Summary
Reggie finds his white whale in “Save the Cat”, but the B-plot involving Monica and Rusty provides much better laughs.
A slightly concerning thing occurred to me in “Save the Cat”, the fourth episode of The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins. Reggie might be the least interesting thing about it. I don’t think he’s actively off-putting or anything, obviously, but after the previous episode partially resolved his most interesting issue, he doesn’t have a great deal to do anymore other than what he has been doing from the start. But while Reggie’s efforts to get his career back on track are as desperate as they are funny, they’re also most engaging in how they illuminate more about Arthur’s character, which is probably the opposite of how that dynamic should work.
But you feel this really strongly in the week’s B-plot, which is significantly funnier than Reggie’s quest to find a missing cat. This is mostly thanks to Rusty, who throws out one-liners as though they’re going out of fashion and ticks basically every box when it comes to comedy supporting characters. There’s a gag about him eating pure butter out of an ice cream tub, but he also offers genuinely sage advice to Monica about dating, and seems curiously proficient at tracking people down based on only the slightest information. We’ll return to this more in a minute, though.
In the meantime, Reggie, who has now started nervously doddering around the neighborhood, reckons he has figured out how to save his career once again. A local cat named Namath is missing, and Namath belongs to his former coach, Duck Donovan, whose own career took a major downslide after Reggie’s betting scandal. Duck is incredibly attached to Namath, so Reggie thinks if he finds the feline, he’ll be forgiven. Induction into the Hall of Fame must surely follow.
For Arthur, Reggie’s inevitable failure to find the cat will make a great moment for the documentary; Captain Ahab searching for his white whale and having to reckon with his own obsession. But Reggie — who, surprisingly, has read Moby Dick and doesn’t agree with Arthur’s assessment — isn’t feeling philosophical. He genuinely sees this as a viable strategy, and after a while, Arthur joins him in the hunt, since he needs the documentary to be a success to salvage his own floundering career.
As it turns out, Namath — at least not Duck’s Namath; there’s a recurring gag about virtually every animal in the neighborhood having that name — isn’t even missing. When Duck gets wind of Reggie’s search, he turns up with the cat in a little bag. It’s a fun in-person appearance, but it’s mostly solidifying the idea that this isn’t going to work in the way Reggie thinks it is. Still, at least he and Arthur can find someone else’s Namath. Nothing is really a waste of time, after all.
In the B-plot of The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins Episode 4, Monica tries to get back into dating, inspired by Rusty’s flourishing love life despite the fact that he lives in her ex-husband’s basement. But Monica is old-school and wants to believe she can find men the traditional way, without resorting to apps. It only takes a few minutes in a bar full of inattentive phone users for her to realise that she needs to get with modernity. And for that, she needs Rusty.
There’s a bunch of great stuff here — “What are you, like, six four?” asks Rusty when he’s setting up her dating profile — but also an interesting angle in how Carmelo finds himself oddly put off by the idea of his mother dating, even though he didn’t have similar reservations about Reggie. While he reckons with the idea that he might be a misogynist, Monica goes on a date with a guy who wears shorts, drives a CyberTruck, and ends up crying on the floor of the escape room he booked.
Rusty’s advice to Monica is to lower her standards, whereas Carmelo helps to renew her self-esteem by pointing out all of the men who have shown a genuine interest in her, whom she was just too busy and distracted to notice. It’s a nice throughline and makes sense for Monica and Carmelo’s character development. There’s also a brief hint of Arthur’s romantic past here, but I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Either way, though, it works, even if it doesn’t assuage concerns that Reggie might be the weakest element of his own show.
