In “The Loyalty Swamp,” The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Dinkins once more happily exists in the cozy gap between incident and character. With just two episodes to go in this too-short first season (both of which air next week), the series’ ostensible driving plot (Reggie’s redemption arc via Arthur’s documentary) sort of putters along in the background. Meanwhile, the uniformly entertaining cast acts out equally excellent ensemble subplots laden with jokes so good you nearly forget that the entire raison d’être barely makes an appearance.
Last week’s cliff-hanger (in the form of Anna Camp’s Narcissa Ocean) takes over, as Arthur Tobin sweatily comes to grips with a one-episode “crazy ex-girlfriend” story. The people behind this latest entry from the Tina Fey sitcom factory operate on such a knowing level that Carmelo immediately takes the paranoid Arthur to task by calling on lessons from his “male allyship” high-school class about why that trope is so hacky.
That Arthur defensively responds with his own meta-textual comeback (“So is ‘pretentious director with a fancy accent’ but then you meet one in real life, wise beyond his years sitcom kid”) is the Little Stranger creative trust essentially playing comedy chess against itself. Same goes for the offhand way in which Reggie’s voiceover toys with the “previously on” cliché opening (“Previously on this thing”), and his later, in-story summation of the series’ premise as “this stupid documentary.”
It’s like watching the Globetrotters. They’re so practiced in their scripted excellence that you don’t mind that the outcome is never in doubt. Does that rob The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Dinkins of the tightrope virtuosity of a more adventurous series where artistic triumph isn’t a foregone conclusion? Sure. But the Globetrotters always put on a hell of a show.
In a more comfortably roomy season, Arthur and Narcissa’s tangled past of codependently destructive sexual gamesmanship would have had more of a slow build. Here, all previous hints about just why the seemingly straitlaced Arthur went so dissolutely off the rails gets about a third of 21 minutes, sharing time with Reggie and Brina’s conflict over him not setting a wedding date and Monica and Rusty’s bleary obsession with sleazy reality show Ex-Peninsula.
Tasked with establishing a pivotal character in a single episode, Camp might not have the whirlwind, show-swiping madness of, say, a Jason Mantzoukas, but her Narcissa is another of the talented comic actor’s slyly indelible creations. “She looks complicated” is Reggie’s snap judgement of the suddenly arriving Narcissa, and he’s not wrong. We get more flashbacks to Narcissa and Arthur’s toxic dynamic (including the blackout Vegas weekend where it turns out they got married), and Camp does a glassy-eyed Muppet voice upon first seeing the terrified Arthur that portends nothing but trouble.
Daniel Radcliffe continues to shine as Arthur locks further into Reggie Dinkins’ unpredictable orbit. The high concept that was putting Radcliffe and Tracy Morgan in the same room has long transformed into a true two-person highlight reel, the duo’s odd couple friction causing more amusing sparks than Reggie’s foot-dragging static-electricity gags. (Rusty goes down with a signature “Ooooh, daddy!” catchphrase.)
While Narcissa is indeed a lot (she tracked Arthur across country when Denise broke up with him via his lost phone’s emergency contact), Arthur’s professional mien has plenty of cracks for his ex to exploit. The show has tickled Arthur’s foibles for long enough that the revelation that Narcissa didn’t so much make him crazy as simply pry open his tightly sealed crazy box isn’t a shock. Arthur is right to ward off his former lover with an imperious, knee-jerk, “Be gone!” but the revelation that the nerdy filmmaking artiste concealed a gun-toting, sex-crazed obsession monster inside digs through the old “women are crazy” detritus to find something more human. (Arthur’s chastened choice to sign divorce papers is clouded by his realization that he signed a legal document without reading it.)
As for the other half of the real odd couple, Reggie’s conflict with Brina (like their fight over his inadequate apology skills) gets resolved without much fuss—but with a handful of great jokes. The revelation that Reggie’s reluctance to set a wedding date stems not from his litany of time-specific objections (don’t want to steal focus from Juneteenth, winter is ashy season) but from his fear that his lingering infamy will overshadow Brina’s big day. Reggie makes a passing reference to his (and the series’) motivation in his pitch for Arthur to rush to complete his documentary “to change everyone in the world’s mind about someone,” but he’s genuine in his worry that his baggage will hurt someone he loves.
Reggie and Brina are made for each other. It’s that simple. He loves a beautiful, much younger woman who sees him for who he is, and she likes Reggie’s sweetness as much as that fact that her aging fiancé doesn’t drop rattlesnakes on her while she sleeps for online content.
That they’re both different kinds of weird and self-obsessed doesn’t hurt either, so Reggie takes Brina’s scheme to make him jealous by going on Ex-Peninsula with her former lover, 2026 European sex champion François (frequently shirtless guest Loic Mabanza) in stride. That Rusty and Monica marathon 70 hours of the Alex Moffat-hosted MILF Island-esque hookup show as “research” is a way to shoehorn everybody into the story, but Erika Alexander and Bobby Moynihan always make for a fun pairing. And Ex-Peninsula’s mix of illicit sex and the occasional ghost contestant and unexplained death does sound eminently binge-worthy.
With less than an hour to wrap things up, The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Dinkins is practically begging for a second season. So am I, actually. Narcissa’s first impression that the unlikely crew gathered around Reggie’s breakfast table are Arthur’s family is actually pretty astute, as the series has, in its brisk existence, sketched out the sort of cozy, consistently funny world you want to hang out in.
Stray observations
- • As part of Narcissa’s “web of sexual insanity,” Russel Crowe once punched Arthur in the face and made him listen to 30 Odd Foot Of Grunts.
- • “You invited her in? Didn’t you see Sinners?”
- • “The biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life is right here in this house!” “But I like the beard.”
- • Arthur is rightly horrified that he has no idea where on his body the prison tattoo Narcissa gave him is.
- • I’m not a font guy, but I’ll be damned if The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Dinkins isn’t in Franklin Gothic. (Not sure about a drop shadow.)
- • Pretty sure this is the first time we get a credit for Marty, the never-seen, little-heard cameraman (played by none other than Chris Gethard).
- • Reggie’s plan to make Brina jealous by showing Narcissa his butt isn’t especially effective, but it does cap off with the line “Why would there be seats in the ham factory, Brina?” so I’ll allow it.
- • Reggie, to François asking if this is a shirt-optional household: “No! You can see we all have shirts on!”
- • Monica’s Ex-Peninsula media break floods back with updates concerning the U.S declaring war on the ocean, Diddy escaping from prison, a real-life Donkey Kong situation, a new pandemic, and an unrevealed list of things women are now not allowed to do.
Dennis Perkins is a contributor to The A.V. Club.
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