Grace and Frankie

[lydy]

I'm watching Netflix' "Grace And Frankie."  It is a sitcom in which two women in their seventies (Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin) end up living together because their husbands (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterson) leave their wives of forty years for each other.  I like the actresses quite well, and had a lot of personal curiosity.   My mother left my father after she found out he was gay.  My parents being who they were, handled it about as badly as it was possible to handle it, bar physical violence.  So I wondered what, you know, more normal people would do in a situation like that.  The fact that I'm looking at a sitcom as a possible model for normal people probably says more about how odd my family was than anything else.  

I'm well into season 3, and I like it quite a bit.  It has the types of problems that television in general and sitcoms in particular have. They play the trippy dippy hippies (Sol and Frankie, played by Sam Waterson and Lily Tomlin) a little too much for laughs, and are a bit too condescending about alternative lifestyles.  Some things are entirely too pat.  But others...

There's an episode, shortly after the divorce, where the affianced fathers invite their kids over for dinner.  The kids, trying to be supportive, show up, and bring a cake.  And it's awkward, and difficult.  And finally, one of them stands up and says, "Let's just face it, if you had been having an affair with women for 20 years, we wouldn't be bringing you cake!"  They all walk out, and take the cake to their moms.  And I love this, so much.  There are real complexities, here, about betrayal and honesty, and tolerance, and how all of this is weirdly difficult.  It absolutely makes sense that it took the fathers so long to come out, makes sense that they lived a double life for twenty years, and there's real compassion for that.  But at the same time, this was shitty behavior that hurt a lot of people.  

There's a scene with Grace and Robert where Grace is laying down the law about future interactions, and what kind of boundaries she expects.  Robert agrees, and Grace says, "This feels great, telling the truth.  If we'd done this years ago, would things be different?"  And Robert looks a little sad, and says, "I think we would have ended up in the same place, but it might have been a better ride."  That's a level of honesty and kindness that I rarely see in sitcoms, and I really do love it.  

In another episode, Grace finds out that her husband had an entire drawer of gifts, pre-bought, just waiting to be deployed when she was unhappy.  They are pre-wrapped, with labels like, "Because you had a bad day," and Grace goes ballistic.  In the course of her rant, she says, "I thought you gave me gifts because you loved me!"  and her ex looks at her, sadly, and says nothing.  Because he really didn't, not for all those years.  And I love the fact he doesn't try to reassure her, doesn't lie to her.  The truth is so spiky and uncomfortable, but that's the only gift he can give her in that moment, and he does.

I love the fact that unwinding marriages of 40 years isn't easy, straightforward, or fast.  I love the fact that they continue to talk to each other, help each other,  that the processing of the damage done takes time, has layers.  It's amazing, to watch adults deal with this shit as adults.  I so seldom see this in fiction.  It's fascinating to see the different ways in which this plays out, between Grace and Robert, who were never very much in love, and Sol and Frankie, who really were and still do love each other.  

This is definitely one of those pieces of fiction where I keep on wondering, "Did you even think about polyamory?"  Which, of course, they didn't.  But it is one of the very few fictional depictions of infidelity and jealousy where I understand where people are coming from, and why.  The infidelity has consequences, does real damage, but it's not so much about the sex. It's very much about the intimacy and honesty within the relationship.  The ways in which people end up experiencing and expressing jealousy seem grounded in real life and real expectations, rather than being about the destruction of a Platonic form of romance.  (Can there be a Platonic form of romance?)

Sex is portrayed as a real thing, a good thing, but not an ideal which exists on another plane.  It is a thing people do with each other, sometimes unwisely, sometimes very wisely.  It has consequences, but the consequences are, again, real world, sane, and understandable.  Also, it's lovely to see two 70 year old women actively pursuing sex while still very much being their age.  One doesn't very often get to see old women with active, age-appropriate sex lives.  

I dunno if this would be anyone else's jam.  But there's just so much _adulting_ here.  Almost everyone is trying to be an adult, and behave in a kind and adult fashion.  And they succeed and they fail, and they try, and seriously, who knew you could do an entire sitcom about being a fucking adult?

Comments

[magenta]

I've seen the first season, and part of the second. I have to get the rest out of the library and finish watching. I really identify with Lily Tomlin's character, because that's who I might have been if I've married a nice Jewish lawyer like my mother wanted me to. There is too much embarrassment humor for my taste, but some of the episodes are delightful.

[ambyr]

I had similar problems with the embarrassment humor--but my tolerance for it is probably unusually low. My partners' family like watching the show, and I had a flee the room after a few minutes.

[bibliofile]

Embarrassment humor, yes.

Still, I'll try the series someday. Maybe when I have regular Netflix access.

[lydy]

There certainly is embarrassment humor. But it is resolved surprisingly often with a kindness towards the subject. There's base level of kindness in this show that is unusual in sitcoms. The gay couple's affection is never played for laughs. In fact, sex is rarely played for laughs, although some of the things surrounding sex are. There's a lack of contempt, even in the embarrassment humor, which is unusual.

[princessofgeeks]

I really wanted to see this but haven't made time to find it and see it yet.

[calimac]

"It absolutely makes sense that it took the fathers so long to come out, makes sense that they lived a double life for twenty years, and there's real compassion for that. But at the same time, this was shitty behavior that hurt a lot of people."

This points at the real problem with the conservative prescription that gay people should just suck it up and live straight lives. The result is this kind of hurtful lying.

[lydy]

As someone whose childhood is a smoking wreckage because of exactly such nonsense, I agree more wholeheartedly than you can imagine.

[carbonel]

I like this show a lot, and have recommended it to numerous people, including you, IIRC.

However, one of the things I don't like about it is what I devoutly hope is a sitcom thing: Frankie's insistence on treating the world the way she wants it to be, and not the way it actually is. The only redeeming feature is that she only gets away with that about half the time; the rest of the time it comes back to bite her the way the real world would 100% of the time. (Okay, 95%.)