Grotesquerie Season 1 Episode 10 Review

Grotesquerie Season 1 Episode 10 concludes its first season, which was certainly a ride. It’s not necessarily a wild ride, but definitely one with twists and turns. It was also a very unfocused ride that went off-road too many times.

The series starts as a derivative Seven homage about a drunk detective and nun solving a murder case that evolved into a surreal fever dream. It became complicated to take Grotesquerie seriously again once it was revealed that the first six episodes were a coma dream.

The show boils down to one woman’s horrible decisions making enemies of everyone around her. And somehow she turns out to be a prophet. What kind of message or theme the series tries conveying with that premise is up to viewers’ interpretation.

The most frustrating part of the finale is how little it focuses on the show’s mysteries and instead centers on unnecessary social commentaries. Before we return to Lois Tryon, we spent the first half of the season finale with Tryon’s husband, Marshall.

While Lois is often difficult to follow and sympathize with, Marshall is on a whole other level of unsympathetic. Episode 10 hammers home how sniveling, cowardly, and hypocritical he is, making Lois a saint in comparison. This first half of the episode feels unnecessary until Marshall is accused of sexual harassment and joins a men’s help group with Ed.

This is where the series takes a huge pivot and makes it about toxic masculinity.

Similarly to the millennial conversation in Grotesquerie Season 1 Episode 8, this social commentary comes out of nowhere. While it is vital that some stories tackle the issues of toxic masculinity and the dangers of certain men’s groups, it feels tacked on in Grotesquerie.

Grotesquerie‘s handling of the topic is hard to judge because the series introduces it in the last episode, so we don’t know what direction the series will take afterward. At this moment, the whole men’s club feels clunky.

Nevertheless, having Ed, played by football player superstar Travis Kelce, be our introduction to this men’s group admittedly feels like perfect casting given some of the controversies within the NFL.

The rest of Grotesquerie Season 1 Episode 10 has Lois suffer from verbal abuse and being gaslit by everyone she talks with. She ends up back in a psychiatric ward looking horrible, with Niecy Nash-Betts giving a sincere performance as a woman who has fallen to rock bottom.

Unfortunately, Lois can’t help being herself even when it’s for her own good. When talking to the doctor at the ward, the one person who seems sincere in helping her, she can’t help but accuse him of being the murderer. The way the doctor swifts in his personality from wanting to help Lois to reverse her accusation is genuinely heartbreaking.

The scene at the ward highlights Lois Tryon’s tragic existence. She can’t help but push people away, and now she’s in a purgatorial state where she doesn’t know if anything is real.

While the doctor’s reactions raise some potential red flags, it doesn’t really matter because Grotesquerie isn’t about a murderer. The killings are there, yet it’s clear that was never the show’s attention.

The finale is more concerned with Marshall and Lois than going over most of the other dangling plot beats. Lois murdering Megan’s significant other in cold blood in Episode 9 is more of an afterthought.

Instead, the season ends with Lois and Megan reconciling. Megan takes Lois to a murder scene replicating the same crime scene in Lois’ dream from Grotesquerie Season 1 Episode 2. That ends the series where it left off in its first week of airing, making it seem as if the series hasn’t moved forward.

For those keeping track, the first season of Grotesquerie isn’t about a murder case, and there’s no nun. Most of it was in a dream that didn’t affect most characters. In the end, the first season is about the toxic existence of one woman who can’t help but make enemies of everyone around her.

Lois Tryon is a complicated and deep character, but a single character can’t carry a whole series on its back. The show starts one way and transforms into something completely different. Audiences never know what they are going to get, which makes the show feel unfocused.

Grotesquerie wants to be so many things. It wants to be a police procedure show with gnarly and gory murder scenes. It wants to be a complimentary commentary of the days we live. It wants to be a character study. It wants to be about religious metaphors, real-life prophets, and toxic masculinity.

Yet the series can’t be all that, it never sticks to a lane. The first season of Grotesquerie fails because it can never commit to what it wants to be, which may be the biggest tragedy of the show besides the cruel treatment of Lois Tryon.

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Grotesquerie airs on Wednesdays at 10/9c on FX.

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