Grace and Frankie was designed in a lab to be perfect comfort TV before bed. Living legends Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin have delivered elevated TV-Land-without-censors gold for 94 episodes over seven seasons. Unfortunately, the time has come for our titular odd couple to say goodbye, making Grace and Frankie the longest running Netflix show of all time.
Even after all this time, our favorite ladies have kept it fresh and fun until the very end. Grace and Frankie never set out to reinvent the wheel. However, they earn points for consistency as they keep things funny and emotional all the way to the bitter (and star studded) end. We’ll miss seeing Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin on our screens regularly. However, the show is charming and lighthearted enough to be the perfect rewatchable comfort food...
The season begins innocently enough with the classic sitcom trope - two’s company, three’s a crowd. Grace’s (Jane Fonda) husband Nick (Peter Gallagher) is released from prison, only to serve house arrest in her and Frankie’s (Lily Tomlin) beach home. It doesn’t take long for the jailbird to start cramping Grace and Frankie’s roommate style. The lovely comic beginning serves as a lovely tonic for a more thoughtful and serious final season.
The antics never stop for our lovable old couple, Frankie (Lily Tomlin) and Grace (Jane Fonda).For much of the show, Grace and Frankie have turned their age into opportunity. The show hit its stride once it made the two women business partners on top of friends. Their inventions highlighted the need for products geared towards older women, specifically a vibrator that is arthritis friendly and a toilet seat that raises in order to help elderly people up. Together, the women make a genius business pair. Only now does age just mean decline.
Creators Marta Kaufman and Howard J. Morris have always done a good job of using comedy to make some of the harder parts of aging more palatable. That trend continues even as the series finale looms closer and closer. One of the more entertaining sections of the season involves Grace and Frankie acting as “Bonita Bandits.” The two women journey across the border into Mexico to get affordable Bonita for their friend Arlene (Marsha Mason) and other friends at Arlene’s retirement home. It’s a great romp that serves to also speak to the challenge older women are currently facing.
Still, this isn’t just any season of Grace and Frankie, it’s the final season. Will our favorite characters make it out alive? It’s a question that isn’t just on the viewer’s minds. The characters are dealing with their own mortality as well. Frankie, in typical fashion, takes a psychic’s vision to heart. She hears a prophecy that she believes means her death is imminent. This brings our lovely eccentric comfort, as she excitedly plans her own funeral and death. The person taking the vision the hardest is Grace. It’s within her character to not put any stock in Frankie’s psychic. However, even the thought of losing Frankie causes Grace to spiral. This odd couple has become codependent in a beautiful way, like a cracked out yin and yang. Much of this is due to Fonda and Tomlin’s effortless chemistry. You can’t have one without the other.
Sam Waterston and Martin Sheen deliver some of their strongest work in the final season of "Grace and Frankie."Age doesn’t just affect our titular characters. Perhaps the most heartbreaking storyline belongs to the ex-husbands, Robert (Martin Sheen) and Sol (Sam Waterston). Robert’s memory diminishes with each episode, but he doesn’t want to admit it. It starts with forgetting lines to some of his favorite musicals. Yet, little slips become harder and harder to ignore. Sol and Robert verbalize what is left unsaid for our main characters. How do you keep going when you know the best years are behind you? In the first two seasons, Sheen and Waterston felt like broad caricatures who merely took time away from the magnetic Fonda and Tomlin. Flash forward to season 7 and both actors have settled into a lived-in, authentic chemistry as a loving, yet frustrated, gay couple. The rough edges and artifice are still present, but the two actors have become more comfortable in the roles and the results speak for themselves.
The rest of the supporting cast remains lovely, even if they’re not given much to do. June Diane Raphael continues to be the standout as Grace’s foul-mouthed daughter, Brianna. She’s well paired with her boyfriend/lackey Barry (Peter Cambor). The two of them get some of the biggest laughs of the season, particularly in another classic sitcom setup when Brianna meets Barry’s parents for the first time. Now with his life together, Coyote (Ethan Embry) lovingly shades his character with some added pathos. How can he keep himself together when everyone around him is so accustomed to seeing him fail?
Many shows grow long in the tooth, dying out once they have lost most of their audience (think Modern Family). If anything, Grace and Frankie continued to get better. It’s sad to see the show end, but much like The Golden Girls, it’s instantly rewatchable, making it the gift that keeps on giving. B+
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