Saving Grace: 2.2 ‘A Survivor Lives Here’ Review
Original Air Date: July 21, 2008
Let’s get the big Ham news right out of the way — at the beginning of this episode of Saving Grace, he informs Grace he left his wife Darleen two months ago and now has his own apartment. After Grace learns the news and we viewers get to endure a disgusting prolonged scene featuring the couple playing around while drenching each other in ketchup, mustard, and milk, we head to the crime scene the next morning.
A 21-year-old college student named Paul Shapiro has disappeared from his filthy and bloody apartment. Grace actually knows the student because she pulled his father out of the rubble the morning after Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Before she realizes she knows him, Grace takes one look at a piece of stone given only to those affiliated with the tragedy and announces to Rhetta that a survivor lives her, hence the episode’s title.
Grace is close to the entire family, or rather what’s left of it (just Paul and his mother), and the team quickly determines that the blood in the apartment belongs to Paul’s girlfriend Karen Smith, a talented rower who’s friends and family dislike Paul with a passion because they believe he’s ruining her chances of making it to the Olympics by getting her mixed up with drugs and crooks, such as his best friend Keith Kingson.
Paul eventually shows up at the police station, and the continuing investigation into Karen’s whereabouts parallels the desperate search for Grace’s American bulldog Gus when her nephew Clay loses the animal during a regular morning walk. Since Clay is mad at his aunt for lying to him about having an affair with married Ham (she keeps denying it) and babysitting him the day before the bombing (she was hungover), Grace at first thinks it’s possible Gus intentionally lost her pet. That isn’t true, though, and the dog is found soon, as is Karen, who’s car ran off the road when she went to see a drug-dealing associate of her boyfriend.
Highlights from the episode include Rhetta’s joy when she learns she not only met but also touched Earl. It happens when she and Clay are out searching for Gus and encounter the angel with his long-tongued bulldog. While Rhetta can remember meeting Earl later, she can’t recall what he looked like or exactly what took place. Grace confirms the incident by telling Rhetta she was touched by an angel.
The cops at the station also reminisce about who they knew that died as a result of the Murrah Building bombing, which lends the episode a somber tone at times, particularly during the scene where Grace talks about having witnessed McVeigh’s execution.
It’s one of the last scenes, however, where Grace rolls around on the floor in her bathrobe repeatedly wailing “I want my Gussy” after slapping Earl that serves as a prime example of why I simply cannot get into this show — I think Grace is often an incredibly annoying and just plain ridiculous character. She’s definitely not my cup of tea, but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize the fantastic job Holly Hunter is doing in the role.
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