Why You Should Watch Graceland
Streaming link for Graceland (probably just for American IP address, though).
Graceland is a show on USA. It's a cop show (well, FBI show), although it's not a procedural.
Yes, the story of me watching TV is a long list of Cop Shows I Have Broken Up With, a list that just so happens to include White Collar, which shares the same parents with Graceland. So I'm very aware that my "this is soooo much fun, this show is so smart, wheeeee!" reaction could get, you know, disrupted by Nazis.
This is a hazard I'm aware of.
But, and I say this with a little bit of nervous tension: this might be the first show in a long time where the show I'm watching? Is the show they're making. I am 80% sure this is the case.
This doesn't really happen to me. Ever. Spoilers &etc behind cut.
So, here be spoilers and all that, proceed with, well, whatever your opinion on spoilers is. (I'm in such huge favor of them; if I hadn't been spoiled for a certain part of the show, I probably would have stopped watching completely. This is because YES PLEASE WARN ME FOR VIOLENCE TO EYES SO I CAN AVOID THAT PART.)
Graceland is a show about six federal agents living in a safe house together. The safe house and name of the show are Graceland, because I guess they really wanted to give themselves headaches with talking about the show and buying URLs and all. Whatever. Four of those agents are FBI, one is customs, and one is DEA. At the beginning of the show, there were two more agents, both DEA. They got transfered out of the house.
It's sort of an ensemble show, but it has two main characters: Mike Warren (Aaron Tveit, the only white dude in the main cast) and Paul Briggs (Daniel Sunjata). Needless to say about an American tv show, especially one on USA, everyone in this show is ridiculously pretty.
Mike Warren is the protagonist. He's fresh out of Quantico and graduated top of his class. However, instead of being assigned to DC like he wanted, he's sent to California to be an undercover agent, living in Graceland. His training officer is Paul Briggs.
Mike is canonically VERY SMART, and Briggs is canonically SMARTER THAN HIM. And, shockingly, the show is actually smart enough that they don't both seem like idiots. There is a little carrying of the idiot ball in a couple episodes, but it's not Mike or Briggs doing it. o.O Basically, the show tells us they're both smart and also shows them being smart. IT IS VERY APPARENT HOW LOW MY EXPECTATIONS ARE WHEN I SAY IT LIKE THAT BUT STILL.
Mike is understandably a bit confused about why he was sent out there, and here's where my first "having been spoiled" made me see the show a little differently, because I thought he knew all the first episode why he'd been sent, but he actually finds out at the end. Oops. I thought he was being Bumbly And New on purpose, instead he was just naturally newbie.
But anyway. Mike is the protagonist. Briggs is the antagonist.
Mike is undercover in Graceland to investigate Briggs.
Mike spends far too long in the show trying to get a good answer for WHY he's investigating Briggs, what he's supposed to look for in general. It takes him a while to get a straight answer, and hilariously, the second answer he gets is the correct one.
Because Briggs.
Let me tell you about Briggs.
Briggs is amazing. I want to give Daniel Sunjata so many awards. And I want to give the writers so many awards for MAKING HIM SMART AND CUNNING AND SLY AND ALWAYS TWO STEPS AHEAD. And then more awards to Daniel Sunjata for just playing him so, so, so well.
Briggs's story is, a few years before Graceland, he was living in another safehouse and investigating a drug cartel. Stuff happened and the Bad Guy, known as Jangles in English because that made sense to the FBI apparently (because of jangling keys), got Briggs addicted to heroin, and got Briggs to tell him who the mole was in the drug cartel. Jangles then torched the safe house.
In the source of Briggs's requisite Man Pain, because tv, Briggs's girlfriend was inside and died.
So, apparently, Briggs then decided to start stealing heroin from drug busts. He's shown as using it on the show, and, oh, also selling it under the name Odin Rossi.
The first story Mike gets is made to make him think that Briggs is stealing money. The second is that he's stealing heroin. The third is that Briggs torched the first safe house and killed his training officer, who was a friend of Mike's supervising officer, Juan. (There might have been another one in there, but I don't think so; I watched out of order to begin with but have been doing a lot of canon review.) By this point when Mike finds out, though, he's just so Done with everything that he walks out. (Juan then gets himself killed by Briggs by pretending to be Jangles and surprising Briggs while he's drunk. Idiot ball? Just a bit. He checked out a actual-tape recorder and was recording the whole thing... and didn't tell anyone where he was going or why.)
So, anyway, Mike is investigating Briggs. Meanwhile, Briggs is a master manipulator. Like, epic. His end game is to protect Graceland (and thus protecting his access to various sources) and then to kill Jangles. He basically manipulates things into there being a drug war, just so Jangles will show up, and so Briggs can kill him. (Briggs doesn't kill him, Mike does.)
Meanwhile, Briggs just manipulates the hell out of everything. It's beautiful. But Mike isn't stupid in all this, and it's glorious. Because Mike is all "I don't even know what to believe" and at the end of the season, it's really unclear just how suspicious he still is of Briggs. Because Briggs totally gets himself out of *everything*.
The other characters in the show are fantastic, too. Johnny is great, and I ship him with Mike. Well, I also ship Mike/Briggs, but Mike/Briggs is amazing because it manages to have complex power dynamics every way you look at it (Briggs is Mike's training officer and is also Mike's assignment. Briggs is suspicious of Mike from the start, and Mike needs to be getting Briggs to trust him.), it's just gorgeous. Meanwhile, Mike/Johnny is an awesome "we are friends and actually like each other" pairing. :D
Charlie (what is it with TV shows and trying to convince me that "Charlie" is a really common name for a woman? IT SEEMS LIKE EVERY SHOW I WATCH, THERE'S A WOMAN NAMED CHARLIE. Okay, maybe not every, but is this is a really common name for women now and I'm just missing the trend???) is also fantastic. She's also really suspicious of Briggs (Briggs ends up getting her high... there's extenuating circumstances) and she doesn't know that Mike is undercover. If the two of them had been able to collaborate, maybe they would have been able to get Briggs. Charlie does have a couple idiot ball moments (so does Johnny), but hers actually are kind of necessary for the plot, so there's that.
Paige is the last DEA agent left in the house. She does have some cool stuff, but, I'm sorry, my most enduring image of Paige is her trying hard to get Mike to tell her what's wrong and all that... and as soon as Mike (while in the hospital, recovering from being stabbed) actually tells her, she is all "I can't handle you being a rat" and walks away. But after she has some time to think about it, she helps Mike try to catch Briggs while Briggs is on the run.
And then there's Jakes, who I'M NOT KIDDING, is told by Briggs that he's trying to DESTROY EVIDENCE THAT HE KILLED AN FBI AGENT, and is all "...yeah, fine, whatever" and HELPS HIM and even as it gets deeper, he just totally goes along with all of it, helping Briggs run from when he thinks Mike has the tape. AND THEN THE NEXT EPISODE, it's like Jakes suddenly realizes that, oh, right, there are consequences for that? But then he goes right back to being on Briggs's side. I hope season 2 explores Jakes's backstory, because, seriously, Jakes, wtf.
So that's the main cast, they're great! There's also Juan, who is Mike's training officer and then gets killed when he decides to be stupid, and also Bello, who is a drug/weapons/etc guy and Mike goes undercover as his bodyguard and it is all SO AWESOME (and then Briggs, to keep Mike from maybe finding out that Briggs = Odin, completely blows Mike's cover with Bello, and incidentally NEARLY GETS MIKE KILLED. Good job, Briggs.)
The show is just SO GOOD and SO SMART and works really well, although, um, that bounce house B plot was PAINFULLY BAD. But a;lksjf;laksjdf;lksjd, I love this show, it's a show about power dynamics and manipulation and smart people trying to outsmart each other, and just the Briggs and Mike dynamic is delicious. And the other dynamics are great, too! Mike and Bello is awesome and Mike and Johnny is hilarious and crying-when-Mike-thought-Johnny-was-dead and just KEYSMASH GLEE THIS SHOW IS GREAT! YOU SHOULD WATCH! AND WRITE FIC!
Also, I now have another fandom for Yuletide, which is great! Because my Yuletide fandoms do this thing where they get too big for Yuletide, so wheee, I have another fandom! :D
BUT ANYWAY, THIS SHOW. THIS SHOW IS FULL OF PRETTY PEOPLE MANIPULATING EACH OTHER IT'S EVERYTHING I NEED. Except for the occassional stupid thing happening, it's just really great.
(The eye thing is: there is off-screen violence to Eddie's eye, and afterwards he's mostly wearing an eye patch, and then later Eddie kills himself, but anyway, I have Eye Squick problems and was able to get through things with reminding myself that "it's just makeup and special effects" and the judicious use of a hand over the screen so I don't see. But thankfully the TWOP recaps warned me about it all happening so I was prepared.)
...Um, anyway, that's the show. IT'S REALLY GOOD. I PROMISE. I seriously hope they don't destroy everything good about it in season 2, which starts on June 11. :D
This entry was originally posted at https://lannamichaels.dreamwidth.org/826361.html.