Character introductions are always important to TV shows, but they arguably matter more in comedies. We as viewers have to want to spend time with these new arrivals on our screens for the weeks or months to come, even when there are no big plot developments to unpack. The creators of most good hangout comedies understand this, and so does Sharon Horgan, the multihyphenate behind the new HBO comedy Youth.
Horgan has shown a knack for effortlessly introducing characters worth viewer investment in series like Catastrophe, the tart and winning rom-com she co-created, co-wrote, and co-starred in with Rob Delaney, and Divorce, which began with its two leads (played by Sarah Jessica Parker and Thomas Haden Church) at the end of their marriage. Catastrophe‘s Rob and Sharon enter into their initial six-day fling with little preamble and backstory hidden in jokes—she gasps that she’s “never had casual sex with a sober person before!” The rest of the pilot sees both characters live up to each other’s first impression, which helps sell their decision to give a more permanent arrangement a shot after learning she’s pregnant. Divorce starts almost in reverse—the Dufresnes’ already frayed relationship rapidly unravels once infidelity is revealed, but viewer sympathy shifts throughout the series’ run. Bad Sisters similarly establishes its eponymous ensemble with elan and dark humor, the camera peeking into the women’s homes during what is both a difficult time and a cause for celebration. Pulling, Motherland, even Shining Vale prove that Horgan knows how to quickly get the audience buy-in.
“Lockjaw” (B+), the series premiere of Youth, keeps her streak going—its opening moments move from an inspirational montage and heavy-handed reminder that women in their 50s have to carpe what’s left of the diem to the sight of one woman, Alex (Horgan), who’s lost track of the time while scrolling through social media videos of glute shelf regimens and exotic bird haircuts. Even with a bruised lip (the result of dropping her smartphone on her face when she realizes she’s late for work), Alex looks like a cosmopolitan woman, the kind you’d expect to work as a literary agent in London and take a meeting with Damian Lewis (playing a heightened version of himself, who’s eager to outdo Stephen Fry as an author). Alex isn’t as willing as her friend and boss Sam (Sharlene Whyte) to humor, let alone encourage, Damian’s aspirations, but just as she’s about to tactfully push back on his pitch, her jaw locks. Suddenly, her poise and experience are out the window, as her colleagues rush around frantically and the former star of Homeland tries to lubricate her locked jaw with some water.
That’s only the start of a run of indignities. When Alex goes to see a doctor, she learns she has arthritis in her jaw. “It’s just an age thing,” the thirtysomething doctor shrugs before practically giggling as she warns Alex away from blowjobs, kebabs, and other “tough meats.” This new limitation on her sex life—what little there is of it, anyway—doesn’t quite make Alex spin out, but it does make her think that she now has only “10 years left as a sexual person.” Because this latest “age thing” is part of a growing list, and its discovery and Alex’s distressed call to Sam cast that inspirational-looking opening montage in a different light. “No decade moves faster than 50 to 60,” a voice (my guess is Horgan’s) intones over images of Maya Angelou, Kathleen Hanna, Margaret Atwood, Yoko Ono, and other prominent women in history. “You have to make every single second of your time count.” For someone like Alex, who, now that her son Ruairi (Aran Murphy, the spitting image of his dad Cillian Murphy) is going off to university, has finally given herself permission to focus on herself again, that’s not so much a rallying cry as an admonition. If every second has to count, then how can she in good conscience watch, say, yet another video for a recipe she’ll never make? After raising a son, embarking on a second career, and maintaining a cordial relationship with an ex-husband with Peter Pan syndrome, isn’t Alex entitled to squander some of that remaining time? Figuring out what the “best” use of her time looks like should make for some fun, mortifying times ahead on Youth.
The first entry in the two-episode premiere garners a lot of sympathy for Alex, as she navigates her son’s awkward high-school graduation ceremony and an even more awkward post-graduation meal with her ex-husband Lorcan (Owen McDonnell), his new girlfriend (Karla Crome), her aging mom and dad (the latter of whom uses his tablet to take photos). She agrees to a setup so she can have sex for the first time in four years, only to end up somewhere between getting off and weeping. “I just don’t know if there’s anything left in my life that I like anymore,” she sobs to her date, Michael (Tim McInnerney), as a way to explain her ambivalence about having him go down on her. She flew through a similar jumble of emotions when first facing her now-empty nest.
It’s easy to like Alex in these moments and be on her side, especially when her reasons for backing out of her hookup with a man she’s not attracted to are written by someone like Horgan. “I don’t know you well enough yet to be selfish in bed,” Alex tells Michael—a statement that’s somewhat silly (she’s not planning to get to know him better) and sweet (still, she could have taken him up on it) and also distinctly feminine. Mere minutes after admitting she’s scared of his 67-year-old balls, she’s able to help them all—Michael, his testicles, and herself—save face.
It’s in exchanges like these that Alex reminds me of Sam Fox, the single working mom at the center of the chaos in Pamela Adlon’s Better Things.* Like Sam, Alex is forthright but never cruel; they both see directness as a kindness. She only has one kid to Sam’s three, which would seem to make it easier for her to get her dating life back on track, but just as quickly as Alex bundles Ruairi off to the University Of Kent, he’s back in his bedroom at home and resentful of her exercise equipment. “Lockjaw” ends with Ruairi seeking refuge at home but rejecting his mom’s efforts to comfort him, putting him in company with the Fox kids and oh so many other TV teens.
“Wagon Burner” (B+), the second episode in tonight’s pairing, starts to flesh out the withdrawn teenage boy a bit more, but it’s probably going to be a while before we find out what sent him running back home so quickly. Ruairi gets a text message calling him a “sex offender,” which is also what a girl in his dorm calls him when Alex drives him back to school. There’s still no real context for what happened during that first day (maybe two) of school, but it does seem to involve a classmate named Bridget, who accidentally sat on his hand at graduation and now is making and breaking appointments to see him. Not knowing what the problem is doesn’t keep Alex from trying to solve it, though. She even reaches out to Lorcan, but the half hour or so he spends thinking of someone other than himself leaves him so drained that he tells Alex they can’t put everything on pause based on the possibility that something bad might happen. An exasperated Alex finally asks him, “What’s it like to just never have to grow up?”
Alex seems to be the only one hearing a ticking clock right now. Obviously, Ruairi wouldn’t worry about the passage of time at this point in his life. Sam is reckoning with age, but from the viewpoint of someone who’s worried her husband is cheating on her with his young, buxom bartenders. Lorcan clearly isn’t concerned about being older than his girlfriend, pursuing acting jobs on a whim, or barely being a father to his son. Alex’s ex, Pat (Rupert Friend), who’s saved in her phone as “ExPat,” is three years younger than her but dating women 25 years younger than her. Now he’s dropping by her not-so-empty nest for a hookup here and there. Pat and Alex have great chemistry, which they’re both aware of, and in just these two episodes, we see how their dynamic shifts from casual sex with someone familiar to something more. They both work in publishing—he seems to be a features writer—have little patience for niceties, and now prefer sex with each other sober. That doesn’t make for the best throwing-pebbles-outside-a-bedroom-window speech, I know, but Pat’s honesty, humor, and intelligence all seem to be on whatever checklist Alex might have for a partner in this era of her life.
So, two hookups and one scooter ride later, Alex wants them both to put their cards on the table. Pat, in what seems like a genuine display of empathy and not a ploy, tells her he understands if it’s not the right time for them to get serious. He knows that she’s sandwiched between taking care of her teenage son and her elderly parents, all while working full-time in a high-pressure job (the demands of which were more fully outlined in the first half of the episode, including a taut scene with Harriet Walter). But Alex won’t hear of it: “It has to be the right time, ’cause another time’s gonna be too late.”
Even though she’s only three years older than him, Alex is under greater pressure to make every second count. She doesn’t just want to be in a relationship, she wants to feel good—sexy, desired—while in one, and those thigh-firming, butt-lifting exercises she does won’t hold off the inevitable forever. And, as much as she likes how she feels when she’s with Pat, she can’t wait for him to make up his mind. So, she lashes out at him, unable to hear what he says about his alcoholic dad over her own disappointment. “Don’t follow me,” Alex tells Pat, and, just as he’s been doing all episode, he listens to her.
Stray observations
- • Welcome to Youth coverage! This is the only twofer; the rest of the season will roll out one episode on Sunday nights.
- • This is a great interview with Sharon Horgan, who notes that the “youth” of the title refers to your 50s, which is considered the “youth of old age.”
- • *Re: Better Things/Youth, the two shows already seem to have a lot in common, like wanting to redefine coming-of-age stories, but I want to let this broader comparison simmer for a bit. I was already planning a rewatch of Better Things for its 10th anniversary, but I won’t let that unduly color these recaps.
- • “Don’t worry about the internet giving him anxiety, okay? My genetics are taking care of that.”
- • Tonight’s second episode gets its title from Wagon Burner, a fairly filthy, in-show bodice-ripper written by a nonagenarian. Charlotte (Anne Reid), the fictional author, also seems to value honesty at her age.
- • Lorcan to Alex: “You’re catastrophizing.”
Me:
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