Saving Grace returns tonight with what are billed as "final episodes"

The final-season premiere of Saving Grace takes place tonight at 10pm ET/PT, 9pm CT.

"Grace is a woman of extremes, and it's been written for me to go to extremes."

-- Holly Hunter, about her Saving Grace character

by Ken

I can't begin to explain why I've remained devoted to Saving Grace through its remarkable run. Obviously Holly Hunter's fearless, fascinating portrayal of Oklahoma City police detective Grace Hanadarko stands front and center. In the course of the video interview montage, she says she's never going to have a job like this again, and I can't imagine a character like Grace being imagined either in film or more conventional network TV. But she's backed up here by awfully good teams of writers and actors, who compel a lot of attention.

There's Grace's large roster of siblings, perhaps most importantly the sister who doesn't appear, because she was killed in the Murrah Building bombing, which looms large in the show's consciousness, as it apparently does in that of its creator, Nancy Miller. (I was startled to find that Saving Grace has apparently been featured on DWT before, and wondered if I'd written about it without remembering. Hey, there's a lot of stuff I've done that I don't remember these days. But no, it turns out that it was Howie reporting on an NPR interview he'd heard with Nancy Miller last August, in which " she mentioned that she couldn't understand how God could let Timothy McVeigh drive up to the Alfred Murrah Federal Building with a truckful of explosives and blow the place up.")

There's Grace's detective-squad colleagues, including Ham (Kenneth Johnson). with whom she's carried on such a torrid affair and the even-better-looking Butch (Bailey Chase), and including lab technician Rhetta (Laura San Giacomo), Grace's childhood friend. And of course there's her angel, Earl (Leon Rippy), and a strange assortment of charcters who come into Grace's life by virtue of having an angel trying to "save" her.

If you haven't watched the show before, it's still worth giving it a shot at this late date, even though you'll be playing catchup figuring out how it works. But these days it's safe to say that the earlier episodes aren't going to die. Between DVD and the insatiable need for cable programming, you'll always be able to catch up with what you've missed. One thing I can assure you: It's not like anything you've watched before.

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