The basic premise of Younger, the TV Land dramedy now entering its second season, is this: Liza Miller (Sutton Foster) is a 40-year-old New Jersey housewife who, after her husband cheated on her and gambled away their savings, is in desperate need of a fresh start. Newly divorced (see above), and with her college-aged daughter away on a semester in India, Liza ends up moving in with her friend Maggie (Debi Mazar), an artist, in Brooklyn. She looks for a job in publishing, the industry she loved and thrived in before she had her kid. The problem: In the estimation of 20-something hiring managers, Liza is too old for the entry-level-ish jobs she’s applying for, but too inexperienced for the roles that would traditionally suit someone of her age.
Prospects for her self-reinvention look pretty dire until Liza happens upon a way out of her catch-22: She’ll pretend to be 26.
Hilarity, and confusion, and many, many lies, ensue. Liza, youth-overed with the help of blond highlights and sassy nail polish and a newly normcored wardrobe, gets a job as an assistant to a Miranda Priestly-esque marketing executive (Miriam Shor) at Manhattan’s Empirical Press. She befriends Kelsey (Hilary Duff), an editor and a rising star at the firm, who takes Liza under her wing. (“We’re gonna be 26-year-old bosses!” Kelsey is fond of enthusing.) She meets a guy—Josh (Nico Tortorella), a tattoo artist—who assumes that she, like he, is in her 20s. Liza doesn’t correct him. They start dating.