Photo Courtesy of USA Network
Graceland, Season 1, Episode 11: “Happy Endings”
Written by: Joe Henderson and Andrew Colville
Directed by: Sanford Bookstaver
Airs Thursdays at 10 pm (ET) on USA
On this week’s Graceland, Mike and Paige openly work against Briggs, DJ volunteers his services to a desperate Briggs, Charlie breaks from the team, and Johnny proves he’s not as clueless as he lets on.
Despite being the first season’s penultimate episode, “Happy Endings” put a halt to the past few episodes’ rapid pace so each character could receive a nice chunk of screen time in preparation for next week’s finale. While it’s nice to see the whole cast get equal story for once, the episode felt a little disappointing–like a filler episode rather than the second to last.
Most frustrating is Briggs himself–not only does he selfishly lure DJ into his career-ruining mistakes, but he also chooses the cowardly way out of his predicament, thus negating DJ’s help completely. As far as leading men go, Mike’s proven over and again that he’s the better of the pair, and Briggs’s season-long unraveling has only served to reinforce Mike’s honorable nature (even though he’s openly embraced being a mole).
Of course, Briggs’s fall led to one of the season’s funniest moments: pregnant Paige. Though she wasn’t around for long–only for the span of a failed questioning–she was one of the episode’s most memorable highlights. This–along with DJ’s “Are ninjas attacking the house?” when Briggs woke him in the middle of the night with a hand over his mouth–easily balanced the heaviness of Charlie’s interactions with her suspicious, weapon-packing Mexican counterpart.
Though Graceland‘s exerting a lot of energy into making us suspect Charlie’s new partner is actually Jangles, he might simply be a red herring. With how obviously suspicious Agent Rafael Cortes was this week (even Johnny refuses to trust the man), it’d be a relief if he wasn’t Jangles, if only to prove Graceland isn’t steeping to weak and predictable storytelling–something it’s repeatedly shown itself to be better than.
Overall, a surprisingly-uneventful episode, though it nicely set up next week’s season finale.
Last episode’s review can be found here.
Ashley Laggan