[This coming weekend, the great Martin Sheen celebrates his 84th birthday. Sheen’s life has been as impressive and inspiring as his iconic career, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of threads to both. Leading up to a special tribute to a pair of even more inspiring Americans!]
[NB. This
post originally appeared in 2015, but I would argue all of its points only
deepened with all the G&F seasons
since that early point.]
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 [ED: although
he sure took a lot away from it himself with his
own actions], 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; [2024 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.
Tribute
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. What
do you think?
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