Netflix’s lovely odd-couple sitcom premiered early in 2019 and was quickly renewed for a sixth season. Season four ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, with Frankie (Lily Tomlin) and Grace (Jane Fonda) making their big escape from the retirement home their concerned kids marooned them in, only to find out the beach house they called home for four years had been sold to a new owner.
The beginning of season five sees the unlikely pals teaming up against their kids to oust the new owner and reclaim their home. They spend a couple of episodes squatting and playing foils to the mystery owner’s real estate agent, played by RuPaul. There are some delightful scenes with some micropigs before the duo meets the capricious new owner, a pop star played by Nicole Richie. RuPaul’s Benjamin Le Day character was delightful and I would definitely not mind seeing him come back in season 6 somehow. The entire cliffhanger is resolved in the first two episodes, but there are plenty of ways to bring Le Day back into the fold.
The bulk of season five can best be summed up using Grace and Frankie’s new personal motto: “Fuck it.” The ladies have had enough of their family bossing them around, and they’re out to reclaim control over their lives. This results in a hilarious compromise: Bud (Baron Vaughn) insists they hire a live-in aide, but they choose their ex-husbands’ retired assistant, the mercurial Joan-Margaret (Millicent Martin), who is both older and less capable than they themselves are. This results in one of the funniest subplots of the season: Frankie and Joan-Margaret attempting to change the length of a crosswalk on a busy road to accommodate elderly pedestrians.
Unfortunately, I had a hard time fully enjoying the ladies’ utter disregard for their family’s concerns, mostly because I believe that Frankie really does need a caretaker. Her kookiness is excusable and even endearing… until she gets lost at the Mexican border with her infant granddaughter in tow, or threatens to bankrupt her business because she got high and made promises she couldn’t keep. While last season’s culminating crisis was the beach house contractor ripoff, season five’s would definitely be Frankie’s Twitter faux pas. The most concerning part was watching Frankie double down on the mistake in an attempt to feel better about compromising her morals.
The fact of the matter is that Grace and Frankie are better together than they are apart. They need each other, but they must also accept that they cannot be each other’s ‘other half,’ like Robert (Martin Sheen) and Sol (Sam Waterston) are to each other, or once were to their respective partners. Frankie’s mistake and her inability to admit fault leads to her greatest blowout with Grace yet, and the pair almost don’t find their way back to each other. In the finale, Grace and Frankie’s take on It’s a Wonderful Life showed us what everyone’s lives would be like if they hadn’t moved into the beach house together–and it’s every bit as horrific as you’d expect. Even their kids felt the ripples–Bud and Briana (June Diane Raphael) don’t have their significant others and Coyote (Ethan Embry) seems to have relapsed at least once. After seeing the ugly alternative, watching Grace and Frankie unite on their beach was beautiful enough to bring a tear to my eye–only to have my hopes dashed minutes later when Grace announces her elopement with boyfriend, Nick (Peter Gallagher). Season 6 will likely deal with the fallout of this choice and I only hope that the compromise keeps Nick in the picture, because we’ve spent a lot of time developing their relationship and I am too invested to watch Grace throw it all away because Frankie can’t cope (I would also hate to lose the charming Peter Gallagher).
Like usual, the rest of the cast has sparse plotlines that play out slowly: Sol gets a dog and cannot bring himself to discipline it, Robert convinces Peter (Tim Bagley) to put on Man of La Mancha for the community play, but isn’t granted the lead because Peter was being extra incorrigible the entire season (note to writers: Peter is hilarious in small doses; the amount of exposure he got in season 5 made me despise him). Robert also copes with feeling too old to blend with his fellow play actors and spends an entire episode falling in love with an older-skewing gay bar which I hope we see more of next season.
On the kids’ front: Bud adjusts to having a new baby and clashes with Allison’s (Lindsey Kraft) father, Mallory (Brooklyn Decker) awkwardly reenters the dating scene and eventually gets together with her kids’ equally-awkward principal, Coyote thinks he has a son but finds out he actually has a brother, and Briana clashes with her mother when Grace comes back to work at her company but cannot let her daughter run the show. Briana also has a subplot where she must decide whether she is okay with boyfriend Barry (Peter Cambor) donating his sperm to a couple he is friends with. Briana seems uncomfortable with the situation until she gets some unexpected wisdom from Sol (a seldom-seen but very delightful pairing) and realizes that she is willing to sacrifice some of her own happiness to give Barry something he has always wanted.
I enjoy the little movements on this show. I think they are natural and believable, but with the show about to enter season six–and possibly winding to a close, I would love to see certain characters find some long-lasting happiness, especially Frankie, Coyote, and Mallory, who have had it the roughest the past couple seasons. I was a bit disappointed that the ladies’ need for a live-in aide didn’t result in us seeing more of the kids this season, as it seemed like a perfect excuse to bring them into the fold more. Watching the unexpected pairings between one of the four parents with one of their four children has always been the most charming part of this show. Briana with Frankie and Coyote with Robert have always been two of my favorite combinations, but those pairings were mostly absent this season, although season five did give us Frankie and Robert getting high on edibles and losing Sol’s dog, so we’ll call it a wash.
Season six is a long year away. This summer I will do my first rewatch from the beginning as I give my roommate a long-overdue introduction to this delightful sitcom. Until then, I will just watch the casting news and hope we get Ernie Hudson back into the fold for season six so Frankie can have some hope of a happy ending with her own perfect partner.
