Samuel L. Jackson is unforgettable in the new Apple TV+ series “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey,” even when he’s silent, slumped in a lawn chair, and fading away in a monumentally cluttered apartment. With the help of excellent aging makeup and delicate prosthetics, Jackson gives a precisely physical, everyman performance that feels like his own “Forrest Gump.” Surrounded by canyons of stuff — triggers to his past lives — his aging, brittle character wrestles with dementia while sporadically being triggered by memories that poetically talk about Black America in the 20th century.
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Starting with the pilot episode directed by Ramin Bahrani, “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey” (based on show creator Walter Mosley’s 2010 novel) can have a shaky magic touch in presenting an incredible — and at times too-unbelievable — story of how this elderly Atlanta man gets back his memory and tries to change the futures of his loved ones. It’s made possible by the radical experiment of Dr. Ruben (Walton Goggins), which returns his memory for a specific amount of time and enables him to tie up loose ends before his mind reverts to its original state and becomes even worse. Then, with the help of an unlikely caretaker — his great niece’s best friend’s child Robyn (Dominique Fishback) — Ptolemy gets a final chance to compile the memories that usually come to him as hallucinations. These memories include his uncle Coydog (Damon Gupton) and the treasure that Coydog gathered for Ptolemy a few lifetimes ago when Ptolemy was a little boy known as Pity (Percy Daggs IV).
Without losing focus on the character at its center, “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey” includes other lives, each filled out with soulful supporting performances. Omar Benson Miller’s close-ups practically steal the show as he plays Reggie, Ptolemy’s great-nephew and the original caretaker for his uncle. Every now and then, the show flashes to Miller’s warm eyes in recollection of a conversation he has with Ptolemy, and it provides this American gothic tale with its sporadic rays of calm light.
Dominique Fishback has significant, restrained power in the role of Robyn, who is introduced in the story having experienced a lot of hardship and heartache of her own. She chooses to embrace the sense of home that Ptolemy gives her in their father-daughter relationship. Fishback and Jackson share many sweet scenes, her taking care of him and him sharing his hard-earned wisdom that we sometimes see in lengthy flashbacks. Through their time together, we get vivid portraits of his earth-shaking marriage to Sensia (Cynthia Kaye McWilliams) and a childhood where he witnessed traumatic, racist violence.
Across its six 50-minute episodes, “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey” proves to be the type of enigmatic, uneven show that teaches you how to best embrace it, to understand what is most precious to it and what isn’t. In the former category, it’s the show’s depiction of Black American trauma across decades, starting with what Ptolemy sees as a boy and what does not change in America since. (Among many things Coydog teaches him, it’s that “there will be a time in every Black man’s life when he has to run.”) The show also nearly takes on a slow, uneasy burn as every character is then shown trying to have a sense of security with family and money. Sometimes people kill for it; sometimes, they steal for it. It adds to a sense of danger in the series, one in which the police are also a threat—Hilliard (DeRon Horton) is accosted by cops immediately in the opening episode for squabbling with his uncle Grey in public, already assumed to be a criminal. The
The storytelling can be more forceful with plot devices, as in the memory-enhancing procedure or a subplot in which Ptolemy decides to more or less become a detective to investigate a murder. These are like flights of magical realism, just like later developments that involve a treasure, and Ptolemy’s life changes from it. It’s as if the series isn’t strange enough with these elements and plays them straight. We have to take them as literal and forget that they don’t mean nearly as much as the flashbacks and conversations they are inspiring.
“The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey” also can’t resist using Ptolemy’s initially bad memory and dementia for cheap thrills in its earlier episodes, as if we wouldn’t already be aware of how vulnerable he is out in the world, especially with the wrong caretaker. And the series usually can’t resist a heavy-handed dramatic beat, often cued by a piece of music or scowl. As much as it wants to have the grounded nature of history in motion, being recalled, it also mixes openly melodramatic flourishes that can take the viewer out, despite their clear intent to feed a binge watch’s intrigue. The show loves a touch-and-go mystery, like a disturbing moment in Ptolemy’s young life, or who killed a main character suddenly shot in the streets, or who is trying to bust down Ptolemy’s door at the beginning of the first episode.
But despite some gratuitous storytelling choices, “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey” prevails most when it illuminates the people who orbit Ptolemy, finding its most tense and moving elements when dramatic beats come down to choice. What does Hilliard do when he is assigned with taking Ptolemy to the bank? What does Robyn do when she sees how much Ptolemy has stored away? This narrative focus becomes one of its more ambitious elements, matching Jackson’s dramatic range in bringing this story to life. [B]
