‘Younger’ Season 5 Delivers On Its Promise To Advance Female Agency In Both Professional And Personal Capacities

When Younger premiered five seasons ago, it was initially characterized as another soapy melodrama from Darren Star, the creator of Sex and the City. And soapy it is; the show is 30 minutes of pure joy centered on Liza Miller (Sutton Foster), a middle-aged woman who re-enters the workforce by lying about her age. But throughout the TV Land comedy’s five seasons, the show has proven Liza to be capable of immense maturity and growth as she owned up to her lie, and of strength as she confides in many of her colleagues regarding the potentially career-threatening secret.

What initially seems like a silly premise is actually rooted in a much more widespread societal issue: that Liza, a 40-year-old woman, felt the need to lie about her age in order to get a job speaks volumes about the American job industry and its relation to gender norms. Younger is a story of reinvention and risk taking, but it’s also a story of breaking social mores and sexist codes that allow men to advance while women are held back. And it has always been this story beneath the love triangles and hipster Williamsburg clothing — now it’s simply more pronounced. Five seasons in, the show is making good on its promise to advance female agency in both professional and personal capacities for not only Liza, but also her colleagues Kelsey (Hilary Duff) and Diana (Miriam Shor), and friend-slash-roommate Maggie (Debi Mazar).

From the jump, Liza has juggled her two lives: one of a young millennial entering the workforce and the other as a middle-aged divorcee. But this season finally allowed her to explore a consensual relationship with her boss Charles (Peter Hermann), a man her age, though it was forced to remain sneaky and clandestine given the optics of an executive dating an assistant. Unhappy with that arrangement and the fact that it could quite possibly ruin the company, Liza decides to end the relationship (at least for the moment). It was one of her first moments of pure decision-making, of putting her foot down, and one in which her romantic fate was held wholly in her own hands.

Since the formation of the Millennial imprint, Liza has straddled the line between editor and marketing assistant, never fully promoted out of her entry-level duties. But in the fifth season, Liza finally gained the recognition she deserved within the industry, being courted by rival publishing houses and ultimately receiving a job offer to run a competing millennial-focused imprint. While (spoiler!) she decides not to take the job, the opportunity gives Liza the confidence to realize what she is worth and, in a way, justifies her reentry into corporate America even if it was through improper means. She’s good at her job and that’s all that matters — her age can simply remain a number.

That work ethic extends to Liza’s work wife Kelsey, who has also shown a similar trajectory. After years of being an editor at Empirical, Kelsey’s idea to open the Millennial imprint is met with flourishing success. At the close of the season, the imprint is positioned to become the primary driver of the business, with Kelsey still at the helm. It’s a huge step for her and is a nice bookend to a season that showed her step into big boss shoes at the company while winning a coveted Glamour Award in the process. Kelsey’s laser-sharp focus on her career has also given her significant agency when it comes to her relationships: after engaging in two questionable sexual relationships (one with a coworker and one with a client), Kelsey ends things with both of them in order to focus on what is becoming an extremely successful career.

While Liza (and ergo Sutton Foster) is allowed to pass as a woman in her mid-twenties, her two contemporaries Diana and Maggie have largely been portrayed as spinsters due to their status as older single women. But their temperament could not be more different; Diana doesn’t seem to have had a day of fun in her life while Maggie is the walking embodiment of it. What I love about Younger is that it doesn’t portray these women as incomplete or unhappy because they are single. They are successful in their own right — Diana runs Empirical’s marketing department and Maggie is a successful artist who can lay claim to discovering Williamsburg — and 100% happy in the lives they are leading. But the series shows us that even at their current stasis of happiness, there is still room for growth.

Younger Season 5 introduced love interests for both Diana and Maggie, and their lovers appropriately pushed their boundaries and forced them to confront deeper insecurities. Over the course of the 12 episodes, Diana evolves from a close-minded elitist to someone who can accept that her significant other is a plumber, and Maggie is allowed to reconnect with an old flame and face the idea of becoming a mother. It’s a worthwhile journey that showcases powerful women who are in touch with their feelings and ready to face their fears, no matter what those fears may be.

Younger has been an absolute delight since the moment the first episode aired, but I never expected to find so much depth in such an entertaining series. But the lessons are there: work hard, love hard, and don’t ever take anything at face value else you’ll miss the bigger picture. As Younger moves to Paramount Network for season 6 next year, I can’t wait to continue watching the journeys of these badass, imperfect HBICs.

Radhika Menon (@menonrad) is a TV-obsessed writer living in New York City. Her work has appeared on The TV Addict, Brown Girl Magazine, Breadcrumbs Mag and Syndicated Magazine. At any given moment, she can ruminate at length over Friday Night Lights, the University of Michigan, and the perfect slice of pizza. You may call her Rad.

Where to stream Younger