Review: Grimsburg “Say Yes To The Death”

Overview

Flute and the team go under cover at a wedding to find the bouquet-catcher killer; Flute argues with wedding crasher Harmony on who was the fun one in their relationship; Kang, Summers and Wynona become a successful wedding band.

Our Take

It is frightening just how close Grimsburg is to BoJack Horseman. Not only does series star Jon Hamm (Marvin Flute) sound just like him, but even the way his dialogue is structured in that he’s explaining his jokes is almost on brand Arnett. The difference is in BoJack you usually would get longer episodes so there’s more time for the dialogue to breathe and allow sufficient time for jokes to setup and land. With Grimsburg being a series born on broadcast TV we don’t have the luxury of time, therefore, each episode feels like it’s trying to cram in as many Marvin-led punchlines as possible.

Because of this, when the other characters do get a second to shine, we don’t get a lot. This week’s episode written by show creators Catlan McClelland & Matthew Schlissel actually has a nice backing cast of characters and voices featuring the likes of heavyweights Alan Tudyk, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Rosie Perez, Rachel Dratch, and my favorite character who I think has the most upside and possibly could’ve had a show all about him, Kevin Michael Richardson’s “Greg Summers” character.

I think Grimsburg is still trying to find itself. Unfortunately, the writers seem to be pulling punches in the dialogue department which isn’t really going to go over well with it’s target audience. Comedy cop franchises like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Chips, etc., all worked because they were made at a time when comedy was trying to challenge the status quo. If Grimsburg doesn’t do that, it’s going to be a long two seasons.