Foster Child

It's the holiday season and the regular shows are in reruns, so I can start catching up on stuff I missed.  On Demand features all 12 episodes of the TV Land show Younger, and I just checked out the first two.

The concept is pretty basic, and fairly thin.  40-year-old Liza Miller was a up-and-comer in the publishing who took off 15 years to raise her daughter.  Also, her rotter husband just divorced her and she has nothing to show for it, not even a house in the suburbs.  She decides to go back into the working world, but no one wants to hire someone her age to start at the bottom.  So she pretends she's 26 and sure enough gets a job at a publishing house as an assistant to a sour 40-something woman who doesn't much like millennials.

Liza has to fool not just her boss but also her 20-something coworkers, as well as a hunky local tattoo artist who also thinks she's young for some reason.  The only one who knows her secret is her old Lesbian friend Maggie, who lets Liza stay at her place in Brooklyn.

The main attraction of the show is Sutton Foster as Liza.  Foster was last seen on TV in the late, lamented Bunheads.  While Younger isn't exactly a raging success, it at least got picked up for a second season--starting in January, in fact.  Foster has been a major Broadway star, and can certainly pull off this role. (So far, only two episodes in, it hasn't made too many demands). The cast also features Hillary Duff as a co-workers (and she is a twenty-something, so it's believable) and Debbie Mazar as the friend and sounding board. The show is based on a novel by Pamela Redmond Staran, and run by Darren Starr, a big name who previously created Melrose Place, Beverly Hills 91201 and Sex And The City. 

Done in a one-camera half-hour format, Younger is more charming than funny, and that's fine.  But the concept is pretty thin.  It seems like a better idea for a movie (or novel).  Either Liza keeps up the imposture or eventually let's it out, but is it that big a deal once she gets settled at the job?  And is learning what's hip with millennials (mostly social networking) that hard to do after you've worked at it a few weeks?  Google pretty much can tell you everything you need to know (or you can Bing it, as this show does--is Microsoft behind Younger?)  Won't the show eventually morph into some kind of Devil Wears Prada thing?

Anyway, I guess I'll keep watching.  I've got ten more episodes to catch up on before the next season starts in a few weeks.  And if it keeps running, will it eventually turning into thirty-something?