Grace and Frankie: perfect chemistry among veteran actors in their prime

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/may/08/grace-and-frankie-jane-fonda-lily-tomlin

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What’s the name of the show? Grace and Frankie.

When does it premiere? All 13 episodes are available for streaming on Netflix.

What is this show? Grace (Jane Fonda), a snooty type-A Wasp, and Frankie (Lily Tomlin), a former hippie who burns sage at the drop of a hat, are forced to live together when their husbands (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) leave them so that they can get married to each other.

What’s the show’s pedigree? Friends’ Marta Kaufman and Howard J Morris wrote and created the show.

What happens in the premiere? Frenemies Frankie and Grace meet up for dinner with their husbands, Sol and Robert, who have been law partners for decades. The men tell their wives that they are gay, have been having an affair for 20 years, and want to get married. After both women justifiably freak out at their spouses, they take refuge in the beach house that the two couples own jointly and that has been the men’s love nest for years. Grace is trying to get Robert to make Sol kick Frankie out of the house, but the ladies end up taking muscle relaxants, drinking peyote on the beach and bonding over their mutual sadness.

Is this show any good? Have you ever had a slice of apple pie that was absolutely delicious and thought, “Gosh, if this pie just had a dash of nutmeg in the filling, it would be the absolute best apple pie I ever had in my whole damn life”? That is what watching Grace and Frankie is like. The chemistry between the former 9 to 5 co-stars and real-life friends Fonda and Tomlin is absolutely incredible, the show is uniquely original in that it focuses on two women of a certain age, and there are multiple LOL moments each episode. However, it doesn’t climb up into greatness the way that Amazon’s Transparent does, even though the shows are very similar.

Vulture’s Margaret Lyons says the show is trapped in the wrong format. She argues that it’s an old-fashioned sitcom trying to be a prestige comedy and is therefore failing at both. I agree with that assessment, but think it is something a little bit different. Grace and Frankie doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. Does it want to focus on the growing friendship between two women? Or maybe it wants us to think about the delights, disappointments, and indignities of our twilight years? Could it be that this is a dramedy about a blended family trying to make sense of what happens when their dads turn out to be gay? It wants to be all of those things at once and so doesn’t have the time to go deeply into any of them.

There is a great moment in the first episode where Grace is talking to her husband and taking off her makeup, hair extensions, and the little clips on her face that give her a surgery-free facelift. She says: “It would have been easier if you just died.” Fonda delivers the line amazingly well and Sheen reacts with a perfect sad demurral, but then the show backs away from such deep and complicated emotion for jokes about old ladies doing drugs and talking about sex (which, the Betty White doctrine teaches us, is always funny).

It’s not the comedy that’s the problem here. Tuning in is worth your time if only to see Fonda scream: “If anyone is going to be sitting on Ryan Gosling’s face, it’s gonna be me!” These are two veteran actors still in their prime and creating two unique, multi-dimensional characters of an age that is usual invisible to Hollywood. There is plenty of fresh material to mine for these two, but Grace and Frankie just needs to decide which mine it wants to claim as its own.

Which characters will you love? Fonda and Tomlin are an absolute delight, but this is actually more of an ensemble show that you might imagine. Sheen and Waterston are both great in their roles trying to orchestrate finally coming out while working to keep their respective families together. All of their adult children are well matched to the veterans, but Frankie’s son Coyote (Ethan Embry), who is fresh out of rehab, and Grace’s difficult daughter Brianna (June Diane Raphael), who took over her mother’s beauty products empire, stand out even in this cast that is packed with talent.

Which characters will you hate? Know what, there isn’t one person yet that is dislikable, which is very good news.

What’s the best thing about it? I am especially tickled by Frankie’s relationship with her phone. Not only is the font set comically large (it’s funny because it’s true) but she has the normal difficulties using an iPhone that anyone who lived through Watergate does. She knows how to take videos of herself and realizes how important texting is, but she just can’t figure out how to shut the damn thing off. The best moment sees her trying to hang up on her ex by slamming the phone on the table, and you hear him saying “Hello?” because it hasn’t worked. This isn’t the equivalent of saying: “Look, old people can’t use technology.” It’s much more layered than that, showing how people with AARP cards are trying to thrive in a world that is alien and sometimes downright hostile to them.

What’s the worst thing about it? There is a subplot about Coyote being in love with Grace’s other daughter, Mallory (Brooklyn Decker), that just seems like one too many relationships between these two families for one program.

Should you watch this show? If you don’t, Tomlin and Fonda will kidnap you and tie you to a bed and leave you there. They don’t even need Dolly Parton’s help.