After seven episodes, The Grinder finds itself in an odd place. Is it a workplace comedy with a touch of meta commentary, or a weightless sitcom where a celebrity runs rampant over the lives of suburban “normies”? The Grinder doesn’t seem to know which it wants to be, whipping back and forth between genres, tones, and resolutions for a show that doesn’t seem all that committed to any of the points it wants to make. “Buckingham Malice” is the epitome of the young comedy’s identity crisis, a half hour of Dean and Stewart antics that initially feels like a story of growth, but ultimately ends up being about how awesome it is to be famous.
That’s right: throughout “Buckingham Malice,” Stuart is trying to teach Dean how to be a ‘normal’ person after so many years as a famous person, who always gets free meals, car repairs, and socks. When Dean gets a traffic ticket (from guest star Nathan Fielder), his famous mind begins to warp Stewart’s lesson into something more self-indulgent, causing a scene and forcing Stuart to consider whether he should’ve tried to change his brother at all – a realization that comes when he needs his car fixed for a sex vacation with his wife (who spends the episode afraid to fire her new assistant because she’s fired so many, until she fires her at the end anyway).
To say “Buckingham Malice” is all over the map is an understatement. Cutaway jokes of Todd trying to read Armenian names and clips from the fake The Grinder showing Dean in a traditional English court make the episode’s randomness pretty clear. What undercuts all that weirdness, however, is the empty morality at the heart of the story. Outside of Dean learning how to order his own coffee, “Buckingham Malice” seems like it ultimately embraces his narcissism (even Stewart seems to embrace it, too, using his brother’s celebrity to get his car fixed and out of jail in time so that he can head out with Debbie). It’s really Stewart’s behavior that bothers me here: he’s so desperate to get laid, he needs to undercut his brother’s attempts to normalize into society (a journey Stewart himself catalyzed). The whole point of this episode – nay, this show – is about Stewart’s attempts to humble his brother a little bit, introducing him to the life of stability, and trying to embed some sense of morality inside his brother’s empty chest, and it feels “Buckingham Malice” never wants to escape the loop of Dean’s selfish behavior, thus negating the idea of “growth” that comes along with it all.
If there’s anything encouraging about this week’s The Grinder, it’s Debbie, who finally gets to exist as a human outside of the boundaries of her home. However, her character gets the kind of story I find misfitting on a show about personal growth. Her whole attempt to work with her assistant is undercut by the fact her new assistant doesn’t resemble a human being in any way, shape, or form. She’s just a series of heightened comedic tropes about lazy young people, ones The Grinder wants absolutely nothing to do with evolving, even as it tries to show Debbie and Dean struggle with their own personal evolution. Debbie’s assistant has as much nuance as an episode of the fake The Grinder, and it holds the B-story back from being something useful and character-building, which the episode clearly wanted it to be.
The Grinder still has the capacity to be funny on a consistent basis, but in comparison to Grandfathered, the show it airs next to, The Grinder still has a long way to go with its depictions of growth and compassion. Dean’s character remains a lightning rod for obnoxious, melodramatic turns, which the show doesn’t really use to do anything but reinforce qualities of his character we’re abundantly familiar with at this point. That’s fine, but there has to be some nuance, some infinitesimal sense of growth, and while the end of the episode certainly appears to offer it when Dean goes back into jail, the 21 minutes preceding it (led by Stewart’s rejection of his own theory) continue to undersell – and often contradict – the growth it purports is the heart of the series.
[Photo via FOX]
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