This article contains some spoilers for seasons 1-5 of Younger
A friend of mine recently recommended I watch Younger. I took his advice immediately and proceeded to watch all five seasons in a little under three weeks. I know, my life is outlandish in its glamorousness.
Now obviously Liza is the central character, but what struck me as I finished gorging myself on the show (and raging about Charles and Liza’s relationship which I do not ship) was that its best character is in fact Diana Trout (followed closely by Maggie, but that’s a discussion for another article).
Diana is an immediately iconic character, brought to life by Miriam Shor and a rather spectacular wardrobe team. In this interview, Shor spoke about Diana’s necklaces as akin to a suit of armour. As an older woman who has climbed to a position of seniority within a notoriously cliquey industry, her ascent to prominence would have required her to adopt a certain toughness. This not only takes the form of a gruff personality but a wardrobe to match. This article delves into all of the effort put into the necklace choice, and how much of a staple they are for the show.
If you aren’t already convinced, allow me to make the case for just how fabulous Ms Trout actually is.
Season one quickly established that her no-nonsense attitude is not mutually exclusive with the capacity to be generous to the people around her. In episode seven Liza is on the hook for $1,800 to make up the difference in her daughter’s university tuition when her ex husband fails to come through with his half. She tells Diana that she is having trouble repaying her student debt and Diana responds by simply leaving a cheque for the amount on her computer without any fanfare. Not only is this an absolutely boss move Diana’s part, but it’s an example of one of the show’s strengths; the strong solidarity between its female characters.
In the pilot I heaved a mighty inner groan at what seemed to be the setup of an antagonistic relationship between Diana and her ‘younger’ assistant. I expected that Diana would steal Liza’s ideas and undermine her. Instead, the show has portrayed her offering brusque but genuine guidance and support to Liza, actually listening to Liza’s suggestions, and giving her credit when it was due. It belies the narrative about women being in competition with one another, and provides an important normative message of how women in fact get ahead by helping one another. External to the prospect of workplace rivalry, it is a testament to the writers that even though Diana is interested in Charles, she never views Liza as a rival because she simply is blind to the mutual attraction between them (as indeed I wish I was).
This leads me nicely to the manner in which Diana’s relationship to romance has evolved over the course of the show. In the first seasons, her crush on Charles had her set up for ridicule, but she moves beyond this. Given her own marriage ended when her husband left her for a man, she is remarkably honest about something which must have been terribly humiliating, and she faces this part of her past with wry humour, which is an incredibly impressive way to conduct herself. It makes sense that this would prevent her from being able to open herself up to new emotional opportunities (perhaps why she is so into her boss, but I could be reaching here).
Yet she not only opens herself up to a relationship with Richard (ugh what a slimebag), but respects herself enough to be able to toss him out when it becomes clear that he really is nothing more than a user. It’s what made the relationship she finds in season five even more fulfilling for me as a viewer – she has gone through lusting after an unobtainable figure, to allowing someone desperately unworthy of her into her home, to finding a nice, decent guy. Moreover, her willingness to accept Enzo for who he is, as this article outlines, in fact distinguishes her from Liza and Kelsey, as she is able to accept the person she loves for exactly what he is (rather than say, lusting after your boss when you have a really lovely, oh I don’t know, tattoo artist, who adores you and would do anything for you).
Finally, Diana is a rich character. She performs in a song from Cabaret with Cheryl Sussman in s5e11 in Frankfurt, she busts out some very decent Italian to stand up for herself to her boyfriend’s mother, and she takes Kelsey to a cabaret bar (I guess we’d call it that, anyway) to cheer her up and gets righteously drunk. She even is willing to participate in a nude photo shoot even though that’s really external to her comfort zone. She’s a complex, dynamic woman who also happens to be brilliant at her job and loyal to the people close to her.
I’m hanging out for season six to arrive around because I want to see Diana Trout. And really, you should be, too.
