Younger – Post Truth

By starrymag | July 5, 2017

By: Taylor Gates

 

 

The Season Four premiere picks up right where the season three finale left off—with Liza (Sutton Foster) telling Kelsey (Hilary Duff) the truth about her age. She stresses she always meant to tell her, but once they started Millennial, things got even more complicated.

 

Liza tells Kelsey she couldn’t keep lying to the people she loves most and, next to her own daughter (Tess Albertson) and Maggie (Debi Mazar), she’s the most precious person in the world to her. Kelsey is understandably shocked and having trouble processing the news and Liza tells her to take her room for the night. She promises they can keep talking about this as long as Kelsey needs.

 

The next morning, Liza tells Maggie she’s nervous about getting fired or sued for deceiving Empirical. Maggie doesn’t understand why Liza suddenly feels the need to unburden herself to everyone—sometimes lying is the kindest thing you can do. Liza goes to wake Kelsey up for work, but she and all her stuff are gone.

 

Lauren (Molly Bernard) texts Liza asking if she knows where Kelsey went. At work, Liza finds Kelsey in her office. However, Kelsey brushes off Liza’s attempts to talk about her lie and instead gets angry at her for buying Emily’s stupid Labradoodle book behind her back. She accuses Liza of only ever looking out for herself. Diana (Miriam Shor) interrupts them, announcing Marylynne Keller (Kristin Chenoweth) is there to pitch her book.

 

Marylynne’s book is called It’s True Because I’m Shouting It: Confessions of a D.C. Spin Doctor. It’s all about how she has spent her career twisting narratives for important politicians. Truth and facts, Marylynne argues, are two completely different things.

 

Charles (Peter Hermann) says the opening offer for the book is $2 million, but Diana thinks the whole concept is garbage and doesn’t want to bother with it. Kelsey, on the other hand, says she felt very enlightened by Marylynne—obviously a dig at Liza.

 

Liza begins making a speech about how truth is elastic but holds value. She stands up, getting ready to confess her secret, but Kelsey stops her. She announces that she’s not going to marry Josh (Nico Tortorella) instead before dragging Liza into her office. Kelsey tells her she can’t tell everyone the truth or else Millennial will fail and no longer be credible. Kelsey googled Liza’s name and nothing came up, which she views as a problem. Kelsey makes her meet with Lauren in order to create a narrative about her identity via social media.

 

During their meeting, Lauren throws shade about Kelsey not calling her back. Kelsey apologizes, saying that she and Colin broke up and she only cried on Liza’s shoulder since she and Josh also recently broke up. Lauren starts crying, saying her relationship isn’t perfect either. Max works such crazy hours there’s not even time for sex.

 

After work, Charles tells Liza he hopes he had nothing to do with her breakup and Liza assures him he didn’t. Charles takes her to see the original draft of Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms. It turns out he’s selling some literature artifacts—they were his father’s and he wanted to swing by and take one last look before they got bought. Among the items, Liza spies Hemingway’s love letters to Marlene Dietrich and Charles awkwardly says he once called the two “victims of unsynchronized passion.” Clearly, he sees some parallels between himself and Liza.

 

Kelsey’s ends an unsuccessful day of apartment hunting sulking at a bar. When she gets there, she spies Josh. Josh avoids her at first, wanting a clean break from everything Liza-related, but they start chatting once Kelsey reveals she knows everything. Josh says they can be friends, but she can never ask him about the night he was going to propose.

 

Kelsey sets up a meeting with Emily Burns (Fiona Robert). Kelsey says she knows Emily blackmailed Liza about the book deal and if she wants to play dirty, the stakes have to go up. If she wants to keep her deal, she has to put them both on EW’s “29 Under 29” list and into the press party that comes with it. Emily angrily agrees.

 

Charles has dinner with Marylynne, who both pathologically lies and flirts with him. He decides he doesn’t want to publish her autobiography because he doesn’t support her message. Afterwards, he swings by the party to congratulate Liza.

 

Lauren lets Kelsey take her Uber home after the party. As she’s getting into the car, Liza thanks Kelsey for forgiving her, but Kelsey says that was just business—she doesn’t think she will ever be able to forgive her.

 

Lauren and Liza look at the Uber app to see where Kelsey is living. It turns out she’s staying with Josh.