Women of a Certain...

Look, I’m naturally going to be interested any show with two female leads. I’m naturally going to be interested in a show with Lily Tomlin as one of those female leads. And, you know, Jane Fonda is no slouch either. So when I heard about the new Netflix series “Grace & Frankie” I was thrilled. Like, seriously, how fun. And then there was the LGBT aspect with the husbands of Grace (that’s Jane) and Frankie (that’s Lily) coming out as gay and in love with each other (they’re played by Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston, respectively).

And the trailer looks fun, too. Like a Nora Ephron turned into a full-length series. I mean, who doesn’t want to watch Lily and Jane rib each other. The only way it could be better is if these two ladies fell in love, too. Late-in-life coming outs for everyone!



While normally I would be a little cranky about a show as unabashedly about rich white folks as “Grace & Frankie” seems to be, I think given the other unprecedented nature of this series I can cut it some slack. I really can’t think of another TV show centered around septuagenarian women. Can you? Women of a certain age so very rarely get the spotlight. “The Golden Girls” was about a group of women in their 60s (in fact Estelle Getty’s Sophia was actually a year younger than her “daughter” Bea Arthur). “Hot in Cleveland” is mostly about women in their 50s and 60s – and Betty White, bless her heart. So a show about two broads in their 70s, yeah, that makes me pretty happy.

This is the beauty of choice. Subscription streaming services like Netflix and Hulu – and the expansion of cable offerings – have helped broadened the field. We can have shows about women of all ages and colors in prison, a trans parent and her adult children, a doomsday cult survivor and her new actor, dancer, homosexual roommate. I could go on. And that makes me very, very happy.