"Grace and Frankie" Is the Best Sitcom of the 2010s (and Maybe the 21st Century)

I said what I said.

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Warning: Full spoilers for the show contained herein.

About a month and a half ago, the boyfriend and I decided that we would finally get around to watching Grace and Frankie, the long-running sitcom starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin that finished its run last year. We’d both seen several seasons of it, but for some reason we just hadn’t gotten around to finishing the damn thing. Well, we have, and I’d like to go on the record as saying that I firmly believe this show is the best comedy of the 2010s and even perhaps of the 21st century so far. 

Yes, I’m aware that that is quite a claim to make, but I think there’s enough evidence in the show itself to prove my point. 

To begin with, there’s the casting. It’s always a pleasure to see Fonda and Tomlin together in whatever project they undertake, but Grace and Frankie excels because it makes the best use of their respective talents. Fonda is perfect as the ice-queen Grace, someone who has so internalized the ideology of being a WASP–with all of the emotional constipation and repression that involves–that it takes her a number of seasons to come even close to being able to express her feelings in a healthy way. Yet Fonda’s brilliance lies in her ability to make Grace more than just the straight woman to Tomlin’s funny woman. She is, instead, the type of feminist archetype so familiar from decades of television (and the real world), someone who has had to play by the rules of men, even if that means sacrificing certain things like, say, emotional attachments. 

Tomlin, likewise, perfectly embodies Frankie. She’s zany and kooky and hippy-dippy, someone who believes in communing with spirits, and as such she is the perfect comedic foil for Grace. For me, though, Tomlin’s finest work in the series emerges at moments in which Frankie makes herself emotionally vulnerable. She accomplishes this right out the gate, and I will never forget the moment on the beach in the first episode in which she tearfully admits to Grace that she is heartbroken by Sol’s leaving her for Robert. Given how resilient and happy Frankie has shown herself to be, this is a moment of particular vulnerability, and it stabs you in the heart to see her in such pain. 

Somehow, though, these two women find a way of working through their differences and actually become stronger together. They found a business together, they navigate the fraught territory of love together and, despite their many fights and disagreements and times of not speaking, they bring out the best in each other. Like the feisty foursome of such shows as The Golden Girls and Designing Women, these two understand that some of the most powerful bonds in the world are those which emerge between and among women. And, of course, the fact that they are so different is precisely what gives the series its comedic bite. The writers understand the rhythms and beats of the sitcom, and they use them to the maximum. At the same time, Grace and Frankie also recognize that their age means that they are going to have to contend with their own deaths sooner or later.

This reaches its apotheosis in the seventh season, when Frankie receives a prophecy from a psychic friend of hers that her death is imminent. This sends the normally-repressed Grace into something of an emotional tailspin, so much so that she starts having panic attacks. As always, though, they manage to work through their difficulties, finding hilarity and pathos along the way. The last shot of the entire series is of the two of them walking along the beach, having survived a near-death experience (and an encounter with a very lenient angel, played by none other than the great Dolly Parton, completing the 9 to 5 reunion). It’s the perfect ending to the series, with Grace and Frankie together as they should be. 

While Grace and Frankie are the emotional heart of the story, both Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston deserve an immense amount of credit for the humanity and warmth that they bring to Robert and Sol. Examples of older gay couples are vanishingly rare in the pop culture world, and while the two seem to have some awkward chemistry in the beginning–as is only fitting, since they’ve spent 20 years being in the closet–with each subsequent season their intimacy grows, and the chemistry between Sheen and Waterston is just as intense as that between Tomlin and Fonda. 

Yet just as Grace and Frankie have to contend with what it means to live together and build their lives (and their business) in one another’s company, so Robert and Sol also have to deal with various health crises, most notably Robert’s heart attack and failing memory and Sol’s prostate cancer. Just as with Grace and Frankie, the road for this delightful older couple is not always a smooth one, particularly when Sol sleeps with Frankie at the end of the first season. Nevertheless, they manage to forge their own relationship, making the most out of their remaining years together. The last we see of them they are back in the very hotel where they first began their illicit affair, and though Robert’s memory has begun to fade, Sol is determined to be there for him. 

In case all of this doesn’t convince you that the show is the best, let me offer two other pieces of evidence. First, there are the secondary characters. Every great sitcom excels at giving its side characters their own unique and compelling storylines, and Grace and Frankie more than excels in this regard. Whether it’s the badass Briana or the struggling-but-amiable Coyote, the neurotic mess Bud (and his even more neurotic wife Allison), or the mild-mannered-but-charismatic Mallory, everyone has something to do. Second, there’s the costuming. It’s easy to overlook the role of costuming in a sitcom, but it plays a key role in shaping how we understand these characters. From Grace’s sharp pantsuits to Frankie’s flowing kaftans and kimonos, from Sol’s Hawaiian shirts to Malory’s busty tops, clothes make the women and men of Grace and Frankie. 

I’m sure that some will disagree with my assessment that Grace and Frankie is the best sitcom of the 2010s, and I’m fine with that. From my point of view, though, Grace and Frankie is one of those few comedies that actually manages to strike a balance between hilarity and pathos, to a degree only matched by such other similarly-great series as The Golden Girls. Like its ‘80s predecessor, furthermore, Grace and Frankie shows that life doesn’t end when you enter your 70s and 80s. Rather than seeing old age as a weakness, Grace and Frankie and Sol and Robert show that it can be an extraordinary strength.

It’s a lesson we should all take to heart.