“Dedicating This One to the Crew” is an episode of The Grinder proudly treading water; the whole idea of Dean the actor vs. Stewart the Normie was one well-explored in the pilot, never needing the specific details of their high school experience to define their life-long dynamic as The Good-Looking Guy and The Hard-Working Guy, with all the caveats of the former and depressing elements of the latter. “Dedicating” adds Stewart’s son Ethan into the mix, when a school play begins casting for their next show.
“Dedicating” takes this story to all the predictable places. Dean’s abrupt change of career into the theater (he was a high school quarterback who broke his ankle) and Stewart’s obsession with stage crew couldn’t be any more of an obvious set-up for this story, and “Dedicating” fails to bring any kind of ingenuity to it, following a cookie-cutter mold from beginning to end. Ethan wants to act, turns out he’s good, but Stewart wants to push him into being a Shadowboy, following in the family line of stage hands who pride themselves on being seen so little, their own brother forgets they were in the show.
To the episode’s credit, it does give a solid sense of Ethan’s goofy, charming presence, where most shows would be content to let most of the reasoning sit with the parents; there’s a better sense of the child in this story, which is saying something on a network comedy. Of course, with Michael Showalter guest starring as the prickish director who begins dredging up 30-year-old beefs with Dean, this episode’s attempts to build conflict far outweigh the episode’s attempts to characterize Ethan as someone who falls squarely between the personalities of his father and uncle, which ultimately limits how far this episode can go with its comedy, or its story and its ultimate resolution, which is shoved into the final two minutes of the episode without any sort of meaningful impact.
“Dedicating This One to the Crew” is a classic example of a comedy settling for its own formula: rather than try to look beyond the premise, the storytelling devices in “Dedicating” feel designed to reinforce them. There are plenty of interesting ideas in “Dedicating,” from Dean’s stunted athletic career to the reality check Ethan delivers his father with his acting skills, but instead, the episode focuses itself on Dean’s bickering with a former classmate. The strongest part of the story, Stewart coming to terms with his son’s newfound talent, is the most underdeveloped dynamic of this episode, and arguably, this is the part of the episode with the most promise, offering potential new conflict on a weekly basis as Dean tries to get Ethan to embrace his talents, while Stewart and the rest of his family (who are noticeably absent through most of the episode, I might add) try and lead Ethan down a different, less anxiety- and failure-ridden path to life.
There’s just something neutered about “Dedicating” that holds this episode back: the underpinnings of a good episode are there, but the 90 seconds this installment offers for resolution is hardly enough to massage some of these themes to life in a meaningful way. An episode of enjoyable, isolated moments, “Dedicating This One to the Crew” feels like a string of ideas too consciously tied to the show’s premise to grow, never able to move beyond the simplest beats of its central dynamic to deliver something truly moving or effective.
Other thoughts/observations:
- Todd, don’t order outside your comfort zone.
- As a person who hates opening gifts in front of people, I always get annoyed when television characters get mad at someone for not wearing/using/being obsessed with the gift they’ve just given. Here’s something – USE IT NOW OR YOU HATE ME. It’s so pathetic and desperate, I hate when it’s used as a comedic trope.
- “The wings, Malmuth.”
- I can buy a lot of scenes, but a scene where The Grinder thanks everyone in his legal department feels too on-the-nose; most legal dramas would never actually do this, save for the episode after a recurring character died/left the show.
[Photo credit: Patrick McElhenney/FOX]
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