A return to blogging! After many, many years. It's a TV show that prompts this comeback. So many thoughts in my head and no other outlet for them. So here goes...
So there's this show I've been watching, somewhat obsessively, called Younger. It took me some time to warm up to it but when I did, I went on a binge watching marathon and have followed its latest season avidly, every single week for the last 12 weeks.
It's a great show - good writing, great cast, beautiful New York City. At its core is the issue of ageism in the workplace, especially for women. Its premise is how a 40-something year old mom has to lie about her age to get back into the book publishing business because no one will hire her. The show deals with this vital and very relevant issue and while the story has evolved significantly from this lie, it is such a great concept for a show (and the book on which this show is based).
The show has also been really great with its wide representation - gay, queer, gender fluid, bisexual... it has displayed so many forms of sexual orientation with great honesty and acceptance, which really has been a hallmark of good television programming in the last few years.
The lead character of Liza Miller is played so brilliantly by Sutton Foster. She wasn't someone I had heard of before this show... I honestly don't follow Broadway much. But she is a wonderful actress, fresh faced and charming and she plays this character, who 'lies' every step of the way, so well, that you root for her despite all her dishonesty.
The rest of the cast is great too (kudos to their casting director). Miriam Shor, who also I hadn't heard of before Younger, plays what has become possibly my favourite character on the show, Diana Trout. Hard on the outside, emotional and soft on the inside, Diana gets some of the best lines and Shor plays the character brilliantly. Peter Hermann as the tall, brooding, sexy boss of the company and one of Liza's love interests, is great. Nico Tortorella as Liza's 'younger' love interest, who she spent 3 seasons dating, is a wonderful actor. Hilary Duff as Kelsey Peters, Molly Bernard as Lauren and Debi Mazar as Maggie Amato are all great in their roles.
So yes, all around a good show with a good cast and good premise, good writing that stays current both on millennial trends and on the current world events like #MeToo, which get incorporated into the show's storylines.
But here's where we come to a few fundamental problems I've started developing with the show as it concluded its 5th season on August 28. And I'm going to attempt to list them down as coherently as I can:
1. The show's creator Darren Starr (a man who has provided me great entertainment in my teens - Beverly Hills 90210, in my twenties - Sex and The City and now in my thirties - Younger) and its stars have repeatedly emphasised the show's focus on feminism, women empowering women, the central love story being how the female characters on the show all love one another and are each other's biggest support structures. And while this definitely hold true for some of the characters (Liza and Maggie, Kelsey and Lauren, even Diana and Liza)... it certainly fails when it comes to the two female leads Liza (Foster) and Kelsey (Duff).
Both Foster and Duff, and even Starr continue to push the idea that these two are the central love story and how they are always there for each other, love each other, support each other. But I don't know whether it is how Duff plays the character of Kelsey or the writing or maybe both... I cannot see the mutual love and support at all.
Kelsey is at her heart an ambitious, talented, selfish go-getter whose aim in life is to get ahead at whatever cost. She views her world and the people in it based upon how it can benefit her and her career. At the start of the show, she takes Liza under her wing (back when she thought Liza was a young millenial trying to crack her way into publishing), determined to prop her up and push her up the publishing ladder... and that was probably the last time we saw any mutual love and support.
Since then, at every step of the way, Kelsey's reactions to Liza have been purely selfish - blocking her promotion because she found out about her age, rejecting a book Liza really liked and wanted to publish because she didn't like the author, blackmailing her boss Charles (Peter Hermann) when she found out about him and Liza, forcing Liza to continue lying when she wanted to come clean so that their imprint Millenial wouldn't suffer... Even when Liza wanted to leave the company in the penultimate episode of season 5, the whole emotional scene between the two characters felt like it had an ulterior motive. Like Kelsey cried her eyes out because she knew that she couldn't run the imprint successfully on her own - after all it was Liza who was behind two of the biggest successes of the imprint... Marriage Vacation (a tell all written by Charles's ex-wife Pauline) and Pearls of Wisdom (a book written from the perspective of a Labradoodle) and not because she understood the sacrifice and emotional upheaval it was for Liza to leave the company. When it came to Liza's relationship with Charles, Kelsey reacted not as a loving and supportive friend but as a blackmailing, conniving woman who was so worried about what this relationship meant for her own career that she tried to force Liza to choose between her and the man she loves.
So I'm confused... what part of all this makes this the 'central love story', the great 'women supporting women' storyline, the 'female friendships drive the show' push? Mind you, I have no problem with a character who is super ambitious, will do anything to get to the top and is aiming for the stars. All power to her. But I have a big problem with such a character being portrayed as this great friend and feminist. She is not. She will screw over anyone who gets in her way to the top. And once again, that's fine. But don't misrepresent her as part of the 'central love story' of the show.
2. Josh's (Nico Tortorella) continuing, 5 season long, obsession with Liza who has long since turned her attention to other things in her life. So Josh was one of the first people Liza met on the show, back when she was starting out with her 20-something year old lie. In that moment Josh represented everything she couldn't experience in her twenties, because she was already married and with a child. So he was the excitement, the sex in a public place, the handjob in a playing field, the constant drinking and partying part of her life that she missed out on. He was also a loving and kind person who was genuinely in love with Liza.
But almost from the beginning, and continuing throughout this relationship with Josh, Liza was feeling attracted to Charles... a man her own age, with the same interests in books as her, similar and age-appropriate references, intellectually more compatible i.e. someone who matched her in every way in a grown-up, adult relationship kind of way. The excitement with Josh, which initially sparked something wonderful inside Liza, ultimately gave way to Liza having to do things she wasn't comfortable with, a realisation that she and Josh really didn't have much in common, a general incompatibility in where their lives were heading (he wanted children, she didn't want any more). And so she ended the relationship and went about pursuing things with Charles.
Yet, again, the writers and Foster herself continue to keep the Josh-Liza candle lit, burning away in the background, of no use to anyone. Josh remains obsessed with Liza, Liza continues to try and be a part of his life even though she knows she is leading him on given how he is in love with her while she is in love with Charles. It was a fun love triangle for 3 seasons but now it's just a dragging storyline, not to mention that Josh's obsession with Liza is bordering on the creepy and unhealthy and once again, not doing the show's big feminism push any favours.
Foster and Starr have given numerous interviews talking about how the Liza-Josh storyline isn't done yet and how they still have love for each other etc etc. I don't know whether that is a strategy to keep the #teamjosh fans happy and invested in the show or whether they really mean it. I mean how do they see a future for this couple where one partner loves the other more, the ages are incompatible in terms of what they want they want out of their lives, where one partner was attracted to another man even at the start of the relationship?
Shouldn't she put an end to things once and for all with him, tell him she only views him a friend and if he can't accept that, then bow out of his life? Wouldn't it be a nicer story if two people who were once in love and have had a tumultuous relationship, could actually move past that and become great friends, which would further be an advertisement for how strong friendships are such an important part of life? Instead we have a bizarre fantasy sequence in the Season 5 finale with Josh, Liza and their baby.
3. In the Season 5 finale, Charles is forced to step down as publisher and be 'put out to pasture', as Diana so eloquently put it, as a board director. And the company is handed over to... Kelsey! Now once again, this is the show's big female empowerment, young women in positions of authority push. And while that's great, let's look at this objectively - Kelsey Peters is a young, well-qualified book editor who is good at her job of editing books. She has just recently been given charge of her own imprint which is doing very well, though largely due to the success of books that Liza has edited. In what world, does that make her qualified to be the head of a major publishing company? There is a big difference between being a great editor with some experience and being someone who can preside over a publishing empire, especially one that is just about recovering from a massive bankruptcy threat. Does she know how to handle big budgets? Does she have the requisite contacts around the entire world (like Charles did through his decades of experience) to keep the company running? Does she know what it takes to run a massive operation just because she is able to run her own small imprint?
Nowhere in the real world would someone like her be put in charge of a big company - and that has nothing to do with her being a woman. Of course it makes for great TV drama, sure. But again, let's not push this as some big female empowerment thing. Putting the company in her hands is such a strange direction for the writers to have taken, who otherwise are pretty clever in the storylines they create. I mean, wouldn't it have made more sense to put the much more experienced Diana Trout in charge? Someone who has so much more experience, understands marketing and what it actually takes to make money for a company to stay afloat? Isn't this ageism as well? Sidelining the older, more experienced candidate in favour of a young, inexperienced one? And if not Diana, would an outside candidate with the requisite experience of running a publishing empire not be a better choice?
Not to mention, Kelsey has been so singularly unprofessional since the start of the show - sleeping with a married author while editing his book, getting drunk at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where she had gone in a professional capacity and not on a vacation, losing their biggest author because of a twitter flirt spat with another book editor, sleeping with her colleague while simultaneously once again sleeping with an author whose book she was editing. I mean, if the show is going to spend so much time focusing on how inappropriate the boss-employee relationship between Charles and Liza is, then how is it appropriate for Kelsey's unprofessional behaviour to be rewarded with such a major promotion?
Once again, in the guise of woman power, the show seems to lose track a little.
4. And finally (I know! This became longer than I thought it would), we come to what has been bugging me the most since Season 5 concluded.
A good, honest, hard working man is forced to relinquish control of his own family business that he has run so successfully for so many years, for it to be handed over to a young, highly unprofessional, up and coming book editor and we are celebrating that as a big win for feminism and woman power? Is feminism about equality or is it about women beating men?
This is a quote from a Duff interview after the season finale: "I think she's lost a lot of respect for him in the way that he's handled the relationship with Liza and the business itself. Also, his not trusting her decisions when she's the one who is raking in all the cash for the company."
What about his respect for her when one of their biggest authors wants her off the book because she slept with him and a colleague at the same time? What about the fact that it was Liza who 'raked in the cash' with two of the biggest Millennial books? What about the fact that he has allowed her to publish whatever she wants under her imprint and never interfered, except with Claw, even though technically Millennial belongs to him? What about the fact that he gave her the money to publish Claw even when the company was in such financial dire straits?
So, is Hilary Duff's perspective skewed? Are the writers thinking like this too? Is this the direction the show is taking?
I get that this makes for great drama and conflict and emotion and that's what drives television shows... but what's worrying is that it is being done in such a distorted guise of feminism and female empowerment. How is an unprofessional, inexperienced woman being given the job of a hard working, honest man a win for feminism? How is a more experienced, and probably more qualified older woman being done out of a job in favour of said unprofessional and inexperienced woman a win in the fight against ageism?
Let's call a spade a spade and say that the storylines, character arcs and writing make for great dramatic television. But let's not muddle it by pushing fighting ageism, promoting feminism, female empowerment and women supporting women as the central premise behind these specific storylines, which simply do not do justice to such great movements. In fact, a lot of the show's other stories are far greater advertisements for all these campaigns.
So while I think the show is quite wonderful in a lot that it has and continues to represent, I also think the writers and stars need to take a good, hard look at just how they promote these story arcs because the last thing this world needs is to take away from or misrepresent the feminist, anti-ageist and female empowerment movements.
