Perpetual Grace, LTD season one recap and review

So Beautiful. So lonely.

Steve Conrad wrote the hell out of this show. Perpetual Grace, LTD was never boring. It put its characters through a lot. It watched them turn into better versions of themselves who became fully capable of creating much worse problems of their own. Sure, there were literary flourishes, but the dialogue was grounded in everyone’s use of the word cool. It could mean almost anything in this show, as it does in real life.

Conrad’s direction made the show, as well. There’s a lot of authenticity in overlapping dialogue. But it’s just as real for people to take pauses before they respond in conversation. If a character needed time to be offended or flustered, that silence wasn’t edited out of the scene. It was part of their character’s reaction. A lot of these pauses are what built the character of James. He needed meaning. He needed to process. Only then could he disregard whatever just got dropped on him with a “cool.”

I also loved the way cinematographer Nicole Hirsch Whitaker (Patriot) shot the show. Quiet, intense two person scenes were often shot out in the open. The shots were wide so you could see the landscape around the actors. It really created a sense of loneliness. Also, it did a lot to create the character of Half Acre, New Mexico. It’s a beautiful place that doesn’t get a lot of visitors. It would love to have more, but it never quite knows what to say to people to keep them around. What a beautiful show to look at.

The Acting

I recapped every episode of Perpetual Grace, LTD on the night the premiered. Every week I felt bad about how little I mentioned the performance of Sir Ben Kingsley. Pa is a part human/part demon form of Pinhead from the Hellraiser films. That character’s original name was Hell Priest, so it tracks. Kingsley grounds this character by making him seem like he’s barely tethered to the ground. You can see the struggle. Like his son, Paul Allen, Pa hovers and scurries out of jack pots and jams. He’s intense and exhibits more indifference than soul. But you get drawn into his presence whenever he’s on screen. It was a masterful performance.

Jimmi Simpson is the glue that holds the ensemble together. James spends a lot of the season in an ambulatory catatonic state. You can see and feel that he hears everything that’s said to him. But he has to repeat to himself in his head for it have any meaning. He transforms subtly, yet completely as his relationship with Glenn gets stronger. It helps him to focus in on his goal of being a silent benefactor for the 11 orphaned daughters. I could feel James come alive. At the same time, I sensed that he knew he only seems to hurt people he interacts with. So, he knows there has to be a distance between himself and others. Jimmi Simpson layered on the sadness and created an unforgettable performance.

Chris Conrad kept New Leaf from becoming wackadoodle. He did that by keeping the character intense and resolute in his goal to avenge his parents at all costs. It informed every emotional choice he made. I could feel it. But, there’s something about that relationship that always seemed toxic. New Leaf spent a lot of time in jail for defending the honor of his parents. When he finally allows Paul Allen to run over his parents bodies to make them unidentifiable, you can see the release in his character. He hugs Paul Allen and James and there’s just some release there. By the way, the fact Chris Conrad pulled off this performance wearing sunglasses the whole time makes his performance more impressive.

Dash Williams has a bright future. Glenn’s transformation come from being shown that there’s a bigger world outside of the pawn shop. From the minute we meet Glenn, he’s a confident, open kid. He just gets stronger and more confident in his own moral compass as the season goes on. Damon Herriman had to be the opposite of Pa. And, he was. But his performance didn’t reflect a looser. Paul Allen was a kid raised by a guy who had all of the answers. But Pa never taught Paul Allen how to know all the answers. So, he ended up being this happy go-lucky guy that would be confused when obvious obstacles arose.