Saving Grace: 2.3 ‘A Little Hometown Love’ Review
Original Air Date: July 28, 2008
I don’t know if it was because I was coming off of the intense high of The Closer’s preceding episode “Cherry Bomb” or if it was because something is changing on Saving Grace, but to my great surprise, I actually enjoyed an episode of Holly Hunter’s show all the way through. This is a first, and an amazing one at that, at least for a TV watcher like me who didn’t last past the halfway mark of Saving Grace’s first season.
The episode opens with Grace having a recurring dream about her and Leon Cooley “shooting the shit” at Louie’s before the convict grabs her and she tries to stop something from dragging him away. Rhetta later visits Cooley on Death Row and learns he’s been having dreams about Grace, as well, where he helps the cop retrieve a kite from a roof and an apple from a tree. The point, Rhetta rationalizes, is that they both need each other’s help.
After Grace recounts her dream to Rhetta at Louie’s, she and Ham retreat to the bathroom because you know every episode of Saving Grace must have at least one off-putting sex scene with the two; that’s how we know this is an “edgy” show for adults only (and some people are actually buying that).
While they’re busy getting nasty with each other in a men’s bathroom stall, someone follows their police department’s most disliked civilian employee, evidence supervisor Ed Ligardi, into the bathroom and slits his throat, nearly severing Ed’s entire head. The fact that everybody hated the victim, from his coworkers to his neighbors to his family, has absolutely no impact whatsoever on Grace and her team’s determination to find out who murdered one of their own on their own turf.
When Grace and Ham aren’t dealing with Internal Affairs now that they’re in the spotlight for their little bathroom-stall tryst at the scene of a murder — Grace lies that she and Ham were actually just setting up a practical joke by smearing chocolate on the back of toilet seats (!) — their investigation begins to lead directly to Ed’s wife Gretchen, who seems mentally challenged in a bizarre, space-cadet way.
Gretchen quickly confesses that she paid several neighborhood men to kill Ed — $75 and a tuna sandwich for the gardener, $50 and carrot cake for a neighbor, twelve movie tickets for the man down the street, and an opened checking account for a bank teller — because he was about to retire and she couldn’t stand the idea of having him around all the time. However, since Gretchen apparently never followed through on the initial solicitation by, for instance, giving the hired killers a picture of Ed or establishing a specific time for the crime, the police can’t book her.
Fortunately, Grace picks up on something else that helps nail Gretchen. Since the Ligardis were into Civil War reenactments, Grace correctly hypothesizes there’s no money trail because Gretchen paid the hit man with something from her husband’s valuable inventory of Civil War collectibles or the proceeds from selling something from the collection. Ed was a meticulous note keeper, so all the cops have to do is go through his books to figure out what’s missing from his collection and who she sold or traded it to. Case closed.
There’s also a minor subplot in the form of Ralph Dewey, Ham’s little brother, whom the cop calls Rafe. The Marine is about to be deployed back to Iraq after an extended leave, and Ham eventually breaks his brother’s arm when the two are being typically competitive during an arm wrestling match. Rafe ships out anyway, although Ham struggles with whether he intentionally injured his brother to prevent him from going back to war. Even if so, the strategy doesn’t work.
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POSTED IN: Recaps, Saving Grace
1 opinion for Saving Grace: 2.3 ‘A Little Hometown Love’ Review
Saving Grace: ‘Do You Love Him?’ Preview (8-11-08)
Aug 11, 2008 at 4:33 am
[...] Ham’s younger brother Ralph, who was just on the episode before last called “A Little Hometown Love,” goes missing in Afghanistan, causing the entire squad to feel Ham’s [...]
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