Grace and Frankie Review: Can’t Spell Funeral Without Fun

After seven years, a few failed marriages, a number of curious inventions, countless Frankie-isms, an endless amount of questionable hijinks, and one 9-to-5 reunion, Netflix’s Grace and Frankie has come to a conclusion.

It was announced back in 2019 that Grace and Frankie Season 7 would be the series’ last. While production was delayed in 2020, a handful of episodes from the final season had already been filmed and thus Netflix split the final season into Part 1 and Part 2.

Dating back to 2015, Grace and Frankie is one of Netflix’s first Original comedies. And boy has it been a fun one.

On the surface, a comedy series about a quartet of septua/octogenarians doesn’t seem like it would have mass appeal. It certainly doesn’t seem like it would continue to see success for the better part of a decade, and you’d probably be surprised to hear it’s Netflix’s longest-running Original series.

Grace and Frankie Season 7 keeps the same zany tone that the series has for its entire run. Where the titular characters were at odds with each other in the first few seasons, the duo’s friendship has matured into the kind of companionship I think we all aspire to have as we age.

I think, like any series focused on characters of a certain age, Grace and Frankie approaches the series finality with significance. Much of the last half of the Grace and Frankie Season 7 deals with the pair’s outlook on mortality, through both a comedic and serious lens.

We learn that Frankie has an on-call psychic when one of their old assisted living friends goes missing. It’s a funny, yet serious plotline, like Grace and Frankie does best.

It’s through this psychic though that we learn Frankie has 3 months left to live — and the psychic is never wrong.

This gray cloud of death looms like an impending thunderstorm through the rest of Grace and Frankie Season 7. When Coyote proposes to his girlfriend Jessica (after divorcing a gambler he met on a bender in Vegas), Frankie tries to get the wedding within her timeline.

Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin continue to shine in their character’s shoes, in both the light and the dark side of aging.

Tomlin’s Frankie has always been the comedic heartbeat of the series, showcasing the freedom that comes later in life. Fonda’s Grace has always represented a different side of aging – the ability to assert your independence no matter your age.

I even found myself less annoyed with the attention paid to Robert and Sol than usual. As Tomlin and Fonda once joked, “It’s called Grace and Frankie, not Robert and Sol.”

However, with Grace and Frankie Season 7, Martin Sheen’s Robert is given one of the other important, heart-wrenching storylines of the season.

It would have been a miss if Grace and Frankie had ignored one of the most prevalent issues that come with age — memory loss. The series handles it respectfully and also shows how it affects not just the person, but the person’s support system.

So often, stories about Dementia and Alzheimer’s are told from the point of view of adult children taking care of their parents, so I was glad to see Sol’s reaction to Robert’s memory lapses. As somebody whose family was touched by the disease, I found the depiction of early signs to be quite accurate.

There are moments early on in Grace and Frankie Season 7 when Robert repeats things in an uncharacteristic manner. It’s a hint at the problem to come before it’s a problem.

His and Sol’s story wraps up in an appropriate way — after being in denial for much of the season, he finally accepts his situation. The two of them return to where they first fell in love to celebrate their kiss-aversary, and remember the beginning of their love story.

The other supporting characters have less of a satisfying conclusion.

Genuinely the funniest part of the show, and probably the most accessible character for the younger followers of the series, June Diane Raphael’s Brianna starts the final season in what’s a pretty progressive relationship with her former employee, Barry.

Were Barry and Brianna good for each other? That’s certainly debatable. But it was a bold move for a series to show a couple that was happily in love and in a committed partnership that wasn’t a marriage.

It seems like a cop-out that they broke up over an argument they’d already had and resolved.

And poor Mallory, (Brooklyn Decker) who was just starting to come into her own as the new CEO of Say Grace, is unceremoniously fired. After being introduced in the series as the “super-mom” foil to her sister’s “girlboss” persona, it is interesting to see their roles reverse in the later seasons.

It is a waste that they both end up unemployed and loveless. I guess it’s a small concession that when we leave them, they appear to have set aside their differences. For once, Brianna protects her little sister’s feelings from the harsh reality of why she was fired as CEO.

I suppose if the Hanson sisters ended up loveless in the end, the Bergstein brothers have an opposite wrap-up. Bud and Coyote finish Grace and Frankie Season 7 with a better sense of who they are, and both are happily married.

For a series that focused on the older generation, the younger generation brought a ton of laughs and levity. If Brianna and Mallory’s Beauty Bitch venture is an opening for a potential spinoff, I’m happily on board.

In true Grace and Frankie manner, the series comes to an end on the beach, and in true Frankie fashion, it’s at a funeral that the “pre-deceased” has planned herself. For all that Frankie put into their Rise-Up toilet business, she brushed off her final opportunity at success in the face of death, for the dramatic choice instead.

I suppose that’s how life goes; we come to realize what’s important to us when we’re faced with life-altering situations, but I do wish we had seen Grace and Frankie succeed in the business world. That storyline kind of dies off at the end — pun intended.

I’ll admit I shed a tear when it turns out that Frankie’s psychic is right, and that she is going to die three months after their ill-fated trip to Mexico. I just wasn’t anticipating Grace to cross the rainbow bridge with her. And for Grace to kill her. Accidentally.

And while there was always the chance that one of the core four would end this series six feet under, I’m glad that their death is only temporary. But does it set up the greatest 9 to 5 reunion ever? You bet it does.

God is a woman, and her name is Dolly Parton.

Grace and Frankie have been through a lot together — everything from hating each other’s guts, blaming their divorces on each other, creating a successful sex toy company, health scares, to new husbands and lovers, retirement homes, accidental money laundering, and not so accidental drug smuggling.

In the end, it’s the two of them together, back from the dead, on the beach outside the beach house that started it all. It’s a fitting finale for the series and an appropriate one for Grace and Frankie Season 7.

I, for one, will be sad to see them go, even if I’m surprised the series lasted this long. But like any time we get to spend with the older generation, I’ve cherished all the stories they shared.

Stray Musings:

• Martha Kelly from Euphoria as Nick’s probation officer is a nice surprise!
• Brianna’s mishap with the racy photos and the printer is genuinely one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Mind the cloud people!
• I love that wearing a wire for the FBI is on Frankie’s bucket list. So true bestie.
• “It is muy hot as shit” – Frankie watching telenovelas is me watching telenovelas
• I’m glad they explore Grace’s anxiety and actually have a resolution to that storyline, though it does seem odd to introduce her brother so last minute.
• I relate to Brianna because I too write down my harebrained ideas on post-its.
• Frankie’s montage of trying to break a Guinness world record is top-notch.
• “I wish I knew you when I was a little girl.” Cue the tears man. 
• The final scene of Grace letting Frankie use her hands to paint is giving Patrick Swayze/Demi Moore in Ghost if you know what I mean.

What did you think of the final season of Grace and Frankie? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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All episodes of Grace and Frankie are available on Netflix.

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