In Praise of 'Younger,' the Show With the Only TV Love Triangle Worth Talking About
Younger was supposed to be background TV. Instead, it became one of the most compelling love triangle stories ever put on screen.
Why Younger Deserves More Credit Than It Ever Got
There is a very specific category of television show that lives in your peripheral vision. You put it on while folding laundry, while cooking dinner, while scrolling through your phone. It asks nothing of you, and you give it nothing in return. It is furniture TV — comfortable, familiar, and entirely forgettable. When I started watching Younger, the Darren Star comedy-drama that ran for seven seasons on TV Land and Paramount+, I was fully prepared to file it into that category. A middle-aged woman pretending to be 26 to re-enter the publishing workforce? Fine. Light. Perfect for a Tuesday evening when my brain had already clocked out.
I was completely wrong. Younger turned out to be one of the most emotionally intelligent, sharply written, and genuinely affecting television series of the last decade — and at its absolute center, burning like a slow fire through all seven seasons, is the only love triangle in recent TV history that I actually cared about with my whole chest.
The Setup: More Than a Midlife Crisis Comedy
For the uninitiated, Younger follows Liza Miller, played with extraordinary precision by Sutton Foster, a 40-year-old divorcée from New Jersey who lies about her age to land an entry-level job at a Manhattan publishing house called Empirical Press. The comedic engine of the show is the sustained deception — Liza must convince her colleagues, her friends, and eventually her romantic partners that she is 26 years old. It sounds like the premise of a broad sitcom, and in lesser hands, that is exactly what it would have been.
But Darren Star — who also created Sex and the City and later Emily in Paris — understood that the most interesting version of this story was not about the lie. It was about what the lie reveals. Liza is not pretending to be young because she wants to recapture youth. She is doing it because the world refused to give her a fair chance as herself. That quiet, persistent injustice runs underneath every episode and gives the show a weight that its breezy aesthetic deliberately obscures.
Josh and Charles: Two Men, Two Completely Different Versions of a Life
The love triangle at the heart of Younger involves two men who, on paper, could not be more different. Josh, played by Nico Tortorella, is a tattooed Brooklyn artist in his late twenties — the man who initially pursues Liza believing she is his peer, who falls genuinely and deeply in love with her, and who becomes one of the most emotionally available male characters in recent television memory. Charles Brooks, played by Peter Hermann, is Liza's sophisticated, literary-minded boss — a widower with two daughters, a man of culture and restraint who falls for Liza slowly, reluctantly, and with a gravity that feels entirely earned.
What makes this triangle extraordinary is that neither man is a villain. Neither is a placeholder. The show does not stack the deck. Josh represents freedom, passion, and the terrifying beauty of loving someone who meets you exactly where you are without conditions. Charles represents depth, partnership, and the kind of love that is built deliberately, brick by brick, over time. Both are real. Both are valuable. Both are incomplete without Liza — and Liza is incomplete in different ways without each of them.
Sutton Foster: The Anchor That Makes Everything Work
None of this would function without Sutton Foster, who should be talked about in the same breath as television's greatest leading performers. Foster plays Liza's internal conflict with a restraint that is almost theatrical in its precision. You can see the exact moment Liza makes a choice she will regret. You can see the exact moment she realizes she is in love without meaning to be. Foster never oversells a scene, which means that when the emotion finally breaks through — and it always does — the impact is devastating.
The supporting cast elevates her further. Hilary Duff as Kelsey Peters, Liza's best friend and professional partner, delivers a performance that grew richer and more complicated with every season. Debi Mazar as Maggie, Liza's best friend since childhood, provides warmth and grounding wisdom. Miriam Shor as Diana Trout, the razor-tongued managing editor, is one of the great comic creations in modern television and deserved every award she never received.
What the Love Triangle Actually Says About Women and Age
The most subversive thing Younger does is use its romantic plot to interrogate what society actually wants from women as they get older. Liza choosing between Josh and Charles is never really just about two men. It is about two versions of herself — the version that is spontaneous, desirable, and uncomplicated, and the version that is experienced, whole, and demanding of something real. The show asks whether a woman can be both. It asks whether she even has to choose.
The Final Season and a Conclusion That Feels Honest
Without spoiling the resolution for those who have not yet finished the series, the final season of Younger makes a choice that initially frustrated a significant portion of its audience. On reflection, it is the only choice that is true to who Liza actually is. The show does not give her a fairy-tale ending engineered to satisfy a demographic. It gives her an ending that feels like a real woman making a real decision about her real life. That is rarer on television than it should be.
Why You Should Watch Younger Right Now
Younger is available to stream and it rewards patient, attentive viewing. It is not a show you should put on while folding laundry. It is a show that will make you put the laundry down, sit on the couch, and pay attention. It is funny, it is romantic, it is occasionally heartbreaking, and it contains one of the most well-constructed emotional narratives in recent prestige television — even though it was never quite treated as prestige television by the people who hand out awards.
That oversight is their loss. Younger knew exactly what it was doing the entire time. It just dressed it up in good shoes and made it look effortless.