Journal Entry #26

Tonight, my sister and I finished a show that we had been following for the past couple
of weeks called Gracepoint. This ten-episode series had an interesting idea at its core, exploring
how the murder of twelve year-old boy Danny Solano affected the titular small town of
Gracepoint. It could have been better in execution, but it was overall an entertaining watch;
and considering that the entire show mostly consists of people talking or yelling at each other,
that could be considered an achievement in and of itself. The show doesnt really have a central
protagonist, and switches between the viewpoints of multiple characters in the town. Good
grief, there are so many characters in Gracepoint, especially considering the series short length.
We have detectives Emmet Carver and Ellie Miller (the characters who are closet to being the
actual protagonists), Dannys parents Mark and Beth Solano, Beths mother, Dannys sister, her
boyfriend, Marks co-worker, a woman Mark had an affair with, Ellies husband, her son, the
local priest, a psychic, the threatening and intrusive Susan Wright, several reporters, and a
kayak/bike rental shop owner and wildlife recorder that served as a mentor to Danny. And
those are just the characters in the main cast. Because the series is so drawn out (yes, at only
10 episodes), much on the intrigue in each episode comes from the interactions between the
characters. However, the series does also have a tendency to abuse the use of coincidences,
using them often to add more drama to the plot. Another downside was that the plot of the
individual episodes could be somewhat predictable at times. New evidence or evidence found
at the end of the last episode leads the detectives to suspect another member of the cast, they
question this person, likely detain them, find new evidence that eliminates any suspicion of said
person or explains previous strange behavior, he or she is released, and new evidence is found
that will further the case. This structure is used in more than half of the episodes in the series,
and even when its not, the series puts most of its plot into the final episode. I wont say who
the killer was, but the big reveal seems like it came kind of out of nowhere. I guess that the
difficult part in writing a murder mystery is making the killers motivations and methods
believable but not too obvious, and Gracepoint didnt even come close to perfectly striking that
balance.