Kenny are funny as usual together, and the "negotiation" at the bar managed to work Gaffigan into their dynamic nicely. Didn't care much about the Jeremy Sisto romance subplot (though it did make me listen to a sample of "The Wrong Girl" just because it was on a mix tape between my beloved Fountains of Wayne and the Flaming Lips), and we the beginnings of the douchey Brendan storyline that's going to pay off nicely next week.

The writers of "The Bronx Is Burning" are lucky the cops caught Son of Sam as relatively early as they did, since it gave them an excuse to dump that subplot with a few episodes of the miniseries left. The show works much better as an all-baseball affair (like I said at the start, either they needed to cover all the stuff from Mahler's book or just the Bombers), even if the Reggie/Billy/George dynamic is feeling repetitive by this point. Two complaints about the first World Series episode: 1)I love "Blitzkrieg Bop" as much as the next guy, but it feels like they've already played it 57 times so far. The Ramones' catalog is consistent (simplistic?) enough that you can substitute a lot of other songs and get the same effect. 2)How in the world do you incorporate so much of the Howard Cosell/Keith Jackson telecast of game two and not include Cosell saying "Ladies and gentleman, the Bronx is Burning"?

Finally, I've been watching "Top Chef" all season, but often so many days late that a blog entry has seemed beside the point. (A big part of the problem: the show inevitably makes me very hungry, and I don't want to be snacking at 10:30 at night, so I have to wait until I can see each show close to a mealtime.) I've been enjoying it a lot and wish I had started with the franchise sooner. (Though I hear season two was very skippable.) All the "Bizarro Apprentice" stuff I admire about franchise sibling "Project Runway" (competent contestants, creative challenges, rational judges), only with a subject I care about.

That said, this show tends to telegraph its exits even more blatantly than latter-day "Survivor." Anytime two contestants declare their undying friendship (in this case, Casey and Tre), you know one of them's out. Tre compounded the sledgehammer foreshadowing with all his overconfidence, and by the time we were halfway through the judges' visit to Restaurant April, I knew he was done. He had been the obvious frontrunner early on, but he'd been through a lot of ups and downs and was clearly the main reason for this loss. If, as the judges have said elsewhere, the judging isn't supposed to be cumulative, he was the right choice. (If not, CJ should have been tossed.) It's interesting, though, that the remaining field includes a few people who have consistently been either brilliant or awful (Hung, to a lesser extent Howie) and then a bunch of people who have had some good moments and some bad ones, but nothing really remarkable on either end. Usually in this kind of show, there's a more obvious pecking order by this stage, and I honestly can't tell who's going to win, or who should.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

The Dudemeister's kiss

Very brief thoughts on "My Boys" and "Saving Grace" coming up just as soon as I go to confession...

It's always dangerous to watch a TV show about your profession. Cops pick apart all the logic leaps in cop shows, lawyers gripe about legal shows and my hospital administrator wife likes to yell at the TV about all the inaccuracies while we watch "ER" or "House" or "Grey's Anatomy." I'm not a sportswriter, but I work at a newspaper and have a bunch of sportswriter friends, including some women, and I cringed throughout last night's "My Boys." That P.J. would get all flirty with the new Cub was awkward enough, but that she would have absolutely no idea that this is the cardinal sin for female sportswriters -- that half the athletes and coaches and even the male reporters assume they're just there to nail an athlete -- was just awful.

There's probably an episode in P.J. developing an attraction to a player she covers and how she deals with that given the stigma, but she was written here as someone brand-new to sports reporting, and not someone established enough to be the Cubs beat reporter at one of Chicago's two major dailies. I won't object to another appearance by Jay Tarses as the seasoned columnist, but P.J. shouldn't have needed the old guy to explain it to her.

On the plus side, we got another Trouty appearance. I should hate Trouty, as he's a walking collection of tics and cliches in search of a character, but something about Johnny Galecki's performance is really endearing to me. (Or maybe it's just that I've seen him on "Big Bang Theory" and realize how much better he is here.)

After doing a good job the first two episodes balancing Grace's spiritual salvation with the pedestrian cop stories, "Saving Grace" gives us an episode that's at least 70-30 in favor of the cop stuff, and that's not a good ratio. And having established in an earlier episode that Grace was molested by a priest, I found most of the Church-related material heavy-handed, with one exception: when Grace tried to act like she didn't remember her first kiss, I wondered for a minute whose identity she was protecting and realized it was probably the priest. I'm glad that the Lorraine Toussaint character is written as more of an ally for Grace than the previous Disapproving Black Captain, but I either want to see more of Grace and Earl moving forward or they need to really punch up the procedural stories.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Saving Grace: Oh my God, they killed...

Not a lot of comments on my first "Saving Grace" post. Is there not a lot of enthusiasm for this show because of the angel stuff? Anyway, spoilers for episode two coming up just as soon as I find a tube of glitter...

How's this for prompt service? By far my biggest complaint about the police scenes from the pilot was the presence of a stock Disapproving Black Captain, so the very kind producers end episode two with the semi-shocking death of said DBC. (He'll be replaced by Lorraine Toussaint, who I liked on Lifetime's "Any Day Now," but who I fear could become a Female Disapproving Black Captain -- two token cliches for the price of one! -- unless the writing for her is much stronger than it was for the late, unlamented Lt. Yukon.)

Beyond that, episode two was notable for its continued use of the Oklahoma locale. Last week it was the visit to the Federal Building memorial; this week it was Grace rolling up to the crime scene (at an oil rig, natch) with her deer kill strapped to her hood -- or, rather, everyone's complete non-reaction to it. The case itself wasn't particularly subtle in its parallels to Grace's situation with Ham and Butch, but at least it offered James Marsters to play a role in which he was completely unrecognizable from his days as Spike. (In case you didn't spot him -- and I'll admit that I didn't, until another critic pointed it out and I checked the DVD -- he was the dead guy's business partner.)

On the Earl front, I like how he's allowing Grace and Rhetta to learn certain facts (or not) like the lack of DNA in the saliva, then messing with their hunt by subbing in the bird feather for the angel feather Grace snatched. The scene where she visits Leon in prison suggests that Earl looks the same to everyone, which I think is a waste of a good idea. Nancy Miller, the creator, says God sends different angels to different people, depending on who they'd respond to, but Leon doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who'd give Earl the time of day if Earl were human.

I'm still not sure all the pieces fit together, but damn, Holly Hunter is interesting to watch.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Holy Holly, holy (expletive deleted)

Today's column takes a look at tonight's debut of TNT's "Saving Grace," which has me oddly transfixed:

Is the world ready for an R-rated drama about angels? For a gritty crime drama that's one part "NYPD Blue" for every part "Touched by an Angel"? Since the show in question, TNT's new "Saving Grace," stars an acting force of nature, I guess we had better be.

Holly Hunter plays Grace Hanadarko, a detective with the Oklahoma City P.D., as self-destructive and charismatic as any fictional male cop you've met.

We meet Grace while she's having naked bucking bronco-style sex with her partner Ham -- her married partner, I might add. When Ham tries to bolt their latest assignation out of religious guilt, she tells him, "I don't believe in God, but I promise: you'll never have mind-blowing sex with me again."

So Grace sleeps with the wrong men -- and in bulk, too -- drinks far too much, curses like a sailor and is heading down the toilet when God decides to take a hand in her life.

You can read the full thing here.

UPDATE: Bumping this up to the top of the page so people can use this as the place to comment on tonight's premiere, as I won't have a chance to do a separate post. My column contains most of my salient thoughts on the pilot. Click here to read the full post