Firefly Lane is an example of that most frustrating genre — the piece of art that’s so frustrating because its almost good. There’s really something in this new Netflix production that could have been a great, but instead the creators — or producers or writers — have somehow managed to miss the boat. It’s too bad, because at times, the series shows these flashes of something great: My Brilliant Friend meets Californication. But instead, it leans into some awful cliches, wastes some terrific actors, and re-enforces the sexist stereotypes it claims to be going against.
Crated by Maggie Friedman for Netflix, the show follows the lives of two best friends over three decades, from the 70s to the early 200s, with a strong ensemble cast of other characters. Katherine Heigl (Knocked Up) shines in the role of Tully, who becomes a famous talk show host, whereas Sarah Chalke (How I Met Your Mother) hast to put up with some cringe-worthy material as Tully’s nerdy friend and neighbor, Kate, who is a divorcing stay-at-home mom reentering the workforce. Their friendship is rounded out by their boss/husband/lover/friend, Johny, a sexy war-correspondent turned fluffy daytime content producer, played by Ben Lawson (Designated Survivor.) The 70s characters are played by (excellent) younger actors, where the 80s characters use de-aging and 80s hairdos in an effective way to convey the earlier timeline.
The main focus seems to be on the early 2000s plot line, but unfortunately this turns out to also be the most problematic of the three decades. First off, you keep forgetting it’s the early 2000s because somehow no one told the creates about normcore and so we don’t get to see the actors with super straight hair and mom jeans even though those are basically the fashion now for kids these days. There are a bunch of secondary teen characters but they barely look 2000s and they listen neither to the god-awful white-kid music popular in the day or the good rap that was happening at the time. How brilliant it would have been if they threw some 2000s Britney and Timberlake in there! The creators seemed to have not taken the noughties as serious a time period as the 70s or 80s. Also, what happened to the 90s? Did the characters just time-warp through that whole decade? Is that what happens when you are married and have a kid?
The 2000s plot line has deeper problems. As a viewer you might get distracted by how fabulous Katerhine Heigel is as the famous talk show host with intimacy problems, but that can’t entirely conceal the giant anti-feminist plot hole of Sarah Chalke’s charachter being a loser divorcing mom. For some reason, Kate has not worked since she had her baby in the 80s and is re-entering the workforce as an assistant. This would make some sense in that period for many careers, but Kate is a copywriter who does both journalism and fiction and still has deep connections in the industry through her husband Johnny and best friend Tully. It makes absolutely zero sense that she is not writing copy for Tully’s talk show, publishing romance novels, or in the very least freelancing for Good Housekeeping. She is perfectly positioned for writing Mom editorials which was the original work-from-home job. It’s like the narrative is determined to make her as much of a loser everywoman as possible. We see her getting caught by her PTA crush at the department store buying Spanx (even though she is bone thin), leaving another crush mid-kiss to do a pointless mom errand, leaving pathetic voice mails, and extracting some kind of something from her younger boss’s dog’s anal glands.
Meanwhile, Tully spends most of her time drinking wine alone in her fabulous condo which is mostly made of glass and which she frequently breaks due to being drunk. She breaks up with her hookup/boyfriend because he wants them to look in each other’s eyes while they are fucking. She’s super famous and has everything but her only real friends are Johnny and Tully and their teen kid. She feels empty because she doesn’t have kids, and when she (spoilers) gets pregnant with her fuck-friend, she eventually gets into it but then (more spoilers) has a dramatic miscarriage on her wedding night and is super rude to her brand-new husband and then feels empty again because her addict hippie mom was neglectful. Apparently, no one in this tv show has heard of therapy, even though they all have degrees and live in downtown Seattle and have lots of disposable income.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Madonna/whore complex, Kate apparently never has sex with anyone but Johnny, over three decades. In the 70s she has a crush on her closeted brother’s not-boyfriend. In the 80s she dates another guy in the office while Johnny is away in El Salvador, but they never actually have sex for some reason. In the 2000’s she has an “emotional affair” with a hot single dad whom she sends some flirtatious emails to (what scandal!) and then as divorce papers are being filed with Johnny she kisses the dad once or twice, and semi-kisses another hot co-worker. In the main 2000s plot line every time she makes out with someone (even Johnny) she has to run away and do Mom Stuff. Is it too much to ask for Moms Who Fuck? I don’t think that doing your ex-husband one time really counts.
Apparently sex, or even just being sexy, is not for Moms. And fulfillment and happiness is not for successful career chicks. You can love, or you can have sex but not both. Single women who live in condos have serious emotional problems and only do it doggy-style, and when you’re done you put on your fabulous robe and send the guy out of the house on your private elevator. You gotta be a virgin if you want to catch a man to have a family with because had you actually done it with your other co-worker you’d never be able to be wife material to your hot boss. And if you are a mom you’ll never have sex again. Watch out, your hot friend will probably steal your man, be it Johnny or your hot dad crush. And this show is supposed to be feminist!
Can we not have some nuance here? It is hard to watch David Duchovny’s Californication in the post me-too era, but could we not have a feminist show that’s sexy and complicated and shows real emotion with people who also have sex? Duchoney’s Hank Moody and his sometime partner Karen (Natascha McElhone) are sexy even though they are parents, and they even fuck other people. In an interview McElhone called Californication “A male fantasy”, and it is, but it at least has something sexy and complex for the female gaze. Grace and Frankie proves it can be done — on Netflix eve — and even though they are in their 70s they have complex romances and sex lives while also being mothers, grandmothers and dealing with their gay ex-husbands.
Firefly Lane deals with date rape and rapey-powerful-film-industry bros, which is great but its unbalanced if we aren’t seeing any real female empowerment. You can be Madonna or whore but there’s no mixing it. Also why is no one bi? There’s a closeted gay character, and his teen boyfriend flirts with Kate and ends up marrying a woman for real, but no one can say the word “bisexual”. Tully should clearly be bi as well. Why are there no threesomes? Does this show not take place in the 70s, 80s and 90s and our two best friends never so much as kiss? Kate’s gay brother spends the several decades married to a woman because he is afraid of HIV. This is a conservative show that tries to pass itself off as liberated.
The show tries to be political but fails. Johnny goes to El Salvador where he sees a priest gunned down in front of him, but he gets rejected by all his editors and can’t get the story out. Apparently alternative media and solidarity groups don’t exist and he finds no way to tell the story; so he ends up being an embedded reporter with the military in the Gulf War of 1990-91 as if that’s somehow the same thing as hanging out with community organizers and leftist Salvadoran priests. Kate doesn’t even get to write her own article about “nesting” post-divorce co-parenting arrangements, and her article about dating as a divorced mother never gets published. Tully tries to address miscarriage and serious feminist issues on her talk show but fails.
You know what? I take it all back. Maybe the inability of pseudo-political media types to actually get anything serious published is the most realistic part of the show. Maybe some of the writers and producers and actors wanted to make Firefly Lane a complex examination of women’s friendship, sex, feminism and motherhood, but they were forced to produced this reactionary grab bag of misogynist cliches instead.
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.