A Man on the Inside Premiere Recap: Ted Danson Plays Senior Spy Games for Netflix (Grade It!)
Ted Danson is back with a new comedy on Netflix — and this time, he’s going undercover.
Danson stars in A Man on the Inside, which debuted Thursday on the streamer, as Charles Nieuwendyk, a retired college professor who’s a bit aimless after the death of his wife. This week’s premiere opens with a flashback to a de-aged Danson (!) as Charles, who gives a toast at his wedding and recalls that, though he and his wife are complete opposites, he still decided that “this is the person I want to grow old with.” But now he’s old and alone, and we see Charles go through his daily routine — making coffee, doing crosswords, taking naps — all by himself.
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He still reads the newspaper and cuts out articles to send to his daughter Emily (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Mary Elizabeth Ellis), and she’s worried about him now that her mom isn’t there to pull him out of his shell. She challenges him to find “something that excites you,” and he finds it when he sees a classified ad looking for an old man to assist a private eye named Julie (Chicago Med’s Lilah Richcreek Estrada). She’s investigating the theft of a ruby necklace at a local retirement home, and she needs someone to go undercover to nab the culprit. Julie tests all the old men who answer the ad by having them send her a simple text on their phone, and though most struggle with it, Charles passes with flying colors. He’s hired!
Julie wants Charles to check into the retirement home and blend in as a new resident, and she gets him ready by taking him out into the field and having him spy on people without being noticed. Charles ends up befriending them, though. (“So I feel like they noticed you,” Julie gently points out.) She equips him with special spy glasses with an earpiece and takes him to visit the home. (“You’re not remotely ready,” she sighs, “but we ran out of time.”) There, they meet the home’s director Didi, played by Brooklyn Nine-Nine vet Stephanie Beatriz, with Julie posing as his daughter. They also meet a resident named Virginia, played by Sally Struthers, who takes an instant liking to Charles. (He’s so tall!) They have music classes, art classes and college lectures there, and Charles fits right in.
He clams up, though, when they pass by the home’s memory care unit, which they call “The Neighborhood.” He hesitates when it comes time to sign up, and he confesses to Julie that his wife had Alzheimer’s, and that brought up some bad memories. Julie’s grandfather had it, too, she tells him, and she encourages him to get past this and “rejoin the world.” Charles eventually relents and moves into the home, with Julie assigning him to get video of any suspects with his phone. He has to explain what he’s doing to his daughter, too, so he stumbles through a lie that he’s taking “a photography painting gardening class… It’s multi-disciplinary.” When he wakes up for that first morning in the home, though, he gets dressed and is ready to go to work, saying to himself in the mirror: “Classic spy.”
So are you in on A Man on the Inside? Give the premiere a grade in our poll, and let us know if you’ll keep watching in the comments.
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