The Gracepoint season 1 premiere introduced a dark case that the two detectives played by David Tennant and Anna Gunn will be dealing with over the next nine episodes.
The show begins with the crime itself, though viewers only see Danny about to fall — not why he did it. Young Danny, played by Nikolas Filipovic, stands on the edge of a cliff in the town of Gracepoint as one of his hands is bleeding. We then jump to his home the following morning, where his mother, Beth, notices that he forgot to bring his lunchbox to school.
Meanwhile, Detective Ellie Miller (Anna Gunn) returns from her work break to bad news: Her new promotion was given to Detective Carver (David Tennant), and he started the gig a week ago. Naturally, she’s furious — but soon her mind is about to be preoccupied with a greater issue.
Beth goes to her son’s soccer practice to learn that Danny isn’t there. She begins to panic, calling her husband Marc and others who may know of his whereabouts. As she makes her way back into town, she comes up to a big traffic jam caused by an investigation into a body found at the beach.
Beth’s heart begins to race as she runs down the road and on to Gracepoint’s North Beach, where she tries to get close to the accident scene.
It’s there that Beth, her friend Detective Ellie, and Detective Carver converge as they stand in shock near Danny’s body. Notably, this is the first time that the two detectives are meeting. They don’t confirm to Beth that the body is Danny’s.
And so, the investigation begins. An investigator at the top of the cliff comes to the conclusion that it wasn’t a suicide based on the position of the body — someone only wanted to make it look like he had jumped.
With the body’s identity confirmed, Ellie and Carver go to Danny’s home and break the news to his parents, grandmother, and sister that he died. After a few moments of mourning, they begin trading information. His father wants to see the body, and when Ellie takes him to the police station, he gives a heartfelt speech to Danny. He vows to find whoever did this.
Carver and Ellie’s first interview is with someone who spent a lot of time with Danny: Jack, a kayak and bike renter who also keeps track of the sea life in town. Danny visited all this week to participate in keeping track of the sea creatures.
Next we’re introduced to Owen, a journalist at the town’s paper The Gracepoint Journal and Ellie’s nephew. The young reporter arrives at the scene but fails to pull a statement out of the detectives. However, he notices Danny’s sister Chloe at the beach leaving a teddy bear, which leads him to believe it was Danny who died. Owen tries to get confirmation from Ellie, but she refuses. He tweets the news anyway, and naturally it starts to spread. When Carver finds out, he’s livid, and Ellie comes clean about what happened.
Owen later apologizes to the detectives, but the damage has already been done. Forced into a corner, Carver makes a statement to the media about who they found.
Meanwhile, a journalist a good distance away from Gracepoint named Rene Clemens tries to cover the case for her paper because of Carver’s history with the town of Rosemont. Her boss says no, but she makes the trip up anyway and gets in touch with Owen for a hotel recommendation. To make matters worse, she lacks a heart — we see her steal the teddy bear that Chloe left at the scene.
At home, Ellie struggles to tell her son Tom about Danny’s death. After she does, Tom immediately grabs his cell phone and deletes all of the text messages he had with Danny. He also goes on his computer and clears his computer’s hard drive. What could he be hiding?
The episode concludes with some new information: A camera on Gracepoint’s Main Street captured Danny skateboarding on his own down the street. It earns Ellie a compliment from Carver because she was able to pull this important footage.
After seeing the video, Carver makes a new statement to the press and vows to catch whoever did this as numerous shots of potential suspects appear in front of viewers.
Who do you think killed Danny?
Viewers who’ve seen Broadchurch should remember that showrunners say there is a new killer in Gracepoint.
At one point during the episode Beth starts to doubt her own husband because he didn’t check on Danny the night of his death. He also has a mysterious answer about his own whereabouts that night — his only excuse is that he was working.
Of the people who were featured tonight, it’s Danny’s father who stood out most as a potential killer. It’s probably too early to assume that he’s the murderer, and more suspects will come to light in the episodes ahead.