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“Younger” recap (1.1): Every Girl Needs a Lesbian Best Friend

When you think of TV Land, you might think of sitting on the couch as a kid watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, or Cheers. But the modern TV Land is spinning a new wheel-they promised a “reinvention” in 2015 and their first stop starts at the front mat of a golden television must-have: single-camera comedies. Meet Younger. Its creator is Darren Star, so you know we’re in good hands. Darren’s influence on/hand in pop culture is a direct result of his history as a TV series creator: He’s responsible for groundbreaking smash series like Beverly Hills, 90210, Melrose Place and Sex & The City.

Younger is based on the book by the best-selling author Pamela Redmond Satron. It stars Sutton Foster as Liza, who may be familiar to ABC Family Bunheads fans. Liza’s in her ’40s and is recently divorced. She’s decided to try her hand at getting back into work now that her house is on the market and her young adult daughter Caitlin (Tessa Albertson) is off in India on a sabbatical. Only 15 years have passed, which means Liza’s former knowledge of the publishing industry she worked in has vastly changed-we now make websites off Go Daddy, not Angelfire. People meet on Tinder, not in AOL Hometown. Let’s face it: Liza is having the kind of cultural shock that a millennial might face if they could only get online via DIAL UP. After her interview fail, she heads back home to find her real estate buddy showing her house to a few prospective buyers. The woman fears this house is a dead reminder of a woman who collects cats and dies alone. Bite your tongue, House Hunter Sassafras. Women with cats are hot.

Yeah, well, you know what else cat ladies have? Lots of wine.

And you know that joke about lesbians with cats, right? Enter Maggie, Liza’s lesbian friend (played by Debi Mazar, familiar face to Madonna video and Entourage fans (who was also in Empire Records-thanks for the reminder, Trish Bendix!) Liza and Maggie go to a nearby bar where Maggie requests they order, like, six more of these skinny margaritas, go out dancing, and then split the hit of ecstasy she’s been keeping “since 1998.” Someone get these girls to a rave. Not an EDM kandy Miley Cyrus rave, but an actual rave-from the ’90s. As soon as Maggie disappears, Liza meets a hunky boy who offers to buy her a shot of whiskey. He introduces himself as Josh (Nico Tortorella, a dude you may recognize from the gory Kevin Williamson show, The Following, where he played a pretend gay.) He’s trying to pull off that white T-shirt Adam Levine look with lots of ink up and down his arms.

Girl, I got them moves like Jagger.

Liza asks if his tattoos are for life or if he can scrub them off. He seems offended, only for a moment-but as the brown booze goes down, he mentions he tattooed the inside of Lena Dunham‘s ass cheek last week, and Liza asks, “Who’s Lena Dunham?” And that’s when his face says it all: Is this girl living under a rock? No, she’s just been “working on a novel” and doing “volunteer work in India” and not having a kid, or a marriage. They share a weird joke about his junk and he says Liza calling his “junk” his “junk” is sexy. He puts his number into her phone only moments before she announces he’s way too young for her and it’s time for her to go. Anyway, could it really work? Maggie says yes.

You can be 26 and I can have long nails-we do what we want.

Back at Maggie’s apartment, she says, “Tell ’em you’re 26.” She convinces Liza that people will believe anything you tell them, so, tell them you’re a fresh-faced twentysomething and see what sticks. Maggie gives her a makeover-er-under? Her hair will hold a mix of loose curls and secrets-the scent of Herbal Essence hair gel and mouse-a sure-fire sign of youth in bloom. Maggie quizzes her on everything from One Direction to The Hunger Games. By the time she’s in the interview hot seat again, she knows just how to balance out that new, “I’m just a girl, in her mid ’20s, forming an adult brain and stuff.” But she also knows she can’t flip her hair too much. And when her about-to-be boss, Diana Trout (Miriam Shor) asks, “What makes you special?” Liza answers: “I’m a grownup. I don’t think I’m special.”

Is the Devil wearing Prada or did you just say what I think you said?

I mean, hand the girl a Sunny Delight. That’s a well-played, hard-earned game move. We obviously want to know way more about Liza’s background. Like, was she watching the New Kids on the Block via Pay Per View in her cloud pajamas? What’s her herstory with Bartells and James wine coolers? Really, the hope (should be) that in time, Liza will merge her real self with her fake self and the age gap won’t be so impossible to reach, or matter, at all.

As she rushes into the bathroom to call Maggie and tell her the good news, she runs into Hilary Duff. Well, not Hilary Duff IRL. It’s Kelsey, an editor in the company who was “basically” Liza two years ago. She immediately takes to Liza because girls gotta stick together. (She quotes T-Swift to prove her point.) The next day, as Liza is Googling “how to set up a Twitter,” I too am Googling “Krav Maga”-which tells me it’s military self-defense training, but for Kelsey, it’s just a night out at the gym where she and her girls can kick some ass. She introduces Liza to Lauren who elbowed her in the tit and is just about to be subject to Liza’s bush display. Mortified at the sight of a woman’s pubic hair,

Lauren and Kelsey look like they’re being confronted with the pages of the 1970s book Joy of Sex. But enough about bush-Kelsey wants Liza to come out for drinks so she can meet Kelsey’s boyfriend, Thad.

Girls with fresh ovaries stick together.

Thad is a mega-douche who tells Kelsey to get him another beer the moment his bottle of gold suds run empty, giving us milliseconds to easily peel back the transparent layers of Thad-because his name is Thad, you guys. Kelsey obliges the beer request, with a smile. Liza’s eyebrows do a dance at this, her feminist radar on siren alert like Sigourney Weaver‘s spaceship from Alien. Thad begins grilling Liza on her supposed resume-like being a graduate of Dartmouth. She fibs and says she knows one of the dudes he mentions. “Well, he loved the ladies!” rolls off Liza’s tongue, and the punch line feels inevitably set-up. “He’s gay,” Thad responds. Freaked that her cover is blown, Liza scrambles to keep her composure and get Thad off her back. As Kelsey returns to the table, Liza’s talking about her stint in India, to which Thad says, “Sounds cool.”

Kelsey wanted a tiny heart tattoo and she wants to hear about India. Wait, isn’t that an Alanis Morissette song?

Cool? India was so not cool for Liza (even though Liza’s daughter Caitlin is the one who’s really in India IRL). “Is that why your bush turned gray?” Kelsey asks Liza then, while a clueless Thad drinks his beer and wonders where his other dude friends are at and why he’s even here, talking about Liza’s gray bush. Liza rolls with it-yeah, yeah-she nods her head. She’s gray down there because of what she saw-and smelled. Fucking India. (Thad doesn’t buy it, because he’s been watching too much Talented Mr. Ripley.)

Looks like this is a job for Maggie. Liza goes to her place the following day to ask her about vagina trends. Maggie looks hungover as she sips her coffee and tells Liza she she knows a girl, who is “technically a man now.” The sound of all this hair removal nonsense is enough to throw Liza into a tweeting tizzy-Maggie tells her, “So, keep the bush!” Liza wonders if all of this is even worth it. Is she willing to fuck with her dignity to have another chance at her 20s? What about our 30s? I hear they’re damn fabulous. It’s striking how Liza and her friends at 40 are willing to bypass the 30s in pursuit of the fresh mid 20s-you know, right before your Saturn returns and you have a nervous breakdown, you brain is hardening into adulthood and you aren’t yet sure how to completely survive. Nah, I’ll take my 30s.

This coffee isn’t going to bring back our 20s. (Though the mug is from our 20s.)

Just as Liza is getting into the swing of this whole thing, both Diana and then Kelsey seemingly shoot her down. Diana thinks Liza’s ideas are ludicrous-she doesn’t have time to hear it, or to pat her on the back for landing over 1,000 followers on Twitter. Kelsey says Diana basically has dementia and is so pathetic for lying about her age. (She’s apparently 43, not 41.) Liza is like, “Yeah, yeah totes pathetic, hashtag pathetic.” And she sees this as opportunity to tell Kelsey exactly what she thinks of her shitty boyfriend Thad. What Liza doesn’t know is that when you’re making new girlfriends, you can’t just straight up tell them their S.O. is bad news. You’d be, as Kelsey puts it, “shitting in her cheerios.” And that’s the face Kelsey makes upon hearing Liza’s reaction. Kelsey likes taking care of “her man.” Gotcha.

Now, something Kelsey can do is help Liza with her makeup and get her ready for her big date with Josh. That’s right, Liza has a big date with bar guy, who awkwardly interrupted the work meeting she was in by the alarm he set in her phone. “Ass and Titties” repeats over and over again. Diana is not impressed. Kelsey sees Josh’s pic and says he’s cute. Liza is still trying to chicken out, but Kelsey’s visions of the future seem both tried and true-does Liza want to end up like a housewife, alone in her bath, spritzing herself with the showerhead? Liza says, “I believe they call that a wand.” She knows her own future.

Outside of the bar, Liza almost backs out one last time. She’s on the phone with her daughter Caitlin who’s thinking about coming home. How is she going to explain this new roommate to anyone? And how is she going to explain this new Liza to Caitlin? How far is she going to take things with Josh-or anyone for that matter-before she tells them all her real age?

Sound off in the comments below and let me know what you thought of the series premiere for Younger! Follow me on Twitter @the_hoff and stay tuned next Tuesday for a new episode and a new recap. XO, youngsters.

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