Far more interesting than the show's flaws are its strengths. Grellong tells the story of Al Gregory, the estranged son of a longtime radio talk-show host who returns to Providence for his father's funeral and soon ignites the airwaves with an incendiary "eulogy" turned rant. Al, it turns out, has spent his exile on a Maine lobster boat reading Ralph Waldo Emerson to his crewmates, and the 19th-century Transcendentalist has inspired Al to develop his own self-gratifying philosophy.
Al's ideas so goose the ratings that he quickly gets a regular show. Basically, he tells his listeners, doing good means just doing whatever makes you happy. Cheat on your wife, break business deals, betray your friends -- if you want to do it and it makes you feel good, it's the right thing to do. Unsurprisingly, this advice creates a few ripples when Al's listeners start following it -- and especially when his biggest fan, a childhood friend who's now married to Al's old crush, jumps on the bandwagon.
As several of Al's callers make clear, Emerson himself would hardly recognize his credo of self-reliance in this ode to self-indulgence. But Grellong gives Al such energy and charisma that it's easy to see why people go for it anyway. If the basic setup -- loose cannon in a sound booth -- recalls Eric Bogosian's "Talk Radio," rest assured that Grellong has created a uniquely abrasive and compelling character of his own, and one who lives in his own messy but sharply realized world.
Al's surrounded, too, by complex characters with their own quirks and sorrows: his manipulative and selfish mother, the grasping doctor who's wooing her, longtime station employee who's more family retainer than colleague, and, especially, old pal Henry and his complicated wife, Gina. All these lives overlap and intersect at work and at home: Henry's first big construction contract is the doctor's dream house, Gina is the radio show's producer, and the obsequious employee seems to spend as much time washing dishes as he does screening calls.
