Saying goodbye to anyone is hard, especially when it marks the end of a long, winding and very happy road, one you’re unlikely walk again.
It’s a peculiar kind of melancholy that acknowledge good times have been had but that they’re now sadly over, and it applies almost as much to the TV characters we bring into our homes as it does to the very real flesh-and-blood friends and family that make life so rich.
And it especially applies to the joyously odd couple pairing of Grace (Jane Fonda) and Frankie (Lily Tomlin), two women who found themselves unceremoniously flung together when their respective husbands, Robert (Martin Sheen) and Sol (Sam Waterston), announcing that they were gay and in a secret relationship with each other of some twenty years standing, and who, initially had no idea what to do with each other.
Way back at the beginning of season 1, uptight, hard-edged businesswoman Grace, who is more than a little fond of vodka, and gorgeously offbeat, hippie chicky Del Taco-loving Frankie couldn’t see any way they could possibly be together; they were too different, they were grieving the loss of their old lives, where they’d been acquaintances at best despite all the time the two couples spent together, and while they had no idea what they did want, they were sure it wasn’t each other.
Sure, they had to share a beach house the couples had jointly owned but beyond that? Not much, really.
Then life happened, and needing someone, anyone, to rely on and finding to their shock and surprise that it’s each other, they became the sort of besties that make life a technicolour splash of happiness, that are there for you unconditionally when the world tells you to take an unceremonious hike and doesn’t even you taxi fare, and who become the difference between life being something worth living and something you get through because you have to.
The best part? We got to spend all that discovery time and friendship time, and warm hugs and angry moments and make-up confessions of undying friendship with them; yes, us, we did, and that’s why saying goodbye to them as they pretty much literally walk off into the sunset is a sad, sad thing, even if you know they, and the people in their orbit for better or worse, are going to be just fine.
Let’s face it – we want to be fine with them, with our very own Boniva Bandidos, who smuggle in medicines from Mexico to help a nursing home full of people feel better on a budget, who believe, well, Frankie does, that she’s going to die as a psychic predicted in three months and who holds her own funeral which doesn’t quite as planned, and who, and this time it’s Grace, realising her marriage white collar criminal Nick (Peter Gallagher) was a big mistake, sees it out on a suitably orgasmic high.
Both Grace and Frankie, and their kids – divorced mother of four CEO Mallory (Brooklyn Decker) and hard-edged, no-nonsense Brianna (June Diane Raphael), and uptight divorce lawyer Bud (Baron Vaughn) and sweethearted, goofy, recovering substance abuser Coyote (Ethan Embry) respectively – and yes, even Sol and Robert who somehow manage to stay a part of this big, dysfunctional grouping, are going to be just fine.
Even if Frankie keeps leaving her phone in the fridge. Or Grace ends up crossing the Mexican border while Frankie’s left behind a car full of … well, not legal things. Or they both find themselves somewhere wholly unexpected with – SPOILER ALERT! – with Dolly Parton making a gloriously fun, 9 to 5-ish cameo, and barely make it out alive.
They’ll be fine because they have each other and as Grace and Frankie has hilariously and poignantly shown time and time again, that’s really all that matters.
It won’t stop husbands leaving them or relationship with other men not really working or their kids making all kinds of funny, and often surreally-realised mistakes – the show’s penchant for going above and beyond the normal to make a wildly comedic point and yet absolutely nailing what it means to be human while doing so is one of its great and abiding strengths – or struggling with all kinds of ageing issues like old arthritic hands making painting not the joy it used to be ..
… BUT, and this is the whole lynchpin of Grace and Frankie, it’s reason for existence, its beating heart that kept thumping reassuringly away amidst all kinds of goofiness, lunacy and witty oneliners – having that special someone in your life, that friend who’s there no matter what, makes all the difference.
Not in some trite, greeting card kind of way but really, truly, substantially in ways that remake the fabric of your life for the better, and then when that’s done, make navigating the ups and down that inevitably come with life, all the easier.
They don’t make life easy, because who’s got that kind of power – although honestly, Frankie’s ardent belief in the universe makes you wonder if she hasn’t got the power to mould reality for the better – but they make getting through it, and smiling more than you thought you would, easier and that’s been the joyous message from Grace and Frankie almost right from the start.
It’s in clear and comforting evidence throughout these final twelve episodes which, yes, this reviewer hung onto because he couldn’t bear to say goodbye, and it’s what makes Grace and Frankie such a hugely funny, unalloyed pleasure to watch because it manages to be both hilarious and heartening all at once, that rare sitcom that elevates its characters, that has over the top fun with situations, playing them for laughs, but which never forgets the humanity at the heart of every situation.
Only the good sitcoms, the really good ones, can balance someone seeing a therapist for some long unresolved issues with their father dying that are manifesting as panic attacks (Grace) while someone else, convinced she’s about to shuffle off this mortal coil, decides to celebrate every single holiday at once. (Frankie, of course).
Grace and Frankie has always leapt from the silly to affectingly sublime with breathtaking alacrity, and in these final twelves episodes, which end the show near perfectly with happy endings aplenty which, yes, does include a marriage and some big life changes for the kids, Sol and Robert facing up something big but doing it together, and of course our beloved eponymous twosome sticking together ready to face whatever comes next.
It is tough to say goodbye, but when it’s done this well, and after we’ve been given so many laughs and heartfelt moments, you can only be thankful, as you would be with friends and family in real life, that we had Grace and Frankie at all, and that we got to laugh with them, cry with them, and learn, and oh how we needed to learn and remember this, that life is always better (and maybe, just maybe, afterwards too) if someone loves you unconditionally and never leaves your side no matter what.
Here’s to friendship, to life and to Grace and Frankie having each other and for us having them – maybe things won’t be so bad, after all …
Grace and Frankie‘s seven seasons are available to stream on Netflix.