Trying to get Younger makes me feel older
A so-terrible-it's-great TV show reveals there to be no remedy for our past bullshit
I have a recurring fantasy and I suspect it’s a common one. I often imagine what it would be like to go back in time, not through a portal or DeLorean, but some sort of metaphysical transformation in which my mind, as it exists today, would be transported into my 16- or 17-year-old body and the era to which it belongs.
Sure, there would be some sports gambling to ensure future generations never had to work, but what this littler reverie mostly concerns is improved life decisions and petty one-upmanship. Imagine being armed with the knowledge of how things will come about and the corresponding confidence to ask out the girl you liked without weeks of mental torment, to have a comeback at the ready when you’re mercilessly mocked for your gangly stature or to tell that one finite math teacher that in no uncertain terms, he should very much fuck off.
Oh, the wonderful thrill and satisfaction that would entail.
It’s a fantasy of course because of the physical limitations preventing it, but even sadder than the lack of means to transport our fully aware souls into our younger selves is the other reason why this conceit would never work as something more than an illusion: I’m likely underestimating my cowardice. Even with every advantage imaginable, I’d still probably not perform as bravely at my life as I’d like to think I would.
A version of this plays out on the television series Younger in which a 40-year-old woman (a mother of a university student, but only when the plot necessitates it) named Liza pretends to be in her mid-20s to get a job as an assistant in publishing. It’s the type of show you’re vaguely aware of until a rainy Sunday when you must pay the consequence of putting off a work project due on Monday morning, and — only after exhausting all the other curated options on your Amazon Prime account — decide to put it on as innocuous background noise while you get down to business.
Whether through the show’s merits or your own insistence on procrastination, it proves a bigger distraction than you intended, and before you know it, you’re into the third season possessing a vested interest in the protagonist’s choice among the romantic rivals. (For the record, I am so firmly ensconced within the boundaries of #TeamJosh, I recoil in disgust every time Charles so much as glances at Liza.)
The series is mostly terrible, but self-aware enough to lean into this terribleness with as much weight as required to pop out the other side of the critical spectrum and occasionally become excellent. A good example of this is when the characters visit Ireland in the Season 4 finale. The circumstances that bring them there are flimsier than leaves of wilted clover and they arrive only to act out as many ridiculous Irish stereotypes as a desperate pub dependent on St. Patrick’s Day revenue to stay afloat. Still, it’s fun. It has a sex-positive message. And it elevates friendship to a status that would enrage anyone who uses the term “family values” without irony.
The series is not a complete adoration of millennial values, though. Season 7 has somewhat clumsily dealt with cancel culture through a lesbian artist character (Maggie, probably the most identifiable figure in the entire series) being brought down on social media for the title of a past exhibition that included terms no longer tolerated. The show has also mocked the fleeting trends of my cohort, and the performative authenticity we embrace. In Season 2, a too-good-to-be-true philosopher farmer who leaves the city to write his musings and raise livestock, is memorably revealed to be a literal sheep-fucker.
If any generation is properly skewered by Younger, however, it’s the Gen X-ers, represented by every character over the age of 40 (with the exceptional exception of Maggie) whose internal struggle between the status they’ve achieved and the values they embraced earlier in life is laid bare.
Every single time in the series so far, that conflict has been won by status. The show seems to be claiming it’s a different sort of performance being put forth by Gen X. Lip service is paid to values, but maintaining tradition or status always takes precedence. Charles, the publisher, whose role within the company was attained through legacy, has brief dalliances with unstructured romance (Liza), his own artistic ambition (a never-completed novel), a business venture (the imprint cringingly called Millennial) and even his own self-made startup, but he returns each and every time to a well-established institution (insisting on marriage, focusing on finances, abandoning the imprint and startup to only deal with established authors).
Like a good friend, the show has a wonderful way of not trying to hide its faults, but rather, it grants you such a good time that its faults seem charming instead of annoying. For the most part, anyway.
It is somewhat irritating that Liza rarely if ever uses her previous life experiences for the betterment of her current situations. She is just as trapped within her mid-20s do-over as she was (presumably) in her 40-year-old life of passive acceptance.
Like other earned criticisms of the show, though, this isn’t a result of bad writing. The annoyance comes from the uncomfortable truth it reveals: That middling fantasy so many of us have about going back to improve our lives is unrealistic. And as much as we might want to blame not living within a sci-fi novel for this, the truth is we’d likely squander the opportunity if it existed in reality anyway. Instead of improving our lives or saving ourselves from bad decisions, we’d merely open the door to more mistakes. There is no fix for all of our past bullshit, not even within the realm of fantasy. There is no going back.
In eliminating that illusion, in taking away the fantasy, Younger makes me feel a whole lot older. But also more comfortable in knowing that all of the bad life decisions I’ve made are so uniquely mine, they’ll never be replaced or replicated. I am so completely myself. I own it, all of it.
It’s fitting that a show that seems so preoccupied with generational classification would, at its heart, be about individual identity and everyone’s independent pursuits of its ownership. For all of the influence of the era in which we reach particular milestones, it’s the sum of our individual mistakes that make us our irredeemable selves.
Photo courtesy of TV Land.