What I’m Watching: Grace and Frankie

Grace and Frankie: Season 4, Episode 4 “The Expiration Date” (B+)

I was pretty excited to see Peter Gallagher back as Nick in this episode, and it turned out to be one of the series’ most substantive installments, one that addressed the fact that, though she looks terrific, Jane Fonda is eighty years old and her character goes to great things to appear young and vibrant. Fortunately, Nick, whose portrayer is sixty-two years old in real life, responded in exactly the right way, kissing Grace immediately after she peeled off her eyebrows and took off her makeup. I enjoyed his confusion at Frankie opening the door after turning off all the lights to look for his left item when he returned to the house unexpectedly, and the revelation that he had dated Brianna’s childhood friend was an unfortunate one that led to him humorously noting that he does often confuse four and ten years of time. Brianna showing up as the uninvited child was fun, and I guess we’ll be seeing more of Nick now that he survived that. Frankie finding out that she was dead shouldn’t have come as a huge shock, and I thought right away of Lily Tomlin’s recent Golden Globe-nominated role in “Grandma” where she’s seen at the start of the film cutting up her credit cards. The best part of her antics trying to get officially and legally resuscitated was Sol’s sadness at the thought that she was actually dead, which she clearly wasn’t. Robert’s decision to intervene in his gay neighbor’s impending marriage to a woman is probably going to backfire, but let’s hope that the story he tells about him and Sol being married for so many years is done subtly and without any specific call to action.