Redemption can’t be forced. Indeed, the harder someone tries to convince the rest of us they deserve redemption, the less likely we are to grant it. There’s nothing less graceful than striving for grace. “Save The Cat” finds Reggie Dinkins and Arthur Tobin succumbing to the entitlement of forgiveness as they both reach new lows in their parallel journeys of effortful image rehabilitation—and join together in the silliest scheme yet.
One of the trickiest elements of The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Dinkins is going to be the calibration of Arthur’s craziness to Reggie’s. Thanks to Reggie being played by Tracy Morgan, we all have a solid handle on the former football idol here. Reggie is basically a decent enough and pampered ding-dong who’s suddenly buffeted out of his life of protective self-isolation by the lure of public rehabilitation and the Football Hall Of Fame.
Former indie-film darling Arthur, however, is both the “sensible” one of this unlikely duo and the audience surrogate witnessing Reggie’s eccentric schemes. (Daniel Radcliffe has a great, Kermit-esque to-camera look.) When Reggie spots a lost-cat poster he’s convinced is Namath, the beloved emotional support animal of his spiraling former head coach, Duck Donovan (Corbin Bernsen), we’re prepared for him to swing into ill-considered action. When Arthur ultimately joins in, the comic balance is off.
That Reggie is introduced walking gingerly along the streets of his rich neighborhood and assuring himself aloud that everything’s fine is a glimpse into just how scared the disgraced idol is to even show his face. (“Well, the commercials for your dad’s law firm are corny!,” he responds to the brat next door calling him a loser.) It’s a similarly rich vein of characterization for Morgan. Showing the vulnerability lurking behind childlike brashness is a strength for the actor, so Reggie seizing upon this simple feat (finding one cat in all of, as Arthur explains, “Alpine, New Jersey, and Big Pussy Bompensiero State Park”) is the quick fix he’s conditioned to look for.
Arthur, catching the scent of Reggie’s impending disillusionment, practically glows as he gloats to his own cameras. Sensing just the dramatic learning experience his film needs, Arthur once again reveals the sly condescension underlying his supposed objectivity as a documentarian. Radcliffe coos, “And that is the cake mother set aside especially for Arthur,” in a perfect harmony of Britishness, punchability, and looming comeuppance.
But there’s the rub. Arthur Tobin might be as desperate as Reggie for a second chance after his outed MCU meltdown (his on-set freakout is now a popular perimenopause meme), but the series’ balance depends on differentiating Arthur’s obsessive neediness from Reggie’s. And “Save The Cat” sends them both into the New Jersey woods screaming a cat’s name into the darkness.
Sure, Arthur has his reasons. He’s fired over the phone by his dean (after unsuccessfully backtracking on his insults by praising her as “a towering figure in the field of 19th century South American pornography”). Radcliffe is always funny as Arthur strains to maintain for his own cameras as he plummets straight through bottom after bottom, his remaining shreds of artistic ethics running up against harsh reality in the mansion of the hair-trigger eccentric he’s hitched his one last hope to.
But when Reggie and Arthur, confronted with the irate and unforgiving Duck (with cat safely in tow), realize their one big swing for an improbable tandem comeback has failed, their plot to stage their own relapses (gambling and drinking, respectively) for the cameras is farcical in the wrong way. “Save The Cat” takes its name from that overrated screenwriting book where storytelling is reduced to mere formula. The title is a knowing riposte to the facile appeal to audience affection, where Reggie’s cat-saving scheme is stripped down to its manipulative bones. That Arthur himself falls into the same obsession is an issue.
Arthur and Reggie both will have to walk a thornier path to redemption than either of them wants, which is as good a framework for a sitcom arc as it gets. But The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Dinkins needs to ground its laughs (and there are plenty here) in a more disciplined depiction of two very different characters’ journeys.
A lot of those laughs emerge as “Save The Cat” finally gives the ensemble more to do. Monica, confronted with Rusty’s inexplicable success with some of New Jersey’s less discriminating ladies (the Newark air-traffic controller he spent the night with in Reggie’s basement tells him to just toss her shoes if they turn up), faces her own lack of a dating life.
Teaming Erika Alexander and Bobby Moynihan is a good idea, don’t get me wrong. Seeing the hard-driving Monica determined to get her groove back (“or a more recent reference”) shades in a character whose devotion to her ex-husband and her own success go hand-in-hand. As with the two leads, we’re inevitably going to learn just why this strong woman has remained loyal to the man who destroyed their shared dreams, so getting to watch Alexander cope with the shorts-wearing douche (played by The Tick’s Scott Speiser) Rusty’s Hitch-styled dating app advice brings to Reggie’s door is reliably rewarding. (Even using her sources to track her date’s home water usage for red flags can’t compete with a guy who owns a Cybertruck and goes fetal in escape rooms.)
Rusty remains the series’ go-to wild-card laugh machine, but Moynihan gets to broaden his role outside of cutaway scene stealer here. Monica bemoans the fact that she’s about to take dating advice from the guy living in her ex-husband’s basement (sure, it sounds bad when you put it like that), but Alexander and Moynihan make the pair’s unlikely bond as the two people who understand Reggie best pay off better than their B-story status suggests. (Jaylen Hall’s Carmelo is a charmer, but his role as protectively selfish mommy’s boy here doesn’t give him much.)
Overall, “Save The Cat” feels like a minor tonal misstep not uncommon in a new series. When Reggie and Arthur receive the felis ex machina of the actual lost cat turning up at Reggie’s window, their shared glee at returning the kitty to her owner leaves the show on the wrong sort of cliff-hanger. “It was never a plan, always a metaphor!” Reggie states happily, as a manic Arthur adds, “We can do anything!” Arthur had earlier called Reggie’s belief in the restorative power of one big, dumb gesture, “the face of delu-lu.” But the episode ends with both the football star and the director wearing the same, farcical face.
Stray observations
- • Rusty, upon hearing Monica’s plan to get back out there: “Do they still have wine bars? I mean, I know they don’t have malls.”
- • “Welcome to Hitch’s office, Kevin James’ character!”
- • “Honestly, Monica, this is a great time to dive back in. There is a male-loneliness epidemic, so you are gonna clean up. But be careful, because they’re also very fragile, so they may fully snap if you reject them.”
- • Rusty, trying to get Monica to give shorts guy another chance: “How often do you see someone’s bottom half? I mean, people sit at tables a lot.”
- • I mean it as a compliment that Michael Kosta seems born to play a smarmy sportscaster.
- • The show’s Jets went four-12 after Reggie’s banishment, the same 2007 record as the actual Jets. What was their excuse?
- • Reggie’s plan fails partly because seemingly every pet in New Jersey is named Namath.
- • On Arthur calling his cat rescue a fool’s errand: “Fools run errands all the time. That’s why Wawa sells sushi.”
- • Both Reggie and Rusty separately discern that the most New Jersey punishment for that neighbor kid is to cut his trampoline.
- • Reggie, responding to Arthur’s censored plan to stick it to his dean by catching Namath: “I don’t know where we gonna get a whole bag of them, but let’s do it!”
Dennis Perkins is a contributor to The A.V. Club.
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