Happy Titty Tuesday y’all! It’s been a bit of a crazy week with Belle off on a class trip – her first time away from home without any family members – and I’m feeling a bit exhausted and behind on life. I also feel like a piece of me is missing. I’m glad for her to be exploring and adventuring, but cannot wait to have her back.
What I have for you this week is a review of a show that fits the Fierce Tit approach to life: Younger, which is now streaming on Netflix. The show ran from 2015-2021, but since I didn’t even begin to watch shows and movies until 2020, I’ve only just caught up to it now.
A Storyline Based on a Lie
Liza Miller, 40, has just learned that her husband has been cheating on her and that he’s leaving her for another woman. He’s also gambled away their money and their house (which must amount to an awful lot of gambling – he’s a dentist). So she’s single, broke, and homeless. Luckily, she has a friend who’s an artist with a super trendy loft in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg. She moves in with her friend and starts interviewing for jobs at publishing houses. But no one wants to hire a woman in her 40s.
One night, out at a bar with her friend Maggie, Liza meets Josh, a hot tattoo artist who’s 26 and thinks that Liza is also 26. She doesn’t correct him. This gives her the idea to alter her resume so that it looks like she actually is 26. She gets a job, and ends up dating the handsome tattoo artist who still thinks she’s 26. (Get it yet? Lies-a?)
Once her new identity starts working for her, she goes to great lengths to conceal her real age from her new friends. Most of the tension of the show comes from her attempts to keep her secret, and her fear of what will happen (to her new friends, her relationship, her child, and her job) if anyone finds out.
Of course, in Fierce Tit fashion, she’s wicked smart. She’s a great writer, a sensitive editor, a good friend, and of course gorgeous. (Sutton Foster was well into her 40s when she was cast to play a character who looked young enough that she could pass for 26!)
A Likeable, Unlikeable Protagonist
It’s only once I finished the show that I realized the irony: Liza’s marriage falls apart because of lies: her husband David lies about his gambling addition, his affair with a blackjack dealer, and the fact that he has taken out multiple mortgages on their home. This leaves her alone and in debt. They have a daughter in college whose tuition she has to pay. So she immediately turns around and tells her own lie – that’s she’s 26 – in order to get a job and take care of herself and her kid.
Liza’s a likeable character, but a bad example. She’s a helper. She gets a job as an assistant to director of marketing Diana Trout (Miriam Shor – a Fierce Tit for sure!) where she excels for her ability to get Diana’s coffee order just right and not step on anyone’s toes.
This theme continues throughout the show. She lets 26-year-old boyfriend Josh tell her who she is. He tattoos her with a symbol of their relationship, and then dumps her when he learns that they both want different futures. (Hers might include another man).
She then spends a number of episodes lost in a dreamy, teen-like stupor, just wishing that publisher Charles (the drop-dead gorgeous Peter Hermann) will like her back. She’s constantly doing things behind people’s backs under the guise of “help,” and while these things make her successful professionally, they end up ruining her personal life. Even until the end of the show, she is keeping secrets from those closest to her.
In the end, I think that’s what makes the show so interesting. All of the characters get it right about half the time – and wrong the other half of the time. This creates a Seinfeldian dynamic that is often cringey, but also enjoyable.
Who should watch Younger:
- Any woman who has just gotten divorced. It’s great for filling up that extra time, and for voyeuristically watching someone relive their 20s.
- Women in their 40s. Finally, a show made for us.
- Women who need something to watch during cancer treatment. Each episode is about 25 minutes, and it’s a fairly light and entertaining watch, so good for when you need some boob tube. (Or tit tube???)
- Couples in their 20s-40s. I found myself wishing that I had a partner to watch with. The show is mostly about the main characters’ friendship and relationship choices, and because their sexualities are diverse and their desires fleeting, they make a lot of interesting choices that could be fun conversation starters for couples.
- Anyone who is a writer or is interested in the publishing world. (Though the accuracy of the way the publishing world is depicted in the show is definitely suspect).
Who might not be interested in Younger:
- Kids: this is an adult show.
- Anyone who does not like shows that have nudity or that (often) depict sex.
- If you have trouble with lying and cannot have compassion for a character who tells lies, this may not be the show for you.
- Anyone who expects a realistic depiction of life in New York in your 40s.
Fierce Tit Recommendation
Younger is an easy, fun, entertaining show on the surface. I picked it up as my most recent watch because I wanted something easy and funny. I needed a laugh. And it is easy and funny (it’s a dramedy) but it also takes on interesting questions of age, truth, and boundaries. The story revolves not just around Liza, but also around her three closest female friends: Kelsey (the amazing Hillary Duff), Maggie (the incomparable Debi Mazar – remember her from Empire Records?!) and Lauren (Molly Bernard). Each one, whether in her 20s or 40s, is navigating issues of power, attraction, and gender. And for each of them, that requires sometimes withholding the truth.
Watch the show alone for entertainment, or with a girlfriend or male partner if you want to nerd out and delve deeper into the issues of truth and lies, intimacy, and power dynamics between the genders.