Some good news on a Thursday: Coronavirus will be completely nonexistent in the final season of Younger, from Sex and the City creator Darren Star. I no longer have to worry another of Hilary Duff’s love interests will be killed off, but this time with the virus instead of a falling steel beam!
The television industry, being staffed by actual human beings living through this hell world along with the rest of us, has dealt with the pandemic to varying degrees of success. The doctor shows became doctor shows about coronavirus, the Real Housewives put masks on, and Shark Tank locked the contestants in a Las Vegas hotel prison for a month. For series finally returning from hiatus, like Younger, the future is even more uncertain. Thankfully, Star told The Hollywood Reporter that the publishing industry spoof will not force its cast through the apocalyptic wasteland of early lockdown New York City.
“We had discussions about possibly including COVID. We mapped out some story directions. But our timeline picked up where we left off — which, in the real-world timeline, was at least eight months before COVID would have affected the lives of these characters. We would have really had to jump time to catch up to when the pandemic hit and we would have been playing a guessing game about how things would develop, and I didn’t want to do that.”
Star relates the decision to Sex and the City’s now-infamous decision to totally ignore the realities of a post-9/11 New York City, which turned out just fine for that series and will likely be just as fine for Younger. I mean, does anyone turn on TV Land to watch as fictional book publishers look out the window and see tanks and machine-gun wielding police officers rolling down the streets of Manhattan?
No!
I turn on Younger because I like to look at Hilary Duff’s ugly wardrobe and watch Sutton Foster flail about as ten shirtless hunks chase her around 5th Avenue. Debi Mazar and Miriam Shor are blessedly the cherry and whipped cream atop the deliciously vapid banana split. (Peter Hermann, if you’re listening? Call me.)
Star, meanwhile, has loftier ambitions for a show that is literally what happens when you anthropomorphize the inspirational quotes on Home Goods kitchen towels. “Younger is timeless. This a series you can watch years from now. And COVID, to me, instantly stamps it.” I’ll definitely be watching it years from now, but timeless? Darren, buddy…