I learned a couple of weeks ago that one of my favorite TV shows, “Saving Grace,” which airs on TNT, is scheduled to be cancelled after the third season, which will air next summer. Apparently ratings haven’t been what everyone had hoped; as an avid fan from the first episode and author of a few dozen romance novels, I’d like to submit a theory as to why the ratings didn’t deliver after a promising start:

THE ROMANTIC CONFLICT WAS SUCKED OUT OF THE STORY!

“Saving Grace” opened with homicide Detective Grace Anadarko as a sexually uninhibited raging alcoholic who gets a “last-chance angel” after she runs down a pedestrian. The angel element is the story engine as Grace tries to live up to the second chance she’s been given, with as many misses as hits as she struggles through. But the part of the story that most engaged me is that she was embroiled in a love triangle with two men she worked with–the hottie hot-hot but aloof Bruce, whose chiseled jaw would make any woman want to break herself against him, and the lovable, hunky Ham, who adores Grace, but who happens to be a married man. When the show started, Grace and Ham were hot and heavy, but Grace was sleeping with other men and she also slept with Bruce once. (Apparently her relationship with Bruce was mostly in the past.) One of my favorite scenes showed Bruce in a bar, having a chat with (unbeknownst to him) Grace’s last-chance angel, confessing that he was hung up on a woman and “my buddy likes her, too.” To see that dark, brooding man who seemed to take Grace and Ham’s affair in stride, admitting that he still had feelings for Grace was GREAT television. (My heart is pounding just writing about it.) Talk about romantic conflict! I couldn’t wait to see what happened next.

(I should mention here that I saw a screening of the premiere episode of the second season of “Saving Grace” and met Kenneth Johnson, who plays the scrumptious Ham. He’s just as delectable in person, y’all. His personal chemistry is hair-melting. Seriously, he is like the sun–I couldn’t look directly at him.)

But I digress.

Unfortunately, so did the writers! I was poised to see Grace ping-ponging back and forth between the two men she was drawn to for different reasons, struggling with her new call to morality while she slept with a married man and caused a deeper rift between the two men she worked with. Instead, the scenes between Grace and Ham became a bigger part of the show…and Bruce’s feelings for Grace were cut out of the storyline completely. In fact, it was never mentioned again. (First leak of romantic conflict.) Then Ham got divorced, making him available to Grace. (Second leak of romantic conflict.) Then Bruce got engaged, like, overnight, to a reporter. (At this point, the original romantic conflict was hemorrhaging.) And finally, Ham pulled away from Grace after his brother died and started dating someone else…and Grace didn’t even care! The entire season felt to me as if it had no emotional momentum, nothing pulling it forward. And apparently, I wasn’t the only viewer who noticed.

Writers: Your original concept of a love triangle WORKED. If you’d developed Grace’s relationship with both men, your female viewers would’ve remained glued to the TV to see which guy she picked, and it could’ve worked beautifully with her journey toward morality and redemption with her last-chance angel. Instead…

Well, instead the show is being cancelled. Coincidence? I think not.

Those of you who watch the show, do you agree? Disagree?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Stephanie Bond, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.