In praise of “Younger,” the show with the only TV love triangle worth talking about

In 2015, I worked at 1515 Broadway, the New York City building famous for hosting TRL and being the headquarters of cable channels like MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, and TV Land. Throughout the building, it was common to see billboards and giant posters promoting the biggest shows on those channels, and when I saw the poster for TV Land’s new show Younger starring Sutton Foster, Hilary Duff, and Debi Mazar, I immediately dismissed it, a decision based entirely on TV Land’s lack of cool credibility.

Last year, the series arrived on Netflix, and to my surprise, after watching the pilot episode, I was immediately hooked. It took a few months, but I eventually finished the entire series and now it’s 2026 and I’m here to make some sense of 2015. I was a fool to turn down this smart, well-written, and flawlessly acted sitcom, which also happens to feature the best love triangle on television. (Sorry, summer house.)

Smaller starts out as a show about a 40-year-old New Jersey mother, Lisa Miller (Foster), who gets divorced and moves to Brooklyn after her daughter goes to college. Desperate for an apartment, she moves in with her best friend Maggie (Mazar), an artist in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. (In the same way that Monica inherited Friends’ massive West Village apartment from her deceased grandmother, Maggie’s massive artist loft, complete with a separate bedroom, was acquired for Lisa before the hipsters and apartments on Bedford Street took over.) Lisa is broke and forced to get a job, but no one will hire her due to an 18-year career hiatus to raise her daughter. Because she has gorgeous hair and Broadway colors, she convinces a book publisher that she’s 26 and gets a job as a marketing assistant.

Let’s be real, the premise of the show is an annoying farce: Lisa is 40, she doesn’t actually look like she’s 26, but the show uses Superman/Clark Kent logic and the Forever 21 wardrobe to convince everyone otherwise. (While it’s ironic, there’s a vicarious thrill in seeing a woman who some might consider overwhelmed find a way to overcome all the beliefs society has thrown her way — sexism, ageism, CV gap skepticism — and live her best life.) But Lisa’s biggest mistake was lying about her age outside of the office, too.

After she meets a 26-year-old tattoo artist named Josh (Nico Tortorella) who lives nearby, she tells him that she is 26, too. The logic at first is, why not plant the oats you’ve never been able to grow? But things get complicated when Lisa and Josh form a real bond; What starts out as proof that Lisa can still turn heads at 40 turns into actual chemistry, and Josh is head over heels for it. There’s no reason for Lisa to lie to Josh about her age, which is probably why he’s the first person she confesses to, revealing her true identity at the end of season one.

Josh seems like the wrong choice for Lisa, even though he’s so young. He’s a tattoo artist, and she’s a Jersey mom. On paper, he’s the exact opposite of Lisa. While Lisa loves him, she develops a self-fulfilling prophecy about their coupling, and her worry that their age will somehow drive them apart is what ultimately drives them apart. She was married, didn’t want any more kids, yadda yadda. When Josh found out Lisa’s real age, he wasn’t upset that she was older; He’s just upset that she lied about it. But Lisa still pushes Josh away, hesitant about whether they can really make it work, while never realizing that they quite do.

Josh may be very young, which fools Lisa, but everything else about him is a long list of professionals. They share some sexy scenes (the show is TV-14 but much more raunchy than you’d expect from a TV Land joint), and Josh becomes friends with all of her friends. He loves her in a weak but strong way. It is a perfect partner, no comments.

What separates Josh and Lisa isn’t actually their age; It’s the fact that he witnessed her kissing her older (as in the right age) boss, Charles (Peter Herrmann), and he is devastated by the betrayal. The show’s casting, from lead roles to supporting characters, is incredible (I’d happily watch a series dedicated solely to Molly Bernard’s character Lauren and her parents, played by Kathy Najimy and Josh Pais), but it’s the chemistry Foster has with both Tortorella and Herman that makes their love triangle so addictive. As perfect as Josh seems to Lisa, he’s almost too good for her, and falls in love with her too, which is a very convenient choice. However, Charles gives Lisa a newfound crush, and their relationship seems a bit risky because he’s also her boss.

But the truth is that Lisa’s attraction to Charles makes more sense. On paper. Like her, he is also in his 40s, is also a parent and also a book lover like her. Their flirtation begins early in the show when Lisa pretends to be younger, but when he learns her real age, he takes it much harder than Josh did. He’s angry. Up until this point, I probably would have been happy if Lisa had ended up with either man, but Charles, who once felt he was the right and safe choice, is also neurotic and quite the grudge-bearer.

He sets traps for Lisa to catch her lying, to prove to himself that she can never be trusted. He dates Lisa’s arch-enemy during a time when they are not together. However, as the final few episodes of the series approach, and as they near the finish line, it seems that these two may have actually found a way forward, forgiving each other and looking to the future. But the show keeps the audience on their toes about Lisa’s fate until the last minute.

Younger ran for seven seasons, and for the majority of the show, it seemed like Charles would be Lisa’s prince charming because it made the most sense. It was flawed, but it seemed more appropriate. But the thing about someone being good on paper is that they don’t take into account feelings, and the show made a strong case for why we (I mean Lisa) love both Josh and Charles. In the end, once the series ended, it was clear that the only right answer was Team Josh. But who knows, maybe I’ll change my mind upon rewatching.