Happy. The friends have a dignified end. We leave them on the beautiful stretch of beach behind their shared house, both a bit stiffer and more battered – but together. It’s a relief that Grace and Frankiethe longest-running Netflix original series to date with seven seasons, is accurately reduced to its core by creator Marta Kauffman and her team in the finale: friendship as a crucial condition for a bearable old age.
In the course of the total of 94 episodes, there were also quite a few bland, far-fetched, sometimes cringe-inducing plot twists. The lives of Grace and Frankie’s children, in particular, were rendered too salty to really captivate. While the writers had gold in their hands from the start: Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston are fearless acting guns.
How did it all start, in 2015? The unapproachable businesswoman Grace Hanson (Fonda) and artistic hippie Frankie Bergstein (Tomlin) would never have become friends if fate hadn’t brutally handed them over to each other. For forty years Grace was married to Robert (Sheen) and Frankie to Sol (Waterston), meeting only when their husbands’ shared law practice required it; neither did they venture outside their own narrowly defined social circle. Grace sat at conference tables in a suit and also strived for perfection outside working hours, Frankie gave painting lessons to former prisoners and demonstrated for equal civil rights.
Also read: Grace and Frankie: Groundbreaking Comedy Drama About Love in Old Age
cheated women
Both their bubbles burst when Robert and Sol confess their love for each other in the very first episode. Suddenly, Grace and Frankie are abandoned, deceived women, and they find themselves in the emotional storm of anger, shame and sadness that comes with it; stubbornly separate from each other, but more and more together. They are evenly matched; their friendship turns out to be a source of life lessons.
Grace is finally less strict with herself after seventy years of armor; in a delicious early breakfast scene, Frankie squirts pure whipped cream into her mouth and she stubbornly continues to tempt Grace to break the mold, using magic mushrooms, singing bowls and the cold waters of the ocean. Frankie, in turn, discovers that she has relied too much on others; Sol and her two sons took in so much that she could happily remain her absent-minded, digibete self.
If Kauffman and co had been less distracted by sons and daughters and focused on Grace, Frankie and their contemporaries, this might have been the perfect old age comedy. Robert and Sol also form a funny and moving bickering couple, and the pleasantly disturbed former secretary Joan-Margaret (Millicent Martin) can’t come around often enough. Professional fraud Nick (Peter Gallagher), who even manages to persuade Grace into a second marriage, is another disarming jammer.
Eventually he disappears from view, just like all the other men. Growing old and flawed calls for something greater than romantic love.