S04.E05: The Gift of the Maggie

[Eri]

2 minutes ago, bilgistic said:

This just reminded me of when I was in my early 20s, I went out with a guy I met at the bar/club. We were going to dinner, but for some reason, he had to first stop at his MOM'S WORKPLACE COOKOUT. He acted like it was only going to be a few minutes. We get there and HIS WHOLE FAMILY IS THERE. Like, his dad, his sisters, sisters' kids, sisters' spouses, the whole damn family tree. I've hung out with this dude for a few hours on the dance floor and now I'm meeting his whole freaking family! Then! They proceed to tell the guy to get a plate AND HE DOES. Instead of saying, "Bilgistic and I are on a date and we're going to eat. Bye," dude gets a plate full of hamburger, hot dog, baked beans, the works, and invites me to do the same. I'M A VEGETARIAN. I ate a handful of chips.

When we FINALLY leave, he takes me on a driving tour of all the multi-million-dollar houses that he's landscaped. I'm starving and he's showing me trees and pavers. It eventually got dark enough that the tour was over and he took me back to my car at his apartment. I left as fast as I could and ignored his calls for the next two weeks. He saw me at the club again one night maybe a month later, and I bolted in the other direction.

LOL, as a fellow vegetarian, you have my sincerest condolences. It's so uncomfortable feeling"vetted" by family members like that.

Josh could not have been going out with this girl for more than a couple weeks/months so why not just say "Hey I'm going by my mom's place to pick up some paintings, are you okay with meeting her?" The mother even seemed to eager to look like a "cool mom" anyway. She made her plagiarism scam sound so cute - I was relieved that they broke up by the end.

[Atlanta]

Keeping a change of clothes and underwear is called a "ho bag." You would think a woman who had been engaged to Thad, messed around with a MARRIED author (major girl code violation), and then messed over by that last author (of course she slept with him) would learn her lesson. Kelsey, empowerment is not code for spreading your legs. Yes, I know the media would like us to believe that way, but K needs to stop using sex for every career point. What happens when she can no longer use sex as a selling point? I've yet to see her use her smarts, but she uses physical manipulation. That's not female empowerment though Hollywood would have us believe that.

Edited July 31, 2017 by Atlanta

[BabyVegas]

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I think there should be a Younger "Fashion Horror" thread because these comments are hilarious.

Possible thread titles include "Is Pat Field OK?" or "Pat Field Is Playing An Extended 20 Year Joke On Fashion Y/N" because SERIOUSLY what in the name of Edith Head is she doing? Watching this show makes me question my sanity.

I was not pleased with Josh this episode. Haven't been pleased with him for awhile, but telling Maggie, who he has met before, about Montana's little stunt and then acting surprised when Maggie showed up was veering into Too Stupid To Live territory. What did he think she was going to do? Send a tersely worded letter? An if he really had that big of an objection to it, then he should have held his moral ground. I find it awfully spineless that he pretended like he wasn't going to say anything and then said something anyway. I think he was right to tell Maggie, but he shouldn't have pretended everything was cool by going to the show with Montanamy.

[Atlanta]

9 hours ago, BabyVegas said:

Possible thread titles include "Is Pat Field OK?" or "Pat Field Is Playing An Extended 20 Year Joke On Fashion Y/N" because SERIOUSLY what in the name of Edith Head is she doing? Watching this show makes me question my sanity.

I was not pleased with Josh this episode. Haven't been pleased with him for awhile, but telling Maggie, who he has met before, about Montana's little stunt and then acting surprised when Maggie showed up was veering into Too Stupid To Live territory. What did he think she was going to do? Send a tersely worded letter? An if he really had that big of an objection to it, then he should have held his moral ground. I find it awfully spineless that he pretended like he wasn't going to say anything and then said something anyway. I think he was right to tell Maggie, but he shouldn't have pretended everything was cool by going to the show with Montanamy.

I'm not a New Yorker, but I would expect them to dress more akin to "The Devil Wears Prada" (Pat Field did the costuming there too) than this weird thing she's got going.

[HunterHunted]

On 7/29/2017 at 9:58 PM, Snarklepuss said:

No, I don't think you were missing anything.  I think it's just another one of Darren Star's pokes at the often absurd out-there art culture in NY.  Like when Carrie in SATC went with Mikhail Baryshnikov to an art exhibit that consisted of a woman sitting in a room for days on end with nothing to do.  Only in Younger's case it was also a poke at rich trust fund Millennial entitlement as well.  Having known of people a little like this in Brooklyn, it's not really all that far off the mark, especially with her feigning humble origins and working in a coffee shop, LOL.  Truth is still stranger than fiction.

I'm pretty sure that was a riff on Marina Abramović. SJP is a huge art collector. She even executive produced a competitive reality art show on Bravo, Work of Art: The Next Great Artist. It was a weird show and remembering it makes me miss our TWoP forum for it.

[MissEwa]

On 31/07/2017 at 10:17 AM, Atlanta said:

Keeping a change of clothes and underwear is called a "ho bag." 

What? When I was younger I worked crazy hours and didn't live in the middle of the city so kept a change of underwear and a toothbrush in my bag because some nights friend's couches were easier and cheaper than getting home.

That aside, being prepared doesn't make her a ho bag. It's not even like he's some random she picked up in a bar. 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

@bilgistic your story reminded me of the Seinfeld episode where Elaine is supposed to meet Todd Gack for dinner (I think it's their second or third non-date) and when she gets to the restaurant, his parents are there.

[dubbel zout]

11 hours ago, MissEwa said:

That aside, being prepared doesn't make her a ho bag. It's not even like he's some random she picked up in a bar. 

Even if he were some random she picked up in a bar, being prepared doesn't make her a ho. Would you call a man who carried a condom in his wallet a ho?

[holly4755]

just wanted to mention woman's college in the 60's - our dean admitted she was Carolyn Keene (one among many)  Instead of shocking everyone, turns out so many of us read Nancy Drew as an empowered girl. and she became kind of a cult hero and more popular than as just dean.  

[aradia22]

HOW can this show know about "Smart Bitches, Trashy Books" and yet get SO much wrong about romance. A) Most notable romance writers are public and have a social media presence. They aren't hiding anything. B) Self-publishing and fanfiction are separate from the rest of the publishing industry though there is some crossover. But it's wrong to conflate the different groups of authors. C) Those Empirical romance covers were straight out the self-publishing badly photoshopped camp. D) There's not a lot of sex in Amish/religious romance. That's kind of the point. E) Everyone is not E.L. James. No wonder you think badly of romance if that's your model.

Also, why wouldn't the Michael Urie agent character know more about M/M romances if he actually reads them?

[aradia22]

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I think there could be a romance novel where the heroine doesn't end up with a man but is happy. Like she's been dating duds and realizes she's better off by herself for a while, but then on the last page she bumps into a guy at the coffee shop (or wherever) who stirs some interest.  She's single at the end, but there's some hope she'll find the right guy in the future.

That reminds me of some early 2000's chick lit. Think knock-off Shopaholic. But it was only because it was a series so eventually the heroine finds a guy. Or maybe she finds the guy and then something happens but there's definitely a point where you think it's HEA.

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Nothing wrong with a story about a romance ending without a happy ending.  Bridges of Madison County was huge and lots of people love Nicholas Spark's books.  They just aren't really Romance novels since to BE in the Romance genre, you have to have at least a positive or hopeful romantic ending.  Otherwise it breaks the contract between the reader.  I'd be equally annoyed if at the end of a mystery novel, the detective shrugs and walks away without revealing whodunit.

The murky part of this subject is a lot of times to make searches easier, books are sometimes tagged as a part of a genre when what is really meant is they have that subject as part of a storyline, not that they are a real Romance novel, but I'm not talking about those more generic novels and neither was the show.  It was clearly the old fashioned Romance.  They even broke out out the kind of heaving bosom cover I haven't seen in ages.   

Those books come with a promise to the reader and not delivering the HEA breaks it.  

I actually just finished a well written book by a writer that in that past had primarily written romantic suspense Romances and thought that was what I was getting again but it turned out what she'd actually written was the first book of a what seemed clearly was going to be a serialized thriller/action story and while it was fine for that genre, I was pissed to be left hanging when I'd picked it out thinking it was something totally different.  And I'm going to hold a grudge for the bait and switch.  

I vaguely remember reading about a Regency in the vein of Georgette Heyer where in a typical romance you'd expect the guy to get over his first love and eventually fall in love with his wife. But no, they have a good marriage but he never LOVES her. But those books feel like romances the way Henry James and Edith Wharton are romances. Technically there are romantic relationships in them but they're just novels. 

I don't mind the HEA. I think people imagine that just because there's a HEA, nothing bad happens to the H/h when actually sometimes a ton of bad stuff happens and they earn that HEA. Sometimes things are slightly complicated when a couple shows up in the next book in a series. Maybe they have troubling getting pregnant. And I heard one Stephanie Laurens had infidelity. Romance doesn't need to be more grounded. It's full of former soldiers, PTSD, alcoholism, estranged couples, practical marriages of convenience, societal strictures, infidelity, jealousy, physical and mental abuse, miscarriages, sexual abuse/rape trauma, characters with all kinds of careers, and plenty of "real love." 

If I wanted to watch a version of Law & Order where the crimes didn't get solved, I'd just watch the news. If I wanted to see people stay single or get divorced, there's real life for that. Like you said, HEA is kind of in the contract between the author/reader. 

Edited August 17, 2018 by aradia22