Television: Gracepoint 1.6

In which the focus lands on Jack (Nick Nolte) and we see just how badly the media can screw up a person's life.

Word gets around Gracepoint that Jack is a pedophile, having done jail time for sex with a minor. This leads to people jumping to conclusions: Jack molests the boys in the Wildlife club, Jack killed Danny.

I do wonder at the half-assed job done by the reporters here. Surely they could have looked into the records? Gotten the truth before putting out an article on the subject? Even though Owen says the article he and Renee submitted has been rewritten to make it more sensational . . . If they'd loaded it with facts, there would have been less room to do such damage.

Almost as confusing is Jack's refusal to tell the truth about his past. "It's none of your damn business," he tells Carver, but actually it is Carver's business. It is, in fact, exactly his business.

So by the time Jack tells first the police and then Mark Solano (who saves Jack from an angry mob of townies ready to kill the beast), it's like, Gee, why didn't you just say that in the first place?

Jack's story: He had been a piano teacher and fell in love with a female student who was not quite 17. The father found out and Jack spent two years in prison for it. Then he got out and married the girl. They had a son who died in a car accident when he was nine. It tore the marriage apart. So Jack enjoys spending time with the Wildlife kids because he misses his son. In truth, it's a sad tale. Though it lost some impact for having been told twice in one episode.

Other sinister stirrings: Tom meets Susan at the post office and she offers to let him come walk her dog sometime. And cigarette butts—three of them—at the crime scene point to the idea that someone stood over Danny's body and smoked for a bit. We later see Susan smoking and are led to jump to yet another conclusion.