The 2020 Graduating Class of Female Friendships

Nov 7

Nov 7 The 2020 Graduating Class of Female Friendships

I didn’t grow up in a TV-watching household. We were more the type to rent 10 million DVDs from Blockbuster on Friday night and then suffer the wrath of the now-archaic ‘late fee’ when we didn’t get through all 10 million by Tuesday.

I didn’t really watch *any* TV until I got into high school. On that fated day my mom rented the first disks in the Gilmore Girls series with equal pride and astonishment that someone had made a TV show about our lives. A single mother and her teenage daughter living in small town USA?! (At the time we thought we were special snowflakes, not knowing there was an arctic storm of other snowflakes in the beyond). A year later a friend pushed Veronica Mars on me, and I relented. And then I loved. Introduction to TV complete.

Growing up, I moved to a different school nearly every year of my life. The stability that those two shows and their amazing female leads offered was nothing short of magical. What was short of magical was their portrayal of female friendships. There is nothing inherently wrong with them, but as a girl who, every year, was having to make and brake new friendships, it wasn’t a great guiding light on how to make and maintain the female relationships in my life.

Until now, I’d move to a new place, make fast and steady friends, move out of town and *poof* the friendships evaporated and it was back to square one. The one year time stamp didn’t offer enough space to have the developments that are naturally put upon friendships after an extended period of closeness. And I wasn’t learning those lessons from Veronica Mars and Rory Gilmore- the lone wolves of the female tribe. It was the height of the “I’m not like other girls” phase in Hollywood. Though different personality types, they both had just two close friends who they really only saw when they needed help or conveniently thanks to the scriptwriter, bumped into them on the sidewalk.

Let’s be clear here. I’m not trying to shame Veronica Mars and Rory Gilmore. I have only the utmost love for those women and their kickass journalistic and crime-stopping agendas. They just weren’t the role models in the realm of friendship that I needed, and honestly still need to this day.

But now we live (*movie narrator's voice*) in a world where (okay, you can stop the voice, that was enough) women in TV are kicking ass as unique individuals WITH concrete and complex female friendships! What a time to woman! I was just talking to a friend on our social-distance walk yesterday about the episode of Insecure where Issa and Molly in Season 4 (like, Season 12 of their friendship) come across the issue of the Friendship Coma.

Many of us have experienced this phenomenon before. The slow fizzle of a bff flame burning out as each member of the team wonders what-the-bff is happening without the skillsets to know which wire cut the fuse. It’s awful. Then, because in those situations there are often too many cracks to understand which one is the real leak, the cracks are left untended and the dams of the friendship burst. See- it sparks such passion in me that I can’t even stick to one metaphor!

Such inspired passion calls for celebration. I would like to honor and pay tribute to the fantastic female relationships on TV right now. I’d like to thank them for their service- to acknowledge both the dirty and clean laundry that they’ve strung on the line for us to accept and appreciate. After all, Emmy nominations are upon us. And this is one category long deserving of the podium. So without further ado, I proudly present to you; the 2020 nominees for the Best Female Friendships!

The Friendemmy’s!

Like, Friend Emmy’s.

Not frenemies.