Summary
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins is a very good sitcom, and that’s increasingly evident in “You May Hug Your Hero”, a more scattershot episode that still offers a dependable flurry of great one-liners.
I’ve seen some mixed opinions on Episode 5 of The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, so let me just throw mine into the mix – I think it’s the best one yet. It’s a bit scattered and chaotic, sure, and it perhaps has a few too many moving parts, enough that the overarching plot of the season gets a little mired in Reggie’s pursuit of instant redemption. But it’s very funny, like “cut above every other sitcom in recent memory” funny, and you just can’t avoid that reality for very long.
There’s a gimmick in “You May Hug Your Hero”, if that’s what you want to call it. Instead of lounging around in Reggie’s house trying to force something to happen, we instead revisit one of Prime Reggie’s ego-stroking “altruistic” projects… trying to force something to happen, only less obviously. Back in the day, Reggie ran a youth camp, and Monica suggests reviving it for the sake of his reputation. What’s crucial, though, is that he’s doing it for the right reasons, which is to say the kids, instead of as a way to reconstruct his fractured image.
Of course, Reggie isn’t doing it for the right reasons, at least not at first. But that’s part of the joke, especially since it tees up a recurring gag from Rusty wherein he keeps stating everyone’s real intentions out loud at the worst moment or in the most bizarre way, including his completely erroneous belief that the documentary is intended to get to the bottom of his uncle’s unsolved murder. Rusty’s barely in this episode, but he makes his presence felt every time he shows up.
“You May Hug Your Hero” also introduces an avatar of Reggie’s failures in the form of Jerry Basmati, an old rival from his playing days who, far from falling into disgrace, has instead achieved everything Reggie wishes he had, from a Hall of Fame spot to a morning show. And this is especially vexing for Reggie since he routinely humiliated Jerry on the field, especially during an infamous meme-worthy moment dubbed “the crotchdown” which has to be displayed by Rusty with the help of action figures thanks to my favourite recurring gag of the episode, which is that Arthur is making the documentary without any official endorsement from the NFL and thus can’t use any archive footage or even say “Super Bowl” out loud unless there’s a bowl of soup in the shot.
Reggie is jealous of Jerry for his post-playing success, then, and Jerry is jealous of Reggie for the on-field embarrassment, so they’re never going to get on. To make matters worse, Monica also hates Jerry’s wife, Tisha, but wants to take the high road in response to Tisha’s really obvious mean-girl baiting. Brina, on the other hand, is less inclined to rise above it, so she and Monica end up bonding over their respective approaches to problem-solving, eventually making Tisha look stupid by not taking the bait, even though Monica was very much about to.
Arthur, meanwhile, doesn’t so much get a subplot as keep a cameoing Megan Thee Stallion busy in a silly but very funny romantic aside. The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins Episode 2 realizes how funny Daniel Radcliffe looks standing next to Megan and mines it for everything it’s worth in every side-on cutaway, but it also manages to create enough genuine chemistry that the whole thing’s sort of oddly believable. Arthur doesn’t get much else to do in the episode, which is a shame, since he has been moaning about the documentary not having any meaningful conflict, but there are some opportunities you’re probably best off not missing.
That feeling of unexpected payoff is threaded all throughout “You May Hug Your Hero”. Reggie’s team of kids gets predictably decimated, but his inspiring speech to the kids in the aftermath gets picked up by Jerry’s morning show, who even backhandedly endorses his career reboot live on air. Tisha and Monica agree to let bygones be bygones, with the former revealing her endless jealousy over the latter having aged better. And Arthur got to sleep with Megan Thee Stallion. Everyone’s an unlikely winner. Maybe Reggie’s redemption is on the cards after all.
