Just when it looked like Reggie Dinkins (Tracy Morgan) humbled his foe Jerry Basmati (Craig Robinson), a shocking twist might mean Reggie will be forced to deal with his rival once again — and this time under even more high-stakes circumstances.
The one hour finale of The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins followed Reggie and the gang – Arthur (Daniel Radcliffe), Monica (Erika Alexander), Rusty (Bobby Moynihan), Brina (Precious Way), and Carmelo (Jalyn Hall) — as they fought for Reggie’s place in the Hall of Fame. As a disgraced former Jets player, in 15 years, Reggie hadn’t even been considered for the honor. Now, with Arthur’s documentary in the works and Reggie’s recent bout of good publicity, there was finally hope that he could earn at least one vote from the nomination committee.
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Of course, Jerry was a huge obstacle, foiling the crew’s efforts at every turn.
A recap of The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins finale
When a vacancy on the Hall of Fame voting committee suddenly opened up in Episode 9’s “Mischief and Memories,” Jerry worked to appoint Reggie’s former coach Duck Donovan (Corbin Bernsen). Duck blames Reggie’s gambling scandal for the sharp decline of his own career, so he’d be a guaranteed vote against Reggie.
Monica and Reggie worked to convince Duck that it was worth voting for Reggie, but Jerry was smarter, abducting Duck off the street and convincing him not to vote for Reggie. Then, to put a cherry on top of his revenge plot, Jerry declared that he’d convince the committee to nominate Reggie’s best friend Rusty to the Hall of Fame, instead.
Episode 10’s “A Real Cinderello Story,” was spent attempting to foil Jerry’s plans. In the end, it was Rusty who ended the evil plot. He found a loophole in the Hall of Fame’s official rule book that would make him ineligible: “Rule 12, Section 1, Article 17. ‘Use of a helmet as a weapon. Immediate disqualification.'”
Rusty took advantage of the technicality and bombarded Jerry right before he was set to vote, throwing a football helmet at him in a random attack. In the end, Reggie didn’t make the Hall of Fame, but he did earn four nomination votes, more than he ever had in his career. This news delighted Reggie and the crew, which baffled Jerry. Their happiness robbed him of the satisfaction of his “win,” effectively giving Reggie the upper hand in their rivalry… for now.
The shocking Reggie Dinkins Season 1 ending
While all seemed well in the Dinkins household, it turned out that a certain someone had a secret that would take the Dinkins-Basmati rivalry to new heights. In the finale’s final scene, Carmelo is secretly filmed on a video call with Jerry and Tisha Basmati’s (Heidi Gardner) daughter. And from the sound of their conversation, it’s clear that the two are dating.
“You got my hoodie all smelling like vanilla. I had to tell me dad it was from baking a cake,” Jalyn told her.
She later told him, “Well, my dad found the rose you gave me. I said it was a prop for the talent show, so now I’m doing a one woman Beauty and the Beast.“
A suspicious Jerry nearly caught them red-handed, walking in during their conversation and looking at the screen right before Jalyn was able to duck out of the frame and hang-up. It was then that Carmelo looked directly into a nearby camera and realized Arthur’s documentary crew had filmed the entire interaction.
Carmelo in a secret relationship with his dad’s arch nemesis? Something tells us that Reggie won’t react well to this revelation. And how long will Carmelo be able to keep this secret? It sounds like a perfect plot for a potential Season 2.
When chatting with The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins co-creators and showrunners Robert Carlock and Sam Means about finale’s surprise ending, they revealed Carmelo’s clandestine romance was added “pretty late in the game” of the writing process.
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“We had not worked with Jalyn, who plays Carmelo, or Precious, who plays Brina, before,” Carlock explained to NBC Insider. “And so there’s always the fun of you audition someone and they’re great in the audition, and it’s like, ‘OK, what can we keep giving them?’ It’s a bottomless pit of being able to give those two actors stuff.”
Means added, “With streaming these days, some shows are written entirely before production and we were writing as we were shooting, the show, and we got to adjust characters and adjust jokes and and give more to to everyone as we went, especially as we just how incredible Jalyn and Precious are.”
Recognizing Jalyn Hall’s undeniable talent as production progressed, they saw that he could carry the shocking scene that would anchor the season.
“It’s called The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, and it’s more about [Reggie] and Arthur, and so it was really fun to sort of stumble upon the fact that we feel like we’d hidden [Carmelo] a little bit during the season,” Carlock said. “And of course part of that is wanting Craig and Heidi to have to come back. The Basmatis were so fun to write for.”