Do You Really Have to Save Her?

I was excited that two recent pilots --Damages and Saving Grace -- feature female anti-heroes. What's more they're both of a certain age.

In an era with so many not-so-nice men (House, Tony Soprano, Vic Mackey, Tommy Gavin), it's great to finally see some shows built around edgy female characters.

I talked about Damages' Kate Hewes in a previous post. She's ruthless, powerful and unapologetic. Plus she has great clothes and hair.

Grace Hanadarko of Saving Grace, a series written and created by Nancy Miller and airing on TNT, has over-processed hair, an unquenchable sexual appetite and no qualms about sleeping with her married partner. She swears like a sailor, drives a beat-up Porsche and she carries a gun. Plus she has a mean right hook which she puts to good use when someone slimy hits on her (if they're not slimy, her clothes come right off).

(If you don't have TNT, you might be able to watch the pilot on their website, but you'll need Windows. I couldn't test it out because I have a Mac.)

Grace, played by Holly Hunter, is naked and in the middle of a sexual encounter when we first meet her.

Moments later (moments well spent, by the way, swilling Jack Daniels, smoking and burping), she's watching tv. The distraught father of a kidnapped child say that he knows the lord will bring his daughter home. Grace practically snort, "and then eliminate war and hunger." She's cynical too.

I was immediately madly in love with her. The character is a cop and watched her solve mysteries and abuse herself for as many seasons as they were willing to make the show.

Unfortunately, the show has a twist: an angel. Okay, he chews tobacco. But he's still an angel. And he wants to save Grace. Hence the title of the show.

(I was going to put a clip from Youtube here, but they all feature the angel and the redemption story line when what I wanted to show you is Grace acting badly, so I had to pass.)

I'm totally bummed out. We finally get a show built around a foul mouthed, sexually-in-control, remorseless woman and along comes the rep of some God who's not fond of boozing, cussing and fornication to clean her up.

What's that about?

I don't know. Maybe it'll all twist into John from Cincinnati territory. Maybe it'll turn out to be some quirky view of religion that won't offend me. Maybe it's going to turn out to be an important work that explores serious themes in a deep and meaningful way.

But come on.

Finally, a really fabulous bad girl with no regrets comes along. Do I really have to see her find religion? I wanted to watch her descent into hell.

Damages

Just a few words about Damages, a new series on FX. The pilot was written by series creators and showrunners Todd A Kessler & Glenn Kessler & Denial Zelman.

I'm still being treated for the scratch marks on head from watching Mad Men and the Damages characters offer a sharp contrast. Interestingly, Todd A Kessler, one of the Damages creator/writers is a former Sopranos writer like Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner.

Before continuing to read, let me warn you that spoilers lie ahead. I can't talk about shows in the way I want to without giving away important plot points. Even my haiku breakdown of Viva Laughlin gave away a lot. So from here on, let it be known, I'm going to give stuff away. If you care, go read the script or see the show before you read.

Damages is built around the character of high stakes litigator Patty Hewes (Glenn Close). Hewes comes out of the box as ruthless and ballsy. Her character is immediately recognizeable to us as viewers and unlike Mad Men's characters, behaves in a way we can predict. There are a couple of twists along the way, but we're not left asking wtf? Instead, we smile and accept her behavour, seeing that she is more extreme than we expected, but the behaviour fits the pattern we expect from the character.

In the first sequence that introduces her, Patty uses a combination of trickery, rhetoric and emotion to force the other lawyer in a case to cave to her will. When he realizes that she's tricked him to the tune of $150,000,000, he responds by saying that if she were a man, he'd "kick the living dog shit out of" her. Patty responds:

PATTY
If you were a man, I'd be worried.

(Watch for the line in the video below. Close's delivery is perfect.)

There is one false move along the way, a scene that bugged me and nagged at me all through my viewing of the pilot.

Ellen Parsons, the young lawyer turns down her interview with Hewes to go to her sister's wedding. Patty turns up at the wedding to Ellen's disbelief. And then ends up hiring her as a result of their little ladies room chat.

I didn't buy Patty's reason for turning up at the wedding ("Because, kiddo, you're the first person to turn me down"). And I didn't buy her sentimentality in hiring the ingenue.

It wasn't a "huh?" moment like the character turns in Mad Men. It just didn't feel like something Patty would do. Why the heart-warming second act moment from the hard as nails anti-hero?

The answer came at the end of the episode. It wasn't a soft moment from Patty, it was a highly calculated move by a master maniulator. It wasn't out of character at all. We know Patty's manipulative from the teaser. And by the end of the episode, we learn how truly manipulative she is. The act of going to the wedding was just another one of her manipulations.

The action fits perfectly into the character as we come to expect her to behave.

The characters of Mad Men challenge us as viewers by refusing to act in ways allow us to understand them. They take us by surprise and leaving us unsettled. The Patty Hewes character surprises us too. By how far she's willing to go. But though I may not have predicted her behaviour, it perfectly fulfills my expectations for the character.