Welcome back to one more week of Younger! This episode has been more transitional than anything else, preparing everything for the last two episodes of the season. “It’s all about money, honey” has made a detour until a final decision for Liza that is a complete mistake, but that surely will have a lot of consequences. In the midst of all this, they have been leaving some clues about the plots to explore for the rest of the characters in the remainder of the season. Let’s talk about everything.
Here we go!
I’m not going to lie to you, I’m fucking pissed off with almost everything I’ve seen in this episode. First: Liza. I’m so disappointed with her character this season. She had always been a strong character, who followed her principles and didn’t compromise. Now she is doing just that. Betraying her ideals … and why? Because I still can’t explain it.
But, let’s start at the beginning. The campaign with the photo of Josh and Liza has launched and has gone viral. As I told you last week, that was always going to cause problems. But not the problems I expected. I was thinking that Charles would feel insecure about his relationship with Liza, and that she would have to face the feelings she still has for Josh. What has really happened is that Liza has decided to hide her head in the sand, and try to keep Charles from realizing what she denies and everyone knows; which in turn has made Charles feel insecure.
Everyone was telling Liza that she seemed happy in that picture. She hasn’t stopped denying reality, she said it was a normal smile, but no. She was genuinely happy in that picture, and it’s for a reason. There is a bubble that exists when Josh and Liza are together … everyone else disappears. That photo perfectly captures the moment in which the are together … and only the two of them exists. That moment, that bubble, speaks of some feelings that exist between them that Liza is determined to deny.
However, even if Liza decides to continue denying the obvious, everyone notices and she believes it is necessary to go to Chicago to talk to Charles and clarify it but … clarify what? If it’s just a photo for a campaign, nothing else, just the past looking like that, past, there was no need to go to so much trouble to hide it from Charles and then tell him, almost as if Liza was confessing an infidelity. I think Liza feels that way, as if she has somehow been unfaithful to Charles … because she, deep down, knows that this picture doesn’t speak of the past … but of very present feelings. Let’s remember the hallucination she had when she was high some episodes ago.
Charles obviously gets worried when he sees Liza so guilty. If she feels that way, it’s because there is something to feel guilty about, something more than a photo. That fact brings out Charles’s insecurities regarding Liza and Josh. She continues to deny it, but it’s there and Charles knows it.
In the end, they talk about the past and the future … and Liza makes a totally ridiculous and horrible decision. At first, Charles kind of hints at her that she is living in the past, as an attempt to find out if Liza is in denial, or there really is nothing there. Then Liza decides not to see Josh anymore, to cut him out of her life for good. Which is a clear sign that she is trying to fight what she feels for Josh, because she feels so much … that she prefers to cut him from her life.
That decision is absurd and self-destructive. Liza is so determined to fit into the mold that Liza herself has created about what her life should be, what she should feel and who she should be with, that she is willing to destroy herself to fit into it. Liza continues to feel very real things for Josh and until she accepts that fact and analyzes her feelings to know if it’s just friendship or something else (new flash: it’s something else) everything will be upside down in her life, and she will never get be completely happy.
She doesn’t want to cut Josh from her life (take, the desire not to return home, because that means that everything is over and that yearning and sad look towards that photo), but feels that she has to do it. She feels she has to choose Charles, because he is her perfect man, and the one that fits most into what she always thought would be her ideal man. But if she feels that way, as if she had to choose … it’s because she has feelings for both.
Liza chooses the easiest option, and the one that destroys a part of herself, a part of her heart, only to fit the standards she has created for herself. It’s a similar and equally absurd and self-destructive decision like that Josh made when he decided to marry Claire to get away from Liza. That didn’t go well. What they feel for each other is not something that will disappear with time. Real love doesn’t disappear with time, and no matter how far apart they are from each other … that longing is still there, and their paths would eventually cross.
Both that wedding with Claire and this decision by Liza are simply the easiest, immature options, and right now the only option that allows Liza to keep keeping burying her head in the sand, without facing what is really happening.
Also, to cut off the relationship with Josh, Liza is going to sacrifice a promise she made to him. Liza promised him in episode 5×05 that she would not always be the same in his life, but that she would always be in his life and now, she simply wants to disappear from it. If it were just her friend, she wouldn’t even consider it. She has raised the possibility because Liza, deep down, knows that there is much more than that … and has chosen the easiest path. And Josh is not to blame for anything. If Liza wants to choose Charles because he fits in her mold, if she prefers to not face her feelings for Josh, it’s her business, but why does Josh have to suffer her loss as a friend because she is a coward?
Liza is not being fair with Josh and most importantly, with herself. This whole situation reminds me of a similar situation in Friends, when Ross is trying to get Emily back and she gives him as a condition that he doesn’t see Rachel anymore. Ross thinks about it a lot, because he values everything Rachel means to him … in the end, he decides to do what Emily asks and … surprise! None of that goes well. You cannot cut someone so important from your life. Rachel was part of Ross’s life, part of him, just as Josh is for Liza, and it was simply impossible to keep their lives apart, just as it will happen with Liza and Josh.
Liza has been too quick to offer to cut any relationship with Josh, simply to cover up and ignore what she feels for him, so she has not even taken into account what he is in her life, because that would mean facing her feelings for him. Emily’s condition to Ross arose from the underlying problem of lack of trust. In the show, Liza’s offer also arises from the same thing: lack of trust in her relationship with Charles, and her feelings about him.
She knows that what she still feels for Josh rivals what she feels for Charles … and she knows he also fits perfectly into her life. She doesn’t trust herself to keep Josh simply as a friend, she doesn’t trust her relationship with Charles enough to know that her feelings for Josh will absolutely not get in the way.
Charles knows all this. So the relationship between the two is really in trouble. All that has been raised here will not work out. Liza will not be able to separate from Josh so easily, and in the end she will have to face what she feels. Charles, meanwhile, is going to realize the real problem. But, as we were so close to the season finale, the characters are going to face, finally, the problems, in the last two episodes, not in this one.
I feel that this season has been really irregular in the characters, while some have matured, others have regressed. Proof of that are Charles and Liza. Charles was practically destroyed, now thankfully they have fixed it. As for Liza, as I said at the beginning, she had always been someone who took the reins of her life and faced problems. In this season, after 10 episodes, I’m still waiting for her to do it.
First she accepted Charles’s lies and secrets and swept all the problems under the carpet. This has continued. Every problem that arose between Charles and her, she ended not facing, and “solving” them without doing so, and the last thing has been this decision about Josh. Again, sweeping her feelings under the carpet. I hope that in these last two episodes of the season Liza returns to face her feelings and all aspects of her life, that brave Liza who plays her for what she really feels.
Josh has been the kindest part of this episode, only one comment bothered me, that he was not the best for Liza. A comment clearly forced so that Liza’s decision had something to hold on to. It is not true that Liza and Josh were not good for each other, they were simply on a different page of their lives. Now they seem to be on the same page. However, since they have to play with both couples, Claire has gotten a very good job in LA and that makes seeing Gemma complicated for him.
I agree with Maggie, Josh has to hire a lawyer. There comes a time when you cannot keep things as friendly as you would like … and you must take action on the matter. What happens is that Josh is so good that he doesn’t want to complicate things, but things are already complicated. I loved that he followed Maggie’s advice and took advantage of the campaign to expand his business (although I think the person in charge of it is more interested in him than anything else … and we’ll see where that ends). But … will it be enough or will Josh make the decision to move to LA?
I was so sad to see how Josh felt … knowing that he felt unsuccessful for not knowing how to hold on to the people he loves most in his life, as if it he was not enough. But he is enough, more than he thinks. I just wanted to hug him.
After this parenthesis, my anger returns. What the hell have they done to get Charles back? The first thing is that, in a meeting with all men, the only woman in the room is Kelsey. Which at the beginning I thought was a criticism, since, unfortunately, almost all the top executives are men and there is absolute discrimination against women in these positions.
But then I opened my eyes. The plot was stupid. Kelsey was somewhat drunk, yes, but she knows how to manage her networks, and I don’t think she sent that video to all her followers. But well, given the situation and that we have all sent uncomfortable messages by mistake, I accepted octopus as a companion animal.
But how the hell is that an excuse to fire Kelsey from her position? She is human, we all make mistakes. They have to do damage control, but the company doesn’t change because of a mistake, Kelsey’s decisions are not changed by a damn awkward message. In addition, it is a bra and tits, welcome to the world, men in suits, women have tits!
It’s stupid to take that grain of sand and turn it into a storm so big that it kicks Kelsey out of her position. I wonder, if it had been Charles who had been in a similar situation, would they have demanded his resignation? I don’t think so. At most, a scolding, damage control and that’s it. I think it was just about having another penis in a suit (like them) in front of the company they were going to invest in, because having a woman made them feel uncomfortable.
And Kelsey hasn’t even fought for her position. Nothing!
I think Younger was wrong here. They had an opportunity not only to claim the power of a woman in the center of a world of men, and also to show that a damn mistake doesn’t change anything and they have chosen the easy way. To put a man in front again. Did they want to put Charles back in the job? Fine, they could have done it differently, but to do so, with a room full of men in suits demanding it and because of a damn and stupid mistake, it seems to me callous and horrible.
Television is an art and a means of communication that reaches many people. I think that the shows we see should give a much better example of the society we want, and that we have to set ourselves the goal of achieving.
Agree? Disagree? Don’t hesitate to share your opinion with us in the comments below!
Younger airs on Wednesday, at 10 / 9c on TV Land.
