Has Graceland Gotten Any More Addictive In Season 2?

Show: Graceland.

Premiered: June 2013.

Why Was It Made? As discussed in the course of my remarks on Royal Pains yesterday, USA built its brand on "blue sky" shows -- sunny series about attractive people in quirky jobs, with few multi-episode-spanning storylines. Procedurals with a twist, if you will. And apparently you will, because USA shows have a lot of brand loyalty. Graceland was marketed as a much darker, morally complex take on the USA formula: it revolves around dreamboat FBI agent Mike Warren (procedural!) joining a somewhat clandestine team of cute law enforcement officials from various agencies -- Customs, DEA, etc. -- who all live together in a drug dealer's seized Malibu mansion (twist!). What Mike's roomies didn't know in Season 1 was that he'd been sent into the house to investigate fellow agent Paul Briggs, suspected of being dirty (dark!).

Why Didn't I Watch? After getting through the first five or six, I finally got cop-show fatigue and moved on to more Ray Donovan-y pastures -- which was, at best, a lateral move. You know how it is. Summer!

Why Give It A Shot? The promo I kept seeing last week during USA's "Benson In Danger" SVU marathon (which I watched for a tight seven hours in my Austin hotel room -- thanks, USA!) gave me a pretty solid recap of what I missed when I quit. Long story short: Briggs killed Prince Oberyn. THAT DUDE JUST CANNOT CATCH A BREAK. Anyway, it's summer again, so why not.

What Aspects Of The Latest Episode Would Seem To Invite Further Viewing? Aaron Tveit and Daniel Sunjata, who play Warren and Briggs (respectively), are still good-looking, and the clash between their approaches to law enforcement -- Briggs is a loose cannon, Warren is a boy scout -- still provides some interesting conflict. And the house -- the titular Graceland -- is pure, uncut real estate porn. Every room is Pinterest-ready.

What Aspects Of The Latest Episode Discourage Further Viewing? The cop stuff still isn't that compelling to me, as you might have guessed based on the fact that I got to the set design in Sentence 2 of what I like about the show. After leaving Graceland, Mike was assigned to Laredo, where he apparently stumbled sideways into an actual smuggling operation involving passenger buses entering the U.S. from Mexico, and now he's been granted a team to investigate how far this scheme has spread -- as far as L.A., apparently. And you'll never guess who his team is! Yes you will, it's everyone who lives at the house. Mike's already pissed them off by calling them "burnouts," and now this little pisher -- who is younger and less experienced than a bunch of them -- is going to be bossing them around; we can probably all see the pettiness that will result from this coming from a mile away. Also, Mike seems to be in a love triangle with Graceland resident Paige and D.C. girlfriend Vera (and no, it's not some cougar -- just the world's youngest Vera). Cops AND predictable romantic "intrigue"? Bleh.

Final Verdict: Under any other circumstances, I might be bored enough to keep this on the DVR for a few more episodes. But USA moved it opposite Catfish, plus I'm supposed to be working my way through Fringe, so it's a hard pass for me.