'The Grinder,' 'Grandfathered,' 'New Girl' Season Finales: Which One Is the Best?
Three sitcoms; two hours of prime time: Grandfathered and The Grinder wrap up their first seasons on Tuesday night, and two episodes of New Girl conclude that sitcom’s fifth season. Which one is the most satisfying? I watched them all; let’s break them down:
• New Girl: You knew Schmidt and Cece were getting married, and it’s no spoiler to say: mission accomplished. And that mission is both wacky (for a while, it looks as though they may not actually be occupying the same space at the moment of getting hitched) and underwhelming. As is frequently the case with New Girl, Max Greenfield’s big, often delightfully broad performance as Schmidt threatens to overshadow those of everyone else in the cast. Indeed, Zooey Deschanel’s Jess is now just one of the ensemble. This week, Megan Fox returns as Reagan, the siren luring Jake Johnson’s Nick, but since we know that Fox is not going to become a series regular, it renders the second episode’s final scenes somewhat anticlimactic.
• Grandfathered: It’s taken all season for this freshman show to realize that the most interesting relationship is the one between John Stamos’s Jimmy and Paget Brewster’s Sara, and it’s never promising when the audience is way ahead of the writers. Like New Girl, Grandfathered builds its finale toward firming up a romantic relationship — Gerald (Josh Peck) proposing to Vanessa (Christina Milian) — but the mechanics of the episode involve divesting Jimmy and Sara of the people they’re dating so they can realize what we’ve realized for a while. Meanwhile, I’ve come up with a further, less happy realization: It may be that Stamos and Brewster deserve a better showcase for their talents.
• The Grinder: Now here’s the show that really pulls off what it wants to achieve. The show has been building to the trial of William Devane’s Dean, overseen by the brother-defense-team of Stewart (Fred Savage) and Dean Jr. (Rob Lowe). Except there are twists (Stewart is sidelined to the courtroom audience and can’t take part in the trial) within twists (the prosecution of Devane’s character is overseen by a vendetta-driven lawyer played brilliantly by a surprise guest star) within twists. You’ve gotta hang around for Rob Lowe’s final “Grinder”-style summation of the case, which also doubles as a summation argument for renewing the show — which has not yet been picked up for Season 2. (Neither, for the record, has Grandfathered.) “How are they gonna make this work? How are they going to keep this up?” are among Dean’s questions, which are pertinent both to the story and the show itself. Only a renewal of The Grinder when Fox announces its fall schedule next week will provide any finality. I hope the network comes to the right conclusion.
New Girl airs Tuesday at 8 and 9 p.m. Grandfathered airs Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. The Grinder airs Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. All on Fox.
