That grill is and always has been, quite frankly, bizarre. But yeah, I think the new one is really nice with subtle updates.
It's like for a brief moment, the designers thought the RC was an ES redesign and just went with it. Very out of place, never understood the rationale.
Even when we're discussion a second generation RC I think we must take a couple of minutes to remember what we've right now:
In my opinion, besides current NX which I'm not really into it, Lexus does some of the most beautiful cars without any question, even this older models like CT/IS/RC!