A thoughtful Saving Grace

On TNT, on Mondays, there is this little show called Saving Grace. It is so....I dunno, it's about God, a foul month cop and an angel named Earl who has a spit cup.

When I first saw it...I didn't think it would last. Here is a cop, a detective actually, small, foul mouthed, having an affair with her married partner. She's Catholic..or well, her brother is a priest. She like to drink. A lot. Then she is stupid enough to drive and drives fast. She hits a man on the side of the road during one of her drunken drives and kills him.

She staggers out of the car over to where the guy is lying on the road...and she prays for help.

She gets it in the form of an angel who is scruffy looking and his name is Earl. Grace has a bit of a hard time understanding all of this because...well...consider: 1. she's got quite a bit of alcohol in her system. 2. God has angels named Earl? C'mon. This is not yer momma's 'Touched by an Angel' that's fersure.

Turns out the guy she ran over and thought she killed is a death row inmate named Leon. She meets him, and turns out they share Earl....he's a sort of 2nd chance angel. We follow part of their story for 2 seasons.

Google Saving Grace for the show's episodes if you want to know what happened, but I can tell you now and this is a spoiler for those of you who care about such things...Leon ends up on the table with needles in the arm.

I have to admit...even I was hoping the Governor would call.

This may make some of you unhappy, but I do believe in the death penalty. But, they have to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. I believe people can change too. But, a life for a life is justice. Naturally, there are judgement calls...not everyone deserves to die for killing someone. Some people deserve killing....like child killers/molesters.

Leon, who is a complex sort of character deserved to die. He's caught on camera killing a guard. Maybe there was a reason why he did that...I don't remember if he ever said. Regardless, he did the deed and deserved to die for that. I still wanted him to live though because he had a good heart.

We don't get to know how many of the people on death row ended up there. We don't know their reasons for what they did. We don't know if they are remorseful for their actions....and if we would believe them if they said they were. I know I'd have a hard time believing anything they said because people will say pretty much anything to keep from dying. Its human nature to want to survive even if one is stuck behind bars.

Monday's Saving Grace made me question for a moment, my belief in the death penalty. So many people worked to get the sentence commuted to life imprisonment. I'm not so sure that would be any better than death. People are not meant to be placed in small cells for long periods of time. I suppose for many, death is something to be feared. After all, there might actually be a hell. Still, kill, be killed. The answer to that is not to kill in the first place.

That's the simple answer. Don't kill to begin with. Who knows why people do the crazy ass things they do in situations like that. I don't really believe there is a simple answer. I'll miss Leon, but there is something else coming alone that will be interesting for a while. At least Leon died in grace and that's something good.

'nuff said