Fonda, Tomlin hit their stride in new season of 'Grace and Frankie'
Thirteen new episodes of the Netflix comedy celebrate female friendship -- and the joys of sex.
Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are back for 13 more episodes of Netflix's Grace and Frankie, and the third season's the most charming yet.
Created by Broomall's Marta Kauffman — of Friends fame — with Howard J. Morris, Grace and Frankie is about the odd-couple friendship of Grace Hanson (Fonda) and Frankie Bergstein (Tomlin), who find themselves living together after their former husbands (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) reveal their decades-long affair and decide to marry.
Read more: From Friends to Grace and Frankie
At least the women got the beach house, a setting straight out of a Nancy Meyers movie that helps undercut the sadness its title characters still occasionally experience over the loss of their former lives.
They've mostly moved on, though, and this season have gone into business together, producing and marketing a vibrator designed specifically for women of a certain age, a project that both exposes their very different approaches to work and life and, along with Frankie's ongoing affair with her "yam man" Jacob (Ernie Hudson), allows the kind of age-appropriate sex jokes TV seldom allows women over 50.
Moving on, too, are Sheen's and Waterston's characters, lawyers facing tough decisions about retirement and working through the challenges of a new marriage, a new home, and plenty of old baggage.
The blended family's adult children — played by Brooklyn Decker, Ethan Embry, June Diane Raphael, and Baron Vaughn — all have solid storylines of their own.
But what I love most about this season is how Fonda and Tomlin's offscreen friendship has continued to bloom into onscreen chemistry. Their characters may have arrived here by accident, but they've both come to the right place.
Where to Stream: Netflix.
Like this? Binge These: Friends, Marta Kauffman's beloved sitcom, is all on Netflix and is still as good as it was two decades ago. The Golden Girls' full run is on Hulu, and it similiarly celebrates friendship among older women.