God seems to be a real hit on television these days. Michael Landon had a hard time getting "Highway To Heaven" on the air, and Della Reese had almost as difficult a time playing "Touched By An Angel", but both series were hits. Blood Sweat & Tears, of course, had done "Lucretia Mac Evil" about "Symphony For The Devil", and the Rolling Stones did "Sympathy For The Devil", both about 40 years ago, so it wasn't like the other side didn't have some representation.

Please allow me to introduce myself,
I'm a man of wealth and taste...

And when Meatloaf did "Bat Out of Hell" and Nora Ephron had John Travolta playing a degenerate Archangel Michael, cavorting with women, dancing to "", the sky didn't fall in. And there was K-Pax, and George Burns playing God, and Bill Murray damned to live the same day, over and over again until he finally gets it right. I suppose we should have expected it.

But anyone who started watching "Saving Grace" last September 17 surely must have been surprised. For the first 20 minutes of the show, officer Annadarko (Holly Hunter) is fully naked, bound face down to the bed. There's a happy face drawn on her back in lipstick, and comments on her butt.

What happens is that the phone rings. I've got to answer that, Annadarko says. No, you don't, her lover says. You don't understand, Annadarko says. I'm an officer. I have to answer that. Her lover freaks out. You're a cop? I'm outta here! And he leaves, in enough hurry that he can't be bothered to untie her. Eventually, her partner shows up, a married man with whom she's having sex on a regular basis, and he's so upset that he leaves without untying her.

You'd think that "Saving Grace" is about sex. Well, either that, or it's a comedy. Indeed, the bondage is either the sexiest funny scene, or else the funniest sex scene, that I've seen in years. In fact, the show is regularly funny, and is regularly sexy, but the gist of the show is that Grace Annadarko is just another one of us regular folks, struggling to make her life work.

Got a heart full of gold on a lonely road, the lyrics go. She said "I don't even think that God can save me" God, it seems, has a different idea. He sends her an angel.

He's not your garden variety angel. He chews tobacco. He has a tattoo. And he doesn't really give Grace answers; instead, he asks her questions, much like a therapist. When she's tied up on the bed, face down, he doesn't untie her. He can't untie her; it's against the rules.

The day before the Murrah building was blown up in Oklahoma City, Grace Annadarko was supposed to babysit her nephew. She couldn't; she was hung over. Consequently, her sister waited a day to do her business at the federal building, and she perished in the explosion. That's a pretty heavy load, to know that your sister had repeated begged you to clean up your act, and yet your continued drinking and whoring around had caused her death.

It's no wonder that she thinks that even God cannot save her, and yet, he persists. I can think of a number of people who would consider "Saving Grace" to be vile, because of the use of rough language and the portrayal of casual sex, and the portrayal of her angel, and yet the pervasive theme is that God loves us anyhow, and doesn't give up on us, even when we're ready to give up on ourselves.

Benjamin Bratt doesn't have any angels displaying their wings in his new show, "The Cleaner". In fact, Bratt's character, William Banks, isn't sure that he believes in God. On the other hand, he made a deal. If God would spare his life, he will give his life to saving others.

Banks was a drug users. He and his team bring other druggies to sobriety, despite the efforts of the druggies, despite the efforts of those who have recruited Banks and paid him to help their family member or friend, despite the efforts of Banks' wife and family.

"I'm trying my hardest", he tells his wife. She says that's not enough, that he was supposed to have tried his hardest before, and at this point he is supposed to have been at the top of his game, succeeding, and providing for his family.

He argues that he has a debt to God, and she isn't having any. It's not clear that his marriage is going to last.

And when another character asks him to pray for a fairly trivial result, he refuses. I don't pray, he says, I just sorta talk to God. And if I did pray, I sure wouldn't waste it on something as minor as that.

"The Cleaner" is actually based on a true story, although it's never clear in this sort of dramatization, just how far they've strayed from the original story. When I was a teenager, I knew that there was fiction, and there was non-fiction, and there was this strange thing called "historical fiction" which was supposed to be fiction set in a true situation. As I've aged, and as I've done a lot more reading and writing, I've learned that there is no such thing as non-fiction.

It's impossible to include every detail, because you don't know every detail, and even if you did, you need to edit out the extraneous in order to make a story possible to follow. You never know, though, just what "grassy knoll" you may be omitting.

Similarly, there's no such thing as fiction. Every character in every story is an amalgam of various people that the author has known. When the protagonist wipes her hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand, it is actually a girl he sat next to in Biology class, and when she squints in the sunlight, it's actually the sun of July 22, 1953, which glared in the author's own eyes.

It seems odd, in a way, that these shows are so much alike, in that the mothers of preteen boys are probably going to disapprove of them watching "Amazing Grace" and approve of them watching "The Cleaner".

But both shows are about God, and our relationship with God, and if the God in these shows doesn't quite look like the one they taught us about in Sunday School, well, maybe that's because God made us in his image, and we're not all spin-and-span ourselves.

I think it was in the 1960s that I read a short story, perhaps in a science fiction magazine. A guy goes up to heaven, expects to be treated wonderfully because he worked very hard to live as the church told him, and he was. But he notices that the reprobate that lives down the way is getting very similar treatment. He did something wonderful that I don't know about? No, say the angels, he was pretty much the bum you think he was. He's headed down to Hell, and I'm staying in Heaven? No, say the angels, everyone goes to Heaven. There's a Hell, but there's nobody there. I get Brand A robe, and he gets Brand B? Possibly, the angels say, but that's all random.

It turns out, in the story, that no matter what kind of life someone leads, no matter what they believe, when they die, they all get treated wonderfully. Boy, is this guy pissed, that he led a good life, and he's not being rewarded accordingly, The angels ask him if he thinks he deserves better than he's getting, that he's earned a place in heaven rather than hell? Why no, the guy answers, of course not, all have come short of the glory of God. Well, then, why shouldn't he get better than he deserves, too?

If I've mangled the story, because of my poor memory, please forgive me, and pretend that someone else wrote a story very much like the one I've described. In any case, it is amazing that God cares about us, the pathetic creatures that we are, at all.

Cross your fingers. Count your blessings. Pray. Or as William does, just talk.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Ben Bratt - Highway To Heaven - Holly Hunter - Saving Grace - television - The Cleaner - Touched By An Angel