S01.E01: Pilot / S01.E02: Liza Sows Her Oates

[hatchetgirl]

I love love love Sutton Foster. Darling and can definitely carry this type of show.

I'm 48 and can pass for 30's (thanks you for staying out of the sun and only drinking baby's blood... J/k) and I can tell you that is do it in a heart beat and definitely show that tattooed Romeo a thing or two in the bedroom. Lol

It's a fun little ditty to counter my current love of drama.

[methodwriter85]

 

Again, makes me think the writers themselves are a lot older than 40 because who watching this show wouldn't think of that right away?

 

I gotta give you that. They need to keep in mind that the average 40-year old was born in the mid-1970's, had their childhood in the 1980's and had their college and mid 20-something years in the mid/late 1990's. These are the people that brought us the dot-com boom and the like. Gen Xers are supposed to be pretty computer savvy, but they're treating her like she's supposed to be 65-year old Baby Boomer. They need to sit down with the writers of Being Erica or Hindsight to get an idea of how to properly portray Gen Xers.

 

I did really like that she made a timeline of her fake life, and tried to find references to hang major moments of her life to, like loving the Notebook when she was 17. It reminded me of that joke on Thirty Rock, where Jenna lied about being 29 with a birth year of 1977, a high school graduation year of 1994, Boy II Men being her prom theme, and not knowing what a drive-in movie theater is.

 

I graduated high school in 2005 and college in 2010, so I have had a ton of friends/acquaintances with her fake 1988 birthyear. LOL.

Edited April 11, 2015 by methodwriter85

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I'm 45 and I'm well aware of who Lena Dunham is -- are we to believe she's just extra out-of-touch because she's been a SAHM for 18 years?  I'm not sure whether to be a bit offended by the portrayal of a 40-year-old who can barely tweet or a 43-year-old boss who's a jealous uptight asshole.

On the one hand, I thought it was a bit much that Liza was portrayed as being so completely ignorant about EVERYTHING. That works better for Kimmy Schmidt who has been in an underground bunker for 15 years and has had absolutely no contact with the outside world. But being a stay at home mom doesn't mean you are completely oblivious to everything. In fact, having a kid often clues you in to things that you never would have known about otherwise (I remember when my younger sister was in elementary school and told me about Pogs and I was like what in the holy hell are you talking about?).

 

On the other hand, I remember at one of my very first jobs, the company hired a woman who had been a stay at home mom for over a decade. Keep in mind she had been out of the workforce for the entire decade of the 90s so when she came back to work, she had no idea how anything worked. She was baffled by everything from Excel to email because in the 90s, why would you use Excel at home? And at that time, dial up was still really slow and lots of people didn't have it at home. Every little thing confused her. Remember back in the late 90s/early 00s, every time you opened an email with an attachment that pop up window would tell you that there was an attachment and ask if the sender was someone you trusted? She would come running over to my desk to ask me if that was normal and if it was safe for her to open the email.

 

Honestly, I think that if the show had been set a decade or so earlier, then you could really understand a woman who hasn't worked in 10-15 years not being familiar with a lot of stuff because there was a lot of technological innovation that happened between 1990 and 2000. When my coworker had her first kid in the late 80s/early 90s, not everyone had a PC at home. By the time she went back to work around 2000, college kids were starting to get cell phones with (clunky) internet. But for someone who is 40 in 2015, it seems much less likely that she wouldn't know about things like Brazilians and twitter because those have been so heavily featured in pop culture for such a long time that it is less believable that anyone who watches tv or reads stuff on the internet wouldn't know about that kind of stuff.

 

I think Liza's cluelessness works better for smaller things like Topless Tuesdays, as opposed to not knowing how to useTwitter. While I appreciate that she didn't whine about it and just googled it herself, on the other hand, duh, you've been on the internet before, right? Signing up for most accounts and then posting something is pretty simple. I mean, she used to have a Facebook account so she knows the basics.

 

I am willing to give the show some leeway about exaggerating for comic effect, but I agree that they are making Liza seem twice her age with her cluelessness. Hopefully this lessens as the season goes on.

[kieyra]

Checking it out. Do like Sutton Foster. Editing is very weird and jumpy/ADHD. I also am confused by ... What network is this? TVLand? But they have premium-cable level profanity? Just generally disoriented. I should probably love it, though, as a GenX chick with a younger boyfriend trying to remain relevant in the workplace. Although I know dang well who Lena Dunham is.

[chessiegal]

I have no idea who Lena Dunham is, but I'm old enough to be Liza's mother. :)  But not too old to love the show,

[methodwriter85]

I have no idea who Lena Dunham is, but I'm old enough to be Liza's mother. :)  But not too old to love the show,

 

Her real birth year of 1974/1975 or the fake one of 1988? In any event, be very glad you don't know who Lena Dunham is. She has to be one of the most purposefully annoying celebrities to have ever existed.

 

I just realized that I had a conversation with a bunch of people about One Direction and we were all in our 20's while we did. So I won't bust on them for that, although really- are you telling me that Kelsey doesn't listen to anything more mature and current? I'd love for them to drop in references to Passion Pit or The Black Keys. Or hell, if you want to stay purely pop, Ellie Goulding.

[chessiegal]

Her real birth year of 1974/1975 or the fake one of 1988? In any event, be very glad you don't know who Lena Dunham is. She has to be one of the most purposefully annoying celebrities to have ever existed.

 

I just realized that I had a conversation with a bunch of people about One Direction and we were all in our 20's while we did. So I won't bust on them for that, although really- are you telling me that Kelsey doesn't listen to anything more mature and current? I'd love for them to drop in references to Passion Pit or The Black Keys. Or hell, if you want to stay purely pop, Ellie Goulding.

 

methodwriter85, I'm old enough to be Liza's real age mother.

[C76]

I've just started to watch this show's pilot. I'm interested in Younger because the premise takes a page from my life. The protagonist's life isn't exactly like mine. However, a while ago, I went back to school with the intention of switching careers. I also get regularly mistaken for being a 20-something when in fact I'm much older.

 

Heck, guys, do you really not know any 40 year olds that don't know twitter, pop culture, etc.? No need to read that much into it, especially since, as someone else mentioned, she seemed like she picked it up quickly. My 32 year old sister is pretty clueless herself about that stuff. It happens. I'd like to hear what she has been doing since she quit her last job beyond rearing a child, but it's only the first episode.

I'm going to answer your first question. As far as I'm concerned, that's not the issue. Knowledge gaps occur. But I'm not looking forward to the portrayal of what people in this thread have described. What gets me is the idea that out of all the ways to represent a 40 year old's response to technology, the writers/producers decided to make her clueless. From the sound of things, it's like they're perpetuating a stereotype, rather than representing an individual.  

 

"Of course a 40-something doesn't know about social media. OF COURSE..."

[DaynaPhile]

Just had to find out if there was a forum for this show. Yay for Sutton Foster! She's amazing, I've met her in person, and she's every bit as adorable as you'd think. I also remember her Bunheads days telling fans that she had to go home and google more than half of the pop culture references that Palladino crammed into those scripts. So her cluelessness is believable for me. Because she really is.

I'm old enough to be Sutton's older sister, and I don't have any idea who Lena Dunham is. But I have Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. But I also have a younger sister in law that doesn't have a clue about social media. She's the kind that shares a facebook account with her husband but they rarely post anything.

Hillary Duff is irritating. I can't stand the way she talks. And are 20-something professional women really that obnoxious? I've seen through episode 5 or so and her two friends are just as awful. Her boyfriend needs a smack upside the head, as well as Kelsey for putting up with his sexist pig behavior.

I get that it's TV, but for me the only like able characters so far are Liza and Maggie. I wish they'd dig deeper into the emotions of Liza, we got a glimpse later when she ran into her ex, Bunheads was full of heartwrenching moment and this show so far is barely scratching the surface of anyone's emotions. Maybe that's the perils of only having 22 minutes of screen time to tell a story.

[swtrgrl]

Also, Nico Tortorella is ridiculously attractive and I will probably keep watching as long as he's on my screen.

This. SO much this. 

 

I love the entire cast and am optimistically hoping this stays fresh. Interesting premise. Great casting.