[October 15th marks the 70th anniversary of I Love Lucy’s debut. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Lucyyyyyyyyyyyy and other sitcoms—share your responses and other sitcom analyses for a crowd-sourced post that’ll need no canned laughter!]
[NB. This post
originally appeared in 2015, but I would argue all of its points have only
deepened with all the G&F seasons
since!]
On two ways the
Netflix sitcom pushes our cultural boundaries, and one way it happily does not.
The Netflix
original sitcom Grace and Frankie (2015)
features one of the more distinctive and yet appropriately 2015 premises I’ve
seen: two lifelong male friends and law partners come out to their wives as
gay, in love with each other, and leaving their wives for each other and a
planned gay marriage. The premise alone would make the show one of the more
groundbreaking on our cultural landscape, but the fact that the two men are
played by two of our most prominent and respected actors, Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston, makes
this nuanced, complex, warm, and so so thoroughly human portrayal of a same-sex
relationship even more striking. It seems to me that a greal deal more has been
written about Transparent and Jeffrey Tambor’s portrayal
of that show’s transgender protagonist than about Sheen and Waterston in Grace and Frankie—and without taking
anything away from Tambor’s equally nuanced and impressive performance, I would
argue that seeing Sheen and Waterston in these roles represents an equally
significant step forward in our cultural representations of the spectrums of
sexuality, sexual preference, and identity in America.
What’s
particularly interesting about Grace and
Frankie, moreover, is that Sheen and Waterston’s characters and storyline
represents only half of the show’s primary focuses—and the other half, focused
on the responses and next steps and identities and perspectives of their former
wives Grace and Frankie, is in its own ways just as ground-breaking. Played to
comic, tragic, human perfection by legendary actresses Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin,
these two characters represent to my mind two of the most in-depth and
multi-layered portrayals of older women in television history. That there has
been some behind the scenes controversy about the paychecks of Fonda and
Tomlin in comparison to those of Sheen and Waterston, while of course
frustrating and tied to broader
current issues and arguments, also seems to add one more pitch-perfect
layer to the ways in which the show asks us to think about the experiences,
lives, and worlds of older women in a society that tends (as this scene highlights
with particular clarity) not to include them in our cultural landscape much at
all. In a year when the single leading candidate for the presidency (I refuse
to consider Donald Trump for that title; [2021 Ben: man I wish I had been right])
is herself a woman over 65, Grace and
Frankie engages with our current moment in this important way as well.
At the time that
it’s four main characters and their storylines are thus so groundbreaking,
however, I would argue (to parallel things I said about Longmire in
this post) that in its use of the conventions
and traditions of the sitcom form Grace
and Frankie feels very comfortably familiar. That might be one reason why Transparent, which blends genres much
more into something like
a dramedy, has received more critical attention and popular buzz (of course
the parallels
to the Caitlyn Jenner story are another such reason). Yet just because Grace and Frankie stays more within
those familiar sitcom lines (featuring everything from physical comedy and
wacky misunderstandings to recurring catchphrases and jokes) doesn’t make it
less stylistically successful—indeed, I might argue that using such familiar
forms yet making them feel fresh and funny is itself a significant aesthetic
success, and one that Grace and Frankie most
definitely achieved for this viewer. Moreover, there’s a reason why the sitcom is one of
television’s oldest and most lasting forms—it taps into some of our most
enduring audience desires, our needs for laughter and comfort that not only
continue into our present moment, but have an even more necessary place
alongside the
antiheroes and dark worlds that constitute so much of the best of current television.
Just one more reason why I’m thankful for Grace
and Frankie.
Next
SitcomStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other sitcoms you’d study?
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