The best version of Grace and Frankie is a thoughtful meditation on aging, love and intimacy, expressed within an ill-fitting network sitcom guise. The worst version maintains that second part, but doesn’t have quite so much on its mind.
On paper, the Netflix half-hour is fashioned as an agreeable, breezy situation comedy. It comes from Marta Kauffman and Howard J. Morris, the co-creators of Friends and Home Improvement, respectively. It stars legendary funny-lady Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, who in her career resurgence has flexed her comedic muscles with aplomb. And its premise -- two polar-opposites are forced to come together when their husbands announce they’re in love with each other -- promises the kind of stereotyping and extravagance that network TV comedy has long delivered.
Such ingredients don’t quite explain what Grace and Frankie results as, however. What’s made clear rather quickly is that this is a series with higher aspirations and a more flexible tone than what was generally expected. Its intended trick, then, is pretty neat: to take the subject matter very seriously, in the way it affects its characters and what it says about the culture at large. At the very least, Grace and Frankie opens with a level of ambition and potential that it, perhaps, hadn’t initially been given enough credit for.
And yet what’s also made immediately evident is the inability of Kauffman and Morris to pull such a balance off. As veteran sitcom writers, their methods are clear, and Grace and Frankie is consistently trapped in an aesthetic somewhere between unassuming network comedy and dark cable half-hour. The humor is especially trying, despite the might of Tomlin and Fonda. Tomlin’s new-age hippie is drawn expectedly broadly, as is Fonda’s tightly-knit career woman -- while these characters may have worked within a more traditional sitcom, here their exaggerated and heightened qualities grate. The material begs a deeper and more careful understanding of these women and their shared predicament; yet the only way to describe the clashing of the show’s serio-comic stylings with its stock archetypes would be, well, awkward.
It’s a shame, because within the mess that is Grace and Frankie’s first season is a show of potential and uniqueness. Despite unwarranted tonal shifts, both Tomlin and Fonda are good enough to settle on a believable balance in the show’s subtler moments. As Frankie (Tomlin) and Grace (Fonda) look at each other, forced to confront the rest of their lives in a way they never expected to, there’s an emotional and thematic drive to the show that legitimately works. Whenever Kauffman and Morris dabble in Frankie’s earthy medicinal habits or Fonda’s obsessive tendencies -- that is, when they try to be funny -- they’re far less successful. Despite the fact that these are sitcom writers, their fashioning of Grace and Frankie as some pseudo-genre mash-up actually renders the drama far more natural than the attempts at humor.
Things are better integrated between the closeted spouses in question, Robert (Martin Sheen) and Sol (Sam Waterston). In their own seasonal arc, the show’s potential and power is realized. Their types are softer and less rigid than their spousal counterparts, and as such they fit better into the show’s vision. Throughout the season, Kauffman and Morris explore several ideas intriguingly specific to their show: Sol and Robert are learning to live as themselves after decades of being closeted, contending with having been forced to leave (and hurt) people they truly love due to their sexuality, and understanding how to negotiate an official, committed relationship after decades of operating in secret. In the season’s sixth episode, Sheen breaks down at a funeral by admitting, in tears, “I miss her.” It’s a stinging moment of acting, and one of the show’s best-written ones as well -- the intermingling feelings of love, attraction and intimacy collide with relatable messiness here. Similarly, Sol’s inability to leave Frankie -- his weirdo-in-crime -- behind always feels true, and Waterston and Tomlin sell their unavoidable chemistry with gusto. Sheen and Waterston are so natural, sensitive, reluctant and humane together that their scenes are the show’s true, enduring pleasure, even as Tomlin and Fonda have isolated moments of brilliance. The fact is that this side of the show is more suited to its overall tonal and thematic template.
And yet, if only it were that simple. Kauffman and Morris double-down on their structural inconsistencies by dedicating frequent C-storylines to the couples’ children. On the Sol/Frankie side is a pair of adopted sons, Coyote (Ethan Embrie) and Bud (Baron Vaughn). The latter is a lawyer, the former a recovering drug addict; neither have any real definition, and there’s a certain smarminess to their characters (or maybe performances -- it’s hard to tell) which doesn’t fit at all with the rest of the show. The first half of the season tentatively and cryptically explores the unwavering attraction between Coyote and Mallory (Brooklyn Decker), the family-oriented daughter of Grace and Robert who doesn’t make much of an impression, either. For maybe a minute per episode, it’s understandable why these characters are independently occupying space in the series. The choice to expand the narrative to the rest of the family is interesting, and there’s a way to make it work within such a different, and yet such a real, “modern family” tale. But these characters are, to be blunt, bland; they add next-to-nothing to the show, none of the three actors particularly strong and the characters neither amusing nor enlightening. The exception to the quickly-established rule is Brianna (June Diane Raphael), Grace and Robert’s other daughter. The difference might lie in Raphael’s presence as an actress, but Brianna is a character with grit and definition. The same cannot be said for the others.
Credit where it’s due, Kauffman and Morris seem to grasp what does and doesn’t work here as the season progresses. The sexual tension between Mallory and Coyote is all-but-dropped, and all three children not named Brianna gradually fade to the background. But what takes their place is even stranger -- Brianna gets a few episodes with her own mini-arc. While engaging and well-executed, she seems to exist in an entirely different show, whether it’s her exploring her love life or her career as head of the company once led by Grace herself. As Grace and Frankie works out its qualitative kinks, its structural and tonal balances emerge as more confounding than ever. Each episode is written as a sitcom’s is, with two-to-three mini-storylines tentatively resolved by the half-hour’s end. But the structure doesn’t mesh with what’s placed within it: a standard episode of Grace and Frankie engages with longform character work and features extended stretches of heavier material. The episodes are parceled out in such a rigid, specific way; there’s an impenetrable wall of artifice preventing these characters and their stories from breathing.
Pared down to its ideas and performances, Grace and Frankie is a commendable episodic. Given the perceptiveness demonstrated by the show’s writing staff, its potential is similarly enticing. But there remains a lasting impediment to the show’s creative success. As realized by sitcom veterans, but with the ambition of something more thoughtful and reflective, Grace and Frankie is stuck in a tonal no man’s land, veering aggressively and inelegantly between poignant drama and slapstick comedy. Without the nuance or intentionality of Mom, a series with a similar aestheticized ambition, this show is as weighed down in its seriousness as it is in its humor. Despite its mature understanding of love, sex and intimacy, it thus fails to convey any these ideas with consistent emotional acuteness.
Because while Grace and Frankie would really like to convince its audience as a B-level sitcom, the hard truth is that by hinting at a more complex and risky series, it actually ends up as something disarmingly, blandly worse.
Grade: C