The more we zip through The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Dinkins, the more clear it becomes that we need more of The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Dinkins. No, I’m not just talking about this series being another smart, welcome addition to the Tina Fey-verse, or the inspired odd-couple teaming of Tracy Morgan and Daniel Radcliffe or even the show’s uniformly tight ensemble of comic actors. We need more The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Dinkins because, with only 10 episodes to chart the journey of the title, even a uniformly entertaining episode like “Dr. Watson’s Dad” winds up feeling rushed.
We start back in 2007 with the breaking news that Reggie’s scandal prompted Rutgers’ football stadium to replace his name and bronze bust with those of fellow alumnus Calista Flockhart. (Mr. Magoo already has his own namesake scholarship, remember.) In the present day, this humiliation gives Arthur Tobin the documentary gold he’s been seeking, as a mournful Reggie opens up about the lasting shame that “the house Reggie Dinkins built” wants nothing to do with him. Reggie and Arthur’s bond is solidified (much to eavesdropper Rusty’s mounting jealousy), with Arthur conceding, “I want to hate her for what she did to you, but she makes Harrison Ford happy.”
Meanwhile, Monica’s announcement that she’s hustled up a non-football interview with a local New Jersey news outlet should be good news for Reggie’s comeback. Sure, Monica admits, it’s for the free paper, but coming off the heels of Reggie falling backward into some positive press last week, it’s a chance to portray himself as “a man who’s not defined by his past.” That Reggie immediately dons a Jets jersey and his mockup Hall Of Fame jacket for the interview continues the former couple’s cross-purposes view of a Reggie Dinkins redemption arc.
All of these eventful currents flow briskly through the episode’s first seven minutes. Arthur, Reggie, and Monica’s disparate motivations were set up skillfully in the pilot. Arthur wants another Oscar-worthy documentary to erase his Dr. Squeeze debacle. Reggie wants the Hall Of Fame cred to displace his infamy and win him the cushy post-NFL life he thinks he deserves. And Monica wants to make sure her family’s paper keeps flowing, all while she tries to build a life outside of Reggie’s bubble.
Naturally, single-minded motives are muddied by inconvenient personal feelings among these three strong-willed individuals, which is the sort of comedic-dramatic arc that a traditional 20-or-so episode season would allow time to breathe. So when “Dr. Watson’s Dad” abruptly turns into a whodunnit a third of the way in, it’s, well, abrupt.
Which isn’t to say that this episode doesn’t work. The revelation that Reggie’s beloved not-bronze bust (the Olympics caused a bronze shortage) has been stolen from its plinth in the Dinkins living room swerves “Dr. Watson’s Dad” into a straight up “I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve gathered you all here together” bottle episode. (This includes Reggie’s furious to-camera “Who did this?” ringing throughout the commercial break, the suspense heightened by his apparently regular habit of having his phone play ominous atmospheric music in a good old diegetic soundtrack gag.)
With Reggie appointing himself sleuth over Monica, Brina, Arthur, Rusty, the late-arriving Carmelo, and Monica’s new assistant Shane Quinn III (Drew Scheid), the game’s afoot. That game, with Reggie acting as “Blackatha Christie” (to quote an annoyed Monica), affords some fine Tracy Morgan anti-logic (“Don’t distract me with your youth!,” he responds when Brina doesn’t get his Wayne’s World burn) and another telling examination of just what documentary ethics mean to one Arthur Tobin.
Arthur’s cameras capture more than anyone would wish, especially Arthur (not that he minds cinematic proof of his hookup with Megan Thee Stallion’s postal worker). Here, the revelation that Arthur not only accidentally broke Reggie’s bust but blamed it on Brina (complete with a raid on her wig and Muppet-y fur-coat closet) is the supposed artiste’s most egregious violation yet. Radcliffe once again proves the show’s best to-camera mugger, showing bewildered shock at the flummoxed Brina’s tearful confession.
“When I became a documentarian I made a vow to remain forever curious, steadfastly objective, and insufferable at dinner parties,” Arthur says while framing Brina. “Today I break the middle part of that vow.” What the Oscar winner actually does is attempt to salvage his breakthrough bonding with his subject by staging a Marx Brothers-worthy farce he only hopes to get away with through Reggie’s inability to stay mad at his young fiancée.
Not to bring up Reggie Dinkins’ breezy way with jokes purloined from its own sitcom family, but this brazen-it-out strategy is some Liz Lemon vs. MILF Island stuff, with a supposedly upright protagonist revealing that their ethics only stretch as far as they serve their purpose of not getting in trouble. There’s little question that Arthur Tobin cares about his craft and his often unfortunate subjects. (He once stood steadfastly by as a sloth took four days to commit suicide. “I don’t know where it got that gun,” a still-haunted Arthur muses.) But in a Little Stranger joint, the inevitable car crash of self-interest with moral probity is the darkly comic guiding principle.
This is just one area where an extended series order would have benefitted the storytelling. Like last episode’s football camp, “Dr. Watson’s Dad,” with its shenanigan-of-the-week structure, would slot cozily into a longer trek with its three main characters. Here, the growth comes in hurried spurts, while the three B-team characters get knocked aside.
Speaking of, Bobby Moynihan’s Rusty continues to get the broadest plotlines and cutaways, with his jealousy at Arthur and his fear of being supplanted as Reggie’s eventual best man seeing the former kicker’s sweaty neediness explode in irrational ways. His enraged “I should kick you in half!” segues to an outraged, “We loved you!” upon learning Arthur‘s treachery. Precious Way gets her biggest scene to date once Brina launches into an elaborately baroque tale. Jalyn Hall’s Carmelo gets the shortest character-development straw, though, as Carmelo’s dual revelation that he initially damaged his dad’s statue and that he wants to ditch football for his school’s a-cappella club whizzes by like an afterthought.
Again, it’s not that “Dr. Watson’s Ghost” is poorly constructed; it’s just compressed from above. In a longer timeframe, Reggie’s feelings about his beloved son (his absolving “You’re my guy” to Carmelo is genuinely affecting) could develop as more than a third-act twist to a “who-smashed-it.”
And yet, Morgan brings his signature naked emotion to the actual interview, where he tearfully tells the reporter that his son is going to surpass him “because he already knows football is not his life.” Morgan is a brashly vulnerable comic actor, his wild card sensibility couched in a sincerity that makes his eccentric characters’ occasional heartfelt confessions feel earned.
When he tells the reporter “For decades, football was my life. But it isn’t life, because football is over” while listing off the individual virtues of his family and friends, it works. It feels earned. And okay, the confused lady from the paper they give away for free at the drug store only wanted to know Reggie’s favorite local sub shop (Salami Joe’s, naturally), but it’s another fruitful step forward.
Stray observations
- • Brina calls Reggie’s Ronaldo-esque bust “a rotten jack o’lantern of Shrek.” She’s not wrong.
- • Upon hearing about the interview, Brina asks if it’s with “a news…paper?” with appropriate youth-of-today incredulousness.
- • Not sure we needed the runner about the flashback reporter (played by Mariette Booth) sleeping with a Rutgers student, but here’s to her breathless delivery of “…until his gambling scandal took him from GOAT to goat. The old version. That means bad.”
- • Rusty consoles himself that Carmelo’s not old enough to be Reggie’s best man with a circular logic leading him to the terrible realization that best boy is a position in a movie—which they’re in!
- • He’s also not wrong in wondering why nobody on Severance is into Tramell Tillman’s Milchick.
- • Reggie, in detective mode: “Brina. So beautiful and thicc… but the plot is thicker!”
- • “You do not wanna rub Calista Flockard’s bangs for luck.” “Bangs? Wait, so the bust is season three Ally McBeal?”
- • Carmelo came home early from school because it was Straight White Pride Day. “Is that new?” Monica asks. “That feels new.”
- • Reggie’s response to Arthur’s betrayal: “My Irish friends were right about you people!”
Dennis Perkins is a contributor to The A.V. Club.
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