Younger (TV Series) Pilot (2015) User Reviews

A great start to the series

[tenshi_ippikiookami · 8/10 · 1 January 2018]

Liza Miller is a 40-year-old, mother of a teenager who is in India, jobless, divorced and who can't find a job because she has been for too long taking care of her family. After a couple of interviews, depressed, she goes drinking to a bar with her best friend, where she gets mistaken for someone younger. With the help of her friend, she decides to try and pull it off, and pass off as a 26-year-old. Would she be discovered?

The pilot of "Younger" is fun, fresh and fast, and it introduces very nicely the viewer to the characters: Liza, her daughter, her best friend and her workmates. It has lots of humor (of the white kind, all very nice, but with charm) and the plot develops nicely, without hiccups, just going for laughs. It helps that all the actors do a great job, starting with Sutton Foster (even though just changing clothes and hairstyle to pass her for a 26-year-old is stretching things a little bit thin).

A show that tries to entertain while doing some commentary but without meanness in its bones, "Younger" is off to a great start.

Pilot

[Prismark10 · 3/10 · 30 October 2019]

The pilot of Younger has an interesting premise. I am not sure it worked and more importantly it was not funny enough.

Liza Miller (Sutton Foster) has a daughter who is supposedly spending time in India. At 40 years of age, divorced Liza is heading back to the job market. She was once a high flyer in publishing but she has spent the last 15 years as a full time mother.

Liza finds that getting a job in publishing and starting out at the bottom is not easy if you are middle aged. The young people in charge of recruitment are more interested in social media and getting college graduates.

Her friend Maggie persuades Liza to shave a few years off her age by pretending Liza to be 26. Liza fakes her driving licence and gets rid off the social media profile of the old Liza.

With a job in publishing with her new fortysomething boss Diana who thinks young people are irritating and work shy. Liza now needs to get along with young people in her workplace such as Kelsey who is shocked that Liza has a full bush. Liza is also being chased by a young tattoo artist, Josh who does not realise her true age.

The trouble was even with a makeover Liza never convinced me that she was younger than 30, never mind someone in her mid twenties.

Younger takes a humorous look at cross generational attitudes. Liza needs to find out what young people like such as music from One Direction. However she has a daughter just out of her teenage years, surely she would be aware of young people's interest in music, fashion and pop culture.

Millenials are painted as shallow, more interested in social media. It goes for easy targets and misses. It simply was not funny and did not catch any kind of zeitgeist. This was not a strong opening episode.

There are interesting ideas such as Diana being passed over for promotion because she is a woman and also deemed to be over the hill. Maybe later episodes will explore that theme.