A Season With: Younger (2015 – 2019)

By Paskalis Damar @sinekdoks
*Estimated Read Time: 4 mins

Coming from the vision of Sex and the City creator, creator, Younger almost breathes the same air as the cult series in celebrating the agelessness and complexity of adult life. Constructed as a single-camera sitcom, the series—which has ventured for six seasons (all are available at Mola TV) going to seven—peels off the meaning of growing up and restructures as a question. What if people can deceive adultness? By acting like a younger version of herself, the protagonist tries to deconstruct adulthood and exploits it for her own sake.

In Younger, Liza Miller (portrayed zestfully by Sutton Foster) is a desperate 40-year-old housewife whose husband left for a mistress and gambling behavior. Devastated and almost penniless, Liza is looking for a second chance in career; but, will a second chance come in the forties? She decides to move into her artist friend, Maggie (Debi Mazar), while her daughter is away in another side of the world. She seeks jobs in the industry where she excels when she’s younger, publishing, but finds it hard to find a suitable job. Living as a housewife for years has made her skip the good chunk of her productive age. Now, she’s too old for an entry level job; but inexperienced for a managerial level. For that, she’s decided to do a make-over; but, instead of some practical ones, she chooses to make-over herself to be 26 once again.

She’s decided to pile up lies after lies to make her disguise completely works. That would mean she must change her appearance almost entirely as well as she’s got to update her repertoire to be able to connect with people of “her age.” Working in The-Devil-Wears-Prada-esque Empirical Press with hot-headed boss, Diana Trout, (Miriam Shor) and a rising mentor, Kelsey Peters (Hilary Duff), Liza suddenly rediscovers herself. She even starts dating again. The second chance does arrive fairly for her.

Younger works like a gossip tabloid. It often takes soap-opera mechanism and re-works it like a sensationalistic show to cater the demand for high-end show. Darren Star’s shows, like Sex and the City and, recently, Emily in Paris, are often labeled so due to their resorting to simplicity adorn with exquisite looks and, most importantly, costumes. The show injects itself with enough FOMO behavior that helps it to connect with the sense of being younger. Living in the mid-20s is sophisticated for some people; but, some people would do just about anything to stay in their 20s for as long as possible.

The show never justifies what Liza has done and, at the same time, it never judges her for her deception. It works more like Breaking Bad where we ask to sympathize with the protagonist, but never actually glorify the crimes. At some moments, the show delivers laughable moments as the protagonist settling in with her new social standing; some other times, the show puts a little thrill here and there as the lies are in the brink of revelation. Younger makes use of its premise cleverly even when the show doesn’t always appear to be as clever as it could actually be.

Younger, created and produced by Darren Star (Sex and the City and the recent phenomena, Emily in Paris) for TV Land, is based on the 2005 novel by Pamela Redmond Satran. The sitcom aired for the first time on 31 March 2015 and, since then, has spawned six seasons with the seventh season already ordered. Mola TV streams all six available seasons of Younger with a total 72 episodes. Indonesian subtitles are available for the Mola Primetime Series program.

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