Grace and Frankie: The Dinner
May 13, 2015 6:06 PM - Season 1, Episode 3 - Subscribe
While Grace and Frankie are at loose ends as to what to do with themselves, their husbands have the kids over to an awkward dinner.
Grace and Frankie are at loose ends, especially after Grace bails out of her entire social calendar. Grace tries to ask Brianna for her old job at her old company that she retired from back, but Brianna says no because then nobody will listen to her. Also, she's taking Grace's face off of the beauty product packaging. Frankie's having a shitty time painting and inadvertently tours an old folks home. Both of them are kind of losing their shit and decide to go out for cigarettes. Grace loses it in the supermarket when they're not being waited on and yells that she refuses to be irrelevant. Frankie, on the other hand, considers it a superpower and steals the cigs. You can't see her, you can't stop her.
Unbeknownst to the wives, the husbands are having the kids over for dinner--a fact that the kids keep from them. Awkwardness ensues, especially between Coyote and Mallory, because Mallory had been married for seven years before Coyote was pleading on her lawn for her to not marry Mitch. The booze has been hidden and the phones have been confiscated, leaving Mallory to snarf the booze-filled chocolates and demand that the dads either give her her her phone or booze. They tell her where the booze is hidden. Brianna and Bud hide in the kitchen and comment on the awkwardness of the situation. Suffice it to say, it's too soon to act like everything's normal, and Bud has enough, takes back his layer cake and leaves it for the moms, who have no idea where it came from.
Grace and Frankie are at loose ends, especially after Grace bails out of her entire social calendar. Grace tries to ask Brianna for her old job at her old company that she retired from back, but Brianna says no because then nobody will listen to her. Also, she's taking Grace's face off of the beauty product packaging. Frankie's having a shitty time painting and inadvertently tours an old folks home. Both of them are kind of losing their shit and decide to go out for cigarettes. Grace loses it in the supermarket when they're not being waited on and yells that she refuses to be irrelevant. Frankie, on the other hand, considers it a superpower and steals the cigs. You can't see her, you can't stop her.
Unbeknownst to the wives, the husbands are having the kids over for dinner--a fact that the kids keep from them. Awkwardness ensues, especially between Coyote and Mallory, because Mallory had been married for seven years before Coyote was pleading on her lawn for her to not marry Mitch. The booze has been hidden and the phones have been confiscated, leaving Mallory to snarf the booze-filled chocolates and demand that the dads either give her her her phone or booze. They tell her where the booze is hidden. Brianna and Bud hide in the kitchen and comment on the awkwardness of the situation. Suffice it to say, it's too soon to act like everything's normal, and Bud has enough, takes back his layer cake and leaves it for the moms, who have no idea where it came from.
Eh...it wasn't the world's best episode, but I was fine with it. But I suspect a lot of it is me comparing it to Transparent, a show that everyone else loves but I thought was mostly awful because (a) I really couldn't stand any of the kids and (b) the kids took up 3/4 of the show. This show has a bigger cast to deal with, albeit they do seem to pair up a lot, but at least I am fine with the kids. Especially Bud and Brianna. And I'm not normally very much into Ethan Embry and tend to think he comes off as a doof, but it's working here.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:59 PM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:59 PM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
Not a great episode but I did like that Brianna felt it was a little soon for them to be sitting down to dinner as if nothing had happened. I didn't buy Grace and Frankie being ignored because they're elderly--especially not those two--but TVLand* is different from reality.
*Whatever happened to TVLand? That's been gone, yeah?
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 7:18 PM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
*Whatever happened to TVLand? That's been gone, yeah?
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 7:18 PM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
I burst into messy tears at the end of this episode (and am tearing up now) because dammit, no-one gave me the cake. It's definitely a bridge episode in a show that's meant to be binge-watched, but there's a nice length to the scenes where because it's a show with a 13-episode order and no weekly run time, they can let the scenes run for as long as they need to breathe, rather than cutting to find a certain time or beat before ad breaks.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 12:58 AM on May 14, 2015
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 12:58 AM on May 14, 2015
Lily Tomlin is killing it on this show, I think, running circles around basically everyone else. I'm enjoying the writing and the story and Tomlin's acting and seeing Tomlin and Fonda together so much, and Fonda is occasionally great, and as jenfullmoon (whom I'm agreeing with a lot lately!) says above at least the kids seem as though they might be found in real life an are likeable.
I still have some trouble buying the two male leads as a couple, and I don't know whether that's my personal problem because I can't grok Jeb Bartlett sleeping with Jack McCoy or whether the actors are failing to sell it. Maybe as we learn more of their history and backstory I will become more of a believer. I'm enjoying this, though. I'm glad it got made!
posted by onlyconnect at 9:26 AM on May 14, 2015 [5 favorites]
I still have some trouble buying the two male leads as a couple, and I don't know whether that's my personal problem because I can't grok Jeb Bartlett sleeping with Jack McCoy or whether the actors are failing to sell it. Maybe as we learn more of their history and backstory I will become more of a believer. I'm enjoying this, though. I'm glad it got made!
posted by onlyconnect at 9:26 AM on May 14, 2015 [5 favorites]
Most def. My favorite Tomlin bit so far in the series is her battle with her painting, at one point pretending to walk away to lull it into a false sense of security then pouncing!
posted by Mogur at 4:55 PM on May 14, 2015
posted by Mogur at 4:55 PM on May 14, 2015
Tomlin has been killing it for decades and it's always bothered me how punitively and dismissively she's been treated by an industry that owes her a huge debt, simple because she's a woman who tells it like it is. She is a brilliant comedian and should be as famous and discussed and deconstructed as Carlin or Pryor, but when you hear people rattle off lists of game-changing comedians, she is routinely omitted and the list is inevitably all men.
posted by LuckySeven~ at 12:48 AM on May 19, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by LuckySeven~ at 12:48 AM on May 19, 2015 [5 favorites]
Also, as a gay woman. It blew my mind to learn I think last year when she got married that she was gay, because she was one of my childhood-adolescent crushes who I knew I wasn't supposed to find attractive because wrong gender/sexuality and Lily Tomlin wasn't 'pretty' anyway, and it turns out she was really does have it all because she's just so -well, teenage crushes do last a lifetime it appears.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 2:23 AM on May 19, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 2:23 AM on May 19, 2015 [3 favorites]
Apart from the whole thing with their ex-husbands living together, in this episode Grace and Frankie are like Edina and Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous, except sadder and older (and older should have nothing to do with it, like everyone is saying), and Grace being much less tolerant of Frankie than Pats was of Eddie.
I'm also fairly sure Eddie's ex-husband was also gay, come to think of it.
posted by tracicle at 1:09 PM on May 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'm also fairly sure Eddie's ex-husband was also gay, come to think of it.
posted by tracicle at 1:09 PM on May 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
And I know the very last lines were a cheap laugh, but I laughed all the same because my mother and I have the same joke.
posted by tracicle at 1:12 PM on May 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by tracicle at 1:12 PM on May 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
Who does the cover of The Passenger at the end of the episode?
posted by gingerbeer at 8:47 PM on May 30, 2015
posted by gingerbeer at 8:47 PM on May 30, 2015
Thank you!
posted by gingerbeer at 10:05 PM on May 30, 2015
posted by gingerbeer at 10:05 PM on May 30, 2015
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posted by Etrigan at 6:45 PM on May 13, 2015