Last January, Niecy Nash-Betts won an Emmy for her role in Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, and she gave one of the best speeches we’ve heard in some time. It was a speech from a person who refused to be penned in by what Hollywood thought of her, which was as a comic actress. Ever since her twice-nominated turn in Getting On back in the mid ’10s, she’s been proving just how versatile she is. And in Grotesquerie, co-created by Monster’s Ryan Murphy, she shows that versatility as the show’s centerpiece.
Opening Shot: We see the corner of a set of curtains. Suddenly, the curtains catch fire. Then Det. Lois Tyron (Niecy Nash-Betts) wakes up.
The Gist: There’s an empty vodka bottle next to Lois, which doesn’t seem to be an unusual occurrence. She’s called to the scene of a gruesome murder: A family of five, all killed in ritualistic fashion, with the father’s head cut off and more than likely being boiled on the stove. It’s such a grisly scene that veteran cops are traumatized and vomiting. Lois’ colleague thinks the should hand this over to the feds, but it’s in her jurisdiction, so she knows she should handle it.
As she drives home from the scene, disappointed that her flask is empty, unhoused people crowd her car, including one who keeps saying “the end is near.” At home, she has a tense relationship with her daughter Merritt (Raven Goodwin); Merritt hates that Lois’ drinking has gotten worse, and Lois thinks that Merritt is eating to excess.
Lois’ husband, and Merritt’s father, Marshall (Courtney B. Vance) is lying in a coma in an extended care facility. Nurse Redd (Lesley Manville), the creepy RN in charge of the ward, chides Lois for not paying enough attention to him when she visits, something Lois is none too happy to hear.
She seems to be at a loss about some of the things she saw at the scene, like a mystery substance that alternately smelled fruity and acrid. Then, she gets a visit from a young nun, Sister Megan Duval (Micaela Diamond). She is a reporter for a tabloidy newspaper for her local parish, and is interested in the ritualistic aspect of the family’s killings. Lois tells her some pretty horrific details on background, and the nun seems to be perversely thrilled by it instead of being disgusted. And she guesses aspects of the scene, like the chamber music that was playing, that makes Lois wonder how she knows this stuff.
A group of junkies is killed, but their bodies are arranged like they’re being crucified, cut in half but with all their blood drained. Sister Megan walks onto the scene, and instead of sending her away, Lois encourages her to look and take notes, as long as she doesn’t touch anything.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Take American Horror Story and cross it with True Detective: Night Country, and you get Grotesquerie.
Our Take: At its heart, Grotesquerie is a murder mystery, with religious overtones. Created by Ryan Murphy, Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Baken (the first episode is directed by Max Winkler), the show may ramp up the gore and try to attach more religious symbolism to the murders than usual, but it’s basically a murder mystery.
Whether it’s a good murder mystery is still up in the air after the first two episodes. But damn if Nash-Betts doesn’t completely command our attention during her copious screen time. This isn’t the first time Nash-Betts has played troubled and depressed well, of course; she won an Emmy for Murphy’s Monster miniseries about Jeffrey Dahmer and was nominated multiple times for playing nurse Didi Ortley in Getting On. We know she’s fully capable of playing a role like Lois. But seeing her communicate, just via her eyes or a hand movement, just how troubled Lois is was fascinating to watch.
In the scene where she is listening to Sister Megan give her theories about the murder, the look of curiosity, disbelief, cynicism and concern are evident, and we can see what might be crossing Lois’ mind just from Nash-Betts’ looks, head tilts and gestures.
That being said, Diamond is a good counterbalance as the overeager Sister Megan. By the end of the second episode, Lois is fully dependent on the young nun to help her figure out what these murders are all about, and Megan seems to have a religious perspective Lois lacks, likely because Lois has been a police detective for so long, any kind of spiritual wonder has been wrung out of her.
In the second episode, we meet Father Charlie Mayhew (Nicholas Alexander Chavez, currently starring on Murphy’s Netflix Menendez brothers smas MONSTERS), an equally-young priest at Megan’s church. A second-episode scene where the two of them sit at a coffee shop and theorize over the killings is one of the few extended scenes without Nash-Betts, but the discourse between the two of them was well-executed, especially as they try to tie the killings to passages from the Bible.
The character we haven’t seen yet is whoever Travis Kelce plays. Yes, he’s likely the big draw of this show, but FX has been keeping his role under tight wraps, and we have no idea whether he’s a killer, a bystander, another priest, or something else. Revealing the Chiefs’ star tight end a few episodes in is a clever ploy by Baitz, Murphy and Baken to keep people curious, trying to find out if Taylor Swift’s beau can actually act.
Sex and Skin: There is some nudity, but mostly of the bare-butt variety through the first two episodes.
Parting Shot: When Sister Megan tells Lois that the mystery substance is probably brimstone, Lois takes a drag on her cigarette and marvels that the killer is “a religious psychopath.”
Sleeper Star: Brooke Smith plays Gale Hanover, one of the detectives that works under Lois. She must have some sort of bigger role later on, because Smith is not just going to play a bit part with a couple of lines, is she? Also, Manville creeps us out as Nurse Redd in every scene she’s in.
Most Pilot-y Line: We’re not sure why the creators and Winkler saw fit to show a closeup of each and every time Merritt dipped a taquito into her avocado dip. We’re not even sure what the whole idea of harping on Merritt’s weight is all about.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Whether the mystery at the center of Grotesquerie is good or not, we like watching Niecy Nash-Betts so much that it may not matter.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
