'The Bold Type' makes me feel inadequate in every way but I love it
If you aren't watching The Bold Type, you are missing out. The show is millennial utopia; feminist, progressive, positive, all packaged with a frothy style thanks to production network Freeform. This is the story of best friends Jane (Katie Stevens), Kat (Aisha Dee), and Sutton (Meghann Fahy), three young women in the New York media scene who are, above all, fierce friends.
It's so perfect that, oftentimes, it makes me feel like crap. But I love it.
The perfect friendship
A friend of mine recently started this show and asked if she was insufficiently close to her female friends.
"There was that one scene where one of them literally pulled a Yoni egg out of the other's vagina," she reminded me. (For the record, it makes sense in context, and should not impact your curiosity in the show).
I let that sit for a moment. I love my girlfriends like sisters, but if it comes to it, would I ever do for them what Kat did for Jane?
Truthfully, I don't know. I would probably call in another friend with some medical training, and I think that is an even better option! Good thing the girls have a doctor around this season.
But the central trio's dynamic is specifically plotted to be friendship goals. They all met while working at fashion magazine Scarlet fresh out of college and connect instantly. We meet them several years later, with an established rapport and traditions like goblets full of wine and sharing hot gossip in the company's fashion closet.
What says the most is their willingness to physically be together so often. Sutton and Jane live together in Brooklyn, while Kat lives in Manhattan. That's a trip some New Yorkers don't make in their lifetimes, yet we see the three of them kicking back in the Brooklyn apartment together almost every night after work (at least hang out at Kat's Loft of Privilege!). A recent episode showed Jane and Kat making Sutton breakfast on a weekday. Should I be doing this for my friends? I'm terrible!!
Career goals
When we first meet "tiny Jane" (I googled it and she's 5'3", let's all calm down), she's jonesing for journalism, and she gets her chance to start writing for Scarlet. In Season 2, she's kicking butt in the freelance world, where I regularly spent most of my days abusing my MoviePass and buying a single macaroon so I could write in a coffee shop.
Kat's been promoted and is crushing it, though there is no way a Scarlet-sized company would still have their social media manager manually sending out individual tweets on mobile instead of having someone three stations lower plug it into TweetDeck. Sutton feels insecure about still being an assistant, but she has an obvious aptitude for fashion design and a boss who recognizes his diamond in the rough.
Beyond the workplace, they're still very functional adults. I'm talking about the little things – for instance, I've noticed that they always have wine at home. It's just there. When Kat proposes a toast to Jane's award nomination in Season 2, she quickly produces a bottle of champagne seemingly from nowhere. I live across the street from a liquor store but if we get good news after I'm in my pajamas, no wine for you!
Also – I'm going to go ahead and put it in this section – they are ALL SO WELL-DRESSED ALL THE TIME. Look, I know it's TV, I know it's exaggerated, but this stuff always gets to me. Mashable is a media company (albeit not fashion) and I regularly wear t-shirts to the office while air-drying my hair in a snuggie. But Jane always rocks a perfect smokey eye, Sutton's lipstick collection inspires nothing but envy, and Kat's accessories are always on point.
Honestly, feeling intense inferiority is a good motivator. I'm going shopping!
Relationship drama
Like many fans of the show, I found myself unexpectedly invested in Sutton's Season 1 romance with older board member Richard (Sam Page). I'm a sucker for fictional forbidden love, and The Bold Type never wrote Richard as condescending or manipulative; he genuinely cared for Sutton and was a successful single man. They just came from different worlds and struggled to bridge that.
Without spoiling much, things with Richard are on an off into Season 2. In one scene, Sutton laments that she's been going out and drinking instead of facing the situation and being present for Kat and Jane. That's it. No dramatics, just a simple apology and transparent admission of where and how she went wrong. It's so self-aware that I cringed at how easy she made it look.
It's that kind of direct writing that crops up when big issues divide the group, like Jane's issues with religion or Kat helping to check her white privilege. As another friend of mine put it, "their problems aren't problems." I think they are, but they're just too adept at facing them. These girls are mindful enough to be their own therapists, and each other's.
Kat's continuing to explore her sexuality, in a way that demonstrates the show understands this as a journey and not just a destination. Whenever the girls are single, they make the best of it, and when they're not the show explores it uniquely, as with Kat and Adina (Nikohl Boosheri) or Jane and Dr. Ben (Luca James Lee).
The women of The Bold Type certainly represent an ideal, and that's completely okay. As much as they make me feel like a poorly dressed mess, they give me something to aspire to, and they're very sweet about it. I imagine them popping champagne in the fashion closet and offering me a chic new outfit to don as I conquer the world. Would that we could all be so bold.
The Bold Type airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on Freeform.
Proma Khosla is a Senior Entertainment Reporter writing about all things TV, from ranking Bridgerton crushes to composer interviews and leading Mashable's stateside coverage of Bollywood and South Asian representation. You might also catch her hosting video explainers or on Mashable's TikTok and Reels, or tweeting silly thoughts from @promawhatup.
