Round Two: Perpetual Grace, LTD

Perpetual Grace, LTD: Season 1, Episode 2 “Orphan Comb Death Fight” (B+)

This show really surprised me with its involving and creative pilot, and I was equally into its second installment. While both James and I might have expected some clarity from the real Paul about his past, or likelier that he would end up being impossible to reach at just the moment that Paul needed some help. Instead, James got to talk to Terry O’Quinn’s Walker, Texas Ranger who didn’t care that he was in New Mexico and who had never heard of Chuck Norris. This show likes to present odd circumstances and just let them sit before characters point out their absurdity, with more unreasonable suggestions like James finding a rattlesnake so that an emergency room would cut off his ankle bracelet just being made bluntly, moments after Hector said that he got his girlfriend an ankle bracelet too. I don’t know what to make of the Lenscrafters guy other than that Byron is evidently just as much of a con man as both Paul and James, and James continues to have an unusual rapport with the kid who now finds that all sounds and all light really hurt his head. The relationship that really wowed me in this episode was the one being built between Hector and Byron. Starting with Byron’s narration demonstrates that he has a plan and that he knows exactly what he’s doing, and the situation appears to have ended in exactly the way he desired. Telling Hector that he needed to exercise when he was given time to do so was just the start of his brutal crushing of Hector’s spirit, and guessing the ending of his novel right away led only to harsher wordplay evisceration of everything about Hector’s character. I don’t think they’re going to make it to the supermax facility.