A USA Network drama called Graceland is about a group of various agents who live together in a fancy beach house in a constant Spring Breakers setting. These federal agents live as roommates–a family assigned to live together for an undetermined amount of time, in a mansion designed to maintain their undercover status during high-profile cases. Based on an actual government residential system, the purpose of this arrangement is for these agents to go undercover and work with higher level criminals, gaining their trust, hoping to eventually exploit their plans and make arrests. According to the show’s introduction, “A beachfront property was seized in a drug raid by the US government in an undisclosed location in Southern California. It was turned into a residence for top undercover agents of the DEA, FBI, and Customs.”
The show had a very promising start: the writers take the audience on an educational journey about the job by allowing us to follow FBI rookie Mike Warren’s (Broadway’s Aaron Tveit) story in learning the ropes. Because Mike is still a baby agent, when he makes the smallest mistakes, we can only laugh and adore Tveit’s portrayal of the perfect FBI fanboy. With the way the writers lead us to believe things like a homeless junkie is robbing the house when we are first introduced to Charlie DeMarco (Vanessa Ferlito), it gives us a sense that we were manipulated in a very clever way, causing us to chuckle with Warren over falling for the ruse.Season 1A is primarily about getting to know all the characters and how this undercover job works (as should be expected from a brand new series). The cases they are working on is easy to follow, thanks to Mike’s “intern” status. As Mike is being educated, so are we–only we have the advantage in knowing what happens behind the closed doors of Graceland. He learns how to balance work life with romance, including the extra challenge of making sure the girl he is dating knows nothing about Graceland and its purpose.
During the second half of the first season, Mike is officially deep into his first ongoing case. With his love life out of the way, he can now focus on the job, because this clean-shaven male model was placed in Graceland for a reason: to investigate his training officer, Paul Briggs (Daniel Sunjata). In fact, he doesn’t even know why he needs to do it, but since the man graduated at the top of his class at the FBI Academy, and he’s a rulebook-thumper, he just follows orders.
Season 2 includes a few more uses of the word “shit” per episode than its predecessor did. My belief in this writing decision is that it supports the notion that things in the house became darker: agents crossed lines, friends betrayed loved ones, fighting ensued–all for the sake of everyone’s own vendetta.
This hypothesis may deem incorrect though: by the time Season 3 rolls around, there seems to be a lot less on the line, yet at this point, writers don’t give a flying fuck where to put their “shits”. Now that they know they can use the word, they are careless about the placement each time it is dropped. While this may mean there is a more realistic dialogue, the word has lost all negative meaning.
Despite the consistently poor word choices, the cases during each season also get harder to follow. The major cases in the third season were too sleep-inducing, yet overly complicated to keep track of. While the plot was very difficult to keep up with, there were still a lot of “what was the point of that’s” and “who gives a shit’s”? (Oh look, the “shit’s” are contagious.)
Another element of the show that too obviously stood out was the lighting design. The distinction is most evident in Season 2 when each location is distinguished by color. For example, with scenes taking place in Mexico, an orange filter was used, providing a sense of heavily-gunpowdered pollution to the area; in the hospital scenes (whose color filter is lost in Season 3) the camera seems to be primarily focused on making everything bright blue. These decisions remain unexplained, and in fact, when I looked up “Graceland TV show lighting”, the only results on the first page were about the house’s namesake: Elvis Presley’s Graceland. Anything relevant to the show said nothing about the lighting design, but rather the Christmas lighting for the house in Tennessee.
There are still parts of this show that I would have loved to witness however. For instance, in Season 2, Charlie is pregnant with Briggs’ baby. This plot point carries on to the first half of Season 3 where she debates getting an abortion in order to keep her job, or moving out in order to be a mother. She really wants to be the mother, but at the same time, she knows her job isn’t done yet. In Season 3, Charlie is at the abortion clinic, but decides to leave the waiting room. Instead, she lies to everyone so she can still work while waiting out this pregnancy. During a mission abroad however, she gets drugged with something hardcore to the point where she knows deep down that her baby is dead. What I mostly looked forward to, out of each storyline, is how this pregnancy would have played out if there was going to be a baby by the end of the season. In my own personal opinion, I think that not deciding to kill the baby off would have helped save the show. Not that I’m pro-life or anything, but part of why people watch dramas is to see the major personal stages and how they help the characters grow. Completely throwing this baby away seems like a slap in the face for those of us who actually wanted to see DeMarco and Briggs tackling parenting.
One of the biggest quirks of talking about pregnancy is the clothes that often come with the territory. Maternity clothes tend to show warmth and is easy on the eyes in order to portray the comfort of the fetus’ home. While Charlie never got to wear maternity clothes, she did have a tendency to wear baggy sweaters and comfortable jeans. Starting with Season 1, the clothes which the residents at Graceland wore around the house were typical beachside attire–outfits that one would wear if they had access to the beach 24/7. Like I said: Spring Breakers life. Mike Warren however, started out with nice shirts and pants, but as he grew more comfortable living in a place where he literally faced the Pacific Ocean every single day, his clothes gave off a more frat brother attitude.
There was also a question of casting: while the main characters started off with decent chemistry onset, the guests on Seasons 2 and 3 don’t seem to want to be there. Perhaps it was just how I felt about each actor, but seeing people like Peter Stormare (who I had previously seen in “The Lost World: Jurassic Park”) making his appearance, it was awkward. They are all fine actors, but watching some of them trying to find their footing in this show, despite that it was a gig that would last a few episodes, was a somewhat uncomfortable thing to witness. It is possible however, to believe that this feeling stemmed from my knowledge of their previous work (in my case, Stormare) and thinking, “Seriously? You couldn’t find a better job?” This belief supports the argument that Season 3 was the worst that ever came out from that show, making you grateful that it was cancelled, even before Jeff Eastin got a second chance.
As if deciding to bring in Peter Stormare was not the only questionable casting choice for Graceland Season 3, at the end of Season 2, Charlie almost loses her baby when she is tied to a chair and beaten by a British man named Germaine Marsden. The actor who plays him is Russ Bain. In Season 3, Charlie went on a manhunt throughout the first half of the season, looking for Germaine–she was searching for payback for putting her child’s life in danger. Once the man makes his next appearance, he is played by another British actor named Hal Ozsan. Again, there is no news coverage as far as this change goes: what happened with Russ Bain, why Hal Ozsan turned out to be the better choice, etc.
Similarly, the recasting decisions may have been due to inconvenience–scheduling conflicts, better actors for the job, even cast disinterest… For example, during the show’s swan song, Dale Jakes (Brandon Jay McLaren) has a monologue that takes the audience back to the days before the show even started. The actors who played his ex-wife and son in the show when his personal storyline ran in Season 2 were Ciera Payton and Chanceller Smith, respectively. In the Season 3 flashback however, uncredited actors who are clearly neither of those actors. In this case, the choice to recast seems more acceptable because they do not have any lines, and they are only seen. Looking at both sets of actors, they look much like their predecessors, so as long as their physical similarities match, the recasting is understood.
The two men who played Germaine Marsden, however, look nothing alike. Bain looks like an older fellow you would avoid like the Plague in a club while Ozsan has a certain devilish charm to his personality. While I do prefer the latter because I have seen some of his work on Melissa & Joey and Young & Hungry for example, this specific recasting will always remain a mystery. That is, until Jeff Eastin or someone else who worked on the show reveals everything in an interview when they do a public autopsy of the show.
If you have never seen Graceland, but plan on watching it, my advice to you is to stick to the first two seasons. Then, read about the resolving events at the beginning of Season 3. Following this story was an exhausting ride, but only in the final stretch. Seasons 1 and 2 are worth watching, but as far as Season 3 is concerned, let’s just say that Jeff Eastin jumped the gun here: USA Network was not quite ready for the darker tones of television drama, as he had presumed.
I made that meme a long time ago, but wasted half an hour looking for it. I have no clue what happened to it so I made another one instead.
He gonna do it?
The Reviewer's Revue 