Issue #3: The romance and power of female friendships
Hi,
Welcome back to Continue Watching! We’re aware that when this email lands in your inbox, at 10am on a freaking Tuesday, you might not have the patience for it. Has your phone been buzzing all morning? Are you getting late for your Zoom call? Are you having the first coffee of the day? The grind is relentless. But we think that this issue will add a little bit of sparkle to what is arguably the dullest day of the week (at least Monday has a diabolical quality to it).
What you have here is an issue dedicated entirely to one of the most nourishing parts of our lives—female friendships. From Meredith and Cristina in Grey’s Anatomy to Masaba and Gia in Masaba Masaba, when shit goes down on TV, women emerge as each other’s true ride or die. We have both been fortunate enough to have such women in our lives, who lift us up in moments of despair and hold our hands through scary adventures. We have also found so much joy in each other over the years, somehow making the transition from colleagues to friends without even realising it, that it’s now difficult to think of a time when we weren’t constantly blowing each other’s phones up. What would our lives be without our girlfriends? We never want to find out. But we do go on and on about it in this issue. It’s a little ode to all the women who have hugged us in bathrooms, proofread our texts, and taken our calls at 3am to tell us, unequivocally, that they love us, that they’re there for us, that they understand. What more can you ask for?
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Our recommendation this week is also for a hilarious and astute show where the central love story is between two best friends. We have also been really excited about the trailer of Emily In Paris, which premieres on October 2 and is most certainly going to make it to one of our issues. It’s created by Darren Star, who also made Sex and the City and Younger (two shows one of us is obsessed with), so it HAS to be good.
As introduced in the previous issue, here’s our favourite section!
CURRENTLY WATCHING
Kashika
It’s Okay to Not Be Okay: Part-fairytale, part-mystery, and part-romcom, this Korean drama is about the undeniable connection between an asocial children’s author and a caregiver working in a psychiatric hospital. Any time they share a scene and look at each other, my screen catches on fire. The show is about grief, repressed trauma, and chosen families, and I am obsessed with the female lead. Streaming on Netflix.
Shaadi Mubarak: A Hindi daily soap about an older couple falling in love while running a business together. I really like the female lead, Rajshree Thakur, and she has a budding friendship with her daughter’s mother-in-law, played by the lovely Rajeshwari Sachdev, that I’m excited about, but so far it’s been full of the usual daily soap tropes so I’m being cautiously excited about it. I haven’t been obsessed with a Hindi show in a while and I miss it. Airing on Star Plus, streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.
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Shahana
I'll Be Gone in the Dark: A true-crime six-part documentary series following Michelle McNamara as she investigates the Golden State Killer. I read the book sometime last year, and I find people and their motivations—both great and mediocre—fascinating. I also harboured dreams of becoming an investigative reporter when I was younger and love watching anything about a writer or journalist doing their thing to find the truth, so if you’re into that, this is one to watch. Streaming on Disney + Hotstar.
Women Who Kill: A comedy-drama revolving around three different women from different decades connected by infidelity in their marriages, which sets off a chain of fatal events. The first few episodes will confuse you, because there’s no explanation for where the plots are really leading and where the titular killing comes in—but stay with it, because the payoff is so satisfying. There will be three dead bodies at the end, but they won’t all belong to those you expect, and the why and how are not only surprising but also quite satisfying. While it starts slow, Why Women Kill becomes something much bigger, a testament to the stories of women and the labour we perform, both at home and work, physically and emotionally. With a killer cast, including Ginnifer Goodwin, Lucy Liu, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, and Jack Davenport, this one is a perfect weekend binge. Streaming on Voot.
Have a great rest of the week, and may the weekend come even before someone at your work can say “let’s circle back to this tomorrow”! We also hope that you’re staying safe and sane, even though the news cycle is making that impossible.
Continue Watching (and reading!),
Kashika and Shahana
The Greatest Love Story Of Our Times: The Romance Of Female Friendships
By Shahana
In her final appearance on Grey’s Anatomy, Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) delivers one of my favourite lines to Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), “Don't let what he wants eclipse what you need. He is very dreamy. But he is not the sun. You are.”
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Sometimes, I lie awake at night (over)thinking about the way my life has panned out, whether I’m wasting my potential, if I even have any potential, and I remember this scene. I remember Cristina’s face and the absolute certainty and pride in her voice when she tells Meredith she was a “gifted surgeon with an extraordinary mind.” I stopped watching the show years ago, but I still remember the tug I felt somewhere deep inside when I watched that scene and what it meant a long, long time later.
Female friendships haven’t always had a good time in the media. Most media aimed at women amped up the concept of romantic partners being our soulmates, that our lives must revolve around this One True Love, and our friends are a side-piece to this main story. Somehow, in the last few years, television writers and showrunners have been very quietly upending this concept to tell us that the Great Love in our life doesn’t have to be a romantic interest—they’re probably already in our life and it’s the women we call our best friends.
Every time I think of my favourite female friendships on television, I am reminded of this essay I read years ago on The Rumpus, by Emily Rapp Black. “Here’s the truth: friendships between women are often the deepest and most profound love stories. But, they are often discussed as if they are ancillary, “bonus” relationships to the truly important ones. Women’s friendships outlast jobs, parents, husbands, boyfriends, lovers, and, sometimes, children.” Cristina and and Meredith are a perfect example of this sentiment, because theirs is a relationship Shonda Rhimes wrote with the love and care that many other writers have devoted primarily to romantic love stories. Grey’s Anatomy premiered 15 years ago, and in that time, television grew up and decided to focus squarely on the intense, messy, complicated, and beautiful relationships between women.
Critically acclaimed and an audience favourite, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag is a brilliant example of this trope. Waller-Bridge’s writing firmly establishes the amount of love Fleabag has for Boo—she tries so hard not to talk about Boo, but in her most unguarded moments, it’s her best friend she remembers and talks about. When she tells us about Boo, it almost seems like Boo’s love redeemed her; that when Boo was alive, she wasn’t as much of a fleabag as she is now, and she won’t bother to smoothen out the abrasive bits in her personality, because why bother when there’s no Boo to soften them?
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While Fleabag and Boo’s friendship is tinged with something undeniably tender, it can be difficult to find that same affection on Sarah Gertrude Shapiro and Marti Noxon’s UnReal, even though it’s there. UnReal revolves around a fictional dating reality TV show, where producer Rachel Goldberg (Shiri Appleby) works with and for executive producer Quinn King (Constance Zimmer) to produce entertaining television. The two women are in the business of constructing love stories, neither can afford to retain an air of naivete around themselves. This is not a friendship where a breakup results in a friend showing up with a pint of ice cream and a hug—here, the women tell each to pull themselves together and get together to do what they’re ridiculously good at—create addictive television. Rachel and Quinn aren’t good people; they know exactly how to manipulate everyone around them into feeling and acting exactly how they want them to. Neither woman will balk at doing something unethical or outright evil, but it’s never to each other. And by the end of the show, it becomes clear that in a world about creating and selling romance, these two women understand intimately what real love looks like and they’ve found it in each other.
On Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You, another universally celebrated show for its nuanced take on consent, Arabella (Michaela Coel) and Terry’s (Weruche Opia) friendship is at the heart of the show. A masterful depiction of Black female friendship where neither is reduced to a caricature of the Black Friend, Arabella and Terry are written with so much warmth that their refrain—“Your birth is my birth, your death is my death”—doesn’t feel gimmicky at any point. While a large part of the show focuses on the bond between the two, we also see them let each other down, both directly and indirectly leading to unpleasant experiences for them, more so for Arabella. In Episode 10, when Arabella reveals to Terry that she now knows about Terry’s deception, she simply looks her straight in the eye, and gently repeats, “Your birth is my birth, your death is my death.” They’ve said it to each other hundreds of times, but this time is different; this time carries with it the heaviness of the knowledge that Arabella knows and still loves Terry, that the love she holds for her best friend is greater than the pain her action has caused.
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While Arabella and Terry’s friendship comes with decades of history, there are plenty of others that don’t come with that kind of heavy baggage and yet, can feel just as meaningful. On The Bold Type, an extremely unrealistic show following the lives of Jane Sloan (Katie Stevens), Kat Edison (Aisha Dee), and Sutton Brady (Meghann Fahy) who work at Scarlet, the fictional version of Cosmopolitan US, it isn’t the romantic interests of the women or their jobs that will have you coming back for more. The characters veer through plots with stakes big and small—stalking an ex, needing someone to pull out a yoni egg stuck in her vagina, losing one’s job, cancer, a mastectomy, a miscarriage, infidelity—and it’s comforting to know that despite fights, disagreements, and all the things that come with a regular friendship, at the end of the day, these three women are each other’s safe places; that when they are together, they’re home.
Every time I watch one of these friendships on TV, I remember a woman I become friends with at some point in my life. I remember my friend from school who’ll read every newsletter I write without fail, who believes what I write is good and will announce it on her social media even when I don’t. I remember my friend from my colony who I go without weeks without speaking to but who’ll randomly send me a text when I need to see it without even knowing and subscribe to my newsletter without me asking. I think of my friend from work, who will help me read and edit everything I write, whether it’s 50 words or 5,000. Every time they do this, the tug I feel when I remember Cristina and Meredith eases a little bit. In their own ways, they’re all saying “You are the sun.” And to quote Emily Rapp Black again, “Support, salvation, transformation, life: this is what women give to one another when they are true friends, soul friends, what the Irish call anam cara... It is real. It is love.”
Shows mentioned:
Grey’s Anatomy - Disney + Hotstar ⭐⭐⭐
Fleabag - Amazon Prime ⭐⭐⭐⭐
UnReal - You’ll have to get creative to find it ⭐⭐⭐
I May Destroy You - Disney + Hotstar ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Bold Type - You’ll have to get creative to find it ⭐⭐⭐
Masaba Masaba And The Healing Power Of Female Friendships
By Kashika
The reigning message of Masaba Masaba, the new Netflix show loosely based on the lives of Neena and Masaba Gupta, is that it’s okay to be a hot mess. In fact, you should own being a hot mess! I have to say that given how most of us have been feeling in quarantine, this is a genius message for any piece of pop culture to embrace. When I first saw the trailer of this show, I remember thinking that I don’t understand the point of it. But at the end of this easily bingeable six-episode-long endeavour, I get it. The point was to watch a sweet show about how women lift each other up and do it with so much love and gentleness.
Masaba is a young, successful entrepreneur with a very happening life. Her mother is a celebrated actor with an even more happening life, but in this show, they seem like just another mother-daughter duo, sniping and arguing through life. It’s real without being affecting and endearing without being cringey. I would have been happy with just this, but then Masaba Masaba gave me something I’m a sucker for—a woman saying fuck you to everything, throwing herself into work, and being celebrated for it, surrounded by (only) the women who helped her reach there.
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Through the six episodes, life throws a lot of curveballs at Masaba—a public scandal, investors that just don’t get the creative process, an ex who keeps showing up at the worst possible time, divorce, and a disastrous fashion show. Every time, no matter how much she resists, Masaba ends up finding solace in either her mother or her best friend Gia, played by Rytasha Rathore who hits all the right notes. In one instance, when Masaba has had a falling out with Gia and can’t stand to be around her mother, she crashes at her assistant’s place, a young woman enamoured by Masaba, working with the single-minded goal of impressing her boss. Too many 20-somethings will relate to this feeling where you feel like the Chosen One because your boss lets you into their inner circle. In a lot of cases, if the boss is a man, this does not end well. In most cases, if the boss is a woman, you gain a mentor for life.
While traditional Hindi television completely sidelines the importance of female friendships, choosing instead to spend more time with the camera focused on the leads as they stare and stare into each other’s eyes and fall in love, Indian web series have done much better in this department. From The Trip to Four More Shots Please!, if the show is about a group of women, their interpersonal relationship and camaraderie are central to the plot. Of course, if the show is about anything more ‘serious’, like match fixing or drug cartels, we’re supposed to pretend like the women exist solely to further the stories of men. In the recently-released Aarya, Sushmita Sen’s titular character has two very close female friends, but the moment some shit goes down between their husbands (who are also besties and business partners), their dynamic is turned upside down and fully ignored, with only a throwaway conversation about being punished for their husband’s crimes. It seems disingenuous and sad, but perhaps a reality in a world where the stakes are always life and death.
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In Masaba Masaba, both Neena and Masaba are surrounded by women. Neena has a housekeeper of sorts who seems to have been with her forever, judging by the ease with which she orders Neena around. She also has a steady group of friends she goes out with, shares her struggles with and, true to every female friendship, sometimes hides her struggles from. Masaba has Gia, a kooky therapist who ultimately hits the nail on the head, and a battalion of young assistants and designers working for her (the men bringing only trouble or bad news). And, of course, Neena and Masaba have each other, always. In the saddest moments of the show, like when Masaba has to face the reality of her divorce, and the happiest, when Masaba holds a screening for Neena’s viral music video, these two are surrounded by supportive, encouraging women, with nary a man in sight.
This works because it is reflective of the urban millennial female experience in 2020. In moments of misery and triumph, many of us turn to the women in our lives. Quarantine has been about not being able to go out, but for women, whether they’re single or married, it’s been about not being able to see “my girls”. Seeing the girls is where the action happens—you talk, you listen, you plan, you commiserate. And every time you meet the girls, you come back a little calmer, a little happier, a little more healed, a little more yourself. Worst-case scenario, you come back feeling like you have people on your side. Neena Gupta hasn’t had the easiest life, nor has Masaba. But they’ve had people on their side, their girls on their side. And whether you’re a celebrity or not, whether you feel like you deserve it or not, you always need your girls on your side. That’s what makes Masaba Masaba fun. That’s what makes it a good quarantine watch.
The only thing lacking is that the show doesn’t give any character development or arc to Gia, who exists in a sort of vacuum as Masaba’s best friend, always there to hear her vent and offer a drink at her soon-to-be-launched bar. The only time you see any dimension to her is when she’s mad at Masaba for making everything about herself (a classic trope, always satisfying to watch when the lead crosses over from anguished to whiny) and lists down her own problems that would have been equally engaging to watch. Rytasha could have—and should have—been given more screen time and more depth, so let’s hope there’s a season two where this can happen.
Because if the cliffhanger is anything to go by, Masaba will need all the help from her girls that she can get.
Shows mentioned:
Masaba Masaba - Netflix ⭐⭐⭐
The Trip - YouTube ⭐⭐
Four More Shots Please! - Amazon Prime ⭐⭐
Aarya - Disney + Hotstar ⭐⭐⭐
Recommendations
We get so many requests for TV show recs from friends, so we’ll get to them here in every issue.
I'm looking for a show about female friendships, something me and my friends can watch and discuss on our weekly video calls. But it needs to be realistic. Female friendships aren’t just about going for mani-pedis together and talking about boy problems.
Oh, do we have the perfect show for you! You will love Insecure, a comedy-drama series created by Issa Rae and Larry Wilmore, loosely based on Rae’s very successful YouTube series Awkward Black Girl. It follows the adventures of Issa Dee (played by Rae) and her best friend Molly (Yvonne Orji) as they navigate work, love and life in LA. It’s super funny, very sexy and while there are a lot of hot men coming in and out of the show, the central love story is between Issa and Molly. Like actual best friends, they’re there for each other and can tell what the other is thinking with just one look, but they are also constantly frustrated with each other as they try to grow into the women they’re meant to be. It’s real, sometimes too real, but the payoff is always worth it. Season four, which premiered in quarantine, is Insecure’s strongest season so far, primarily because every episode is about the growing pains of the friendship between Issa and Molly. You’ll want to take sides, but like in life, there are none. The show has also been widely acclaimed for its depiction of the black millennial female experience, which was unfortunately a rarity on TV in 2016, when the show premiered.
Insecure is streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.
Shout-Outs
Kashika
I was anyway sold on the HBO Max show Selena + Chef after watching the trailer, but this review by Variety has piqued my curiosity further. As a self-proclaimed disaster in the kitchen, I fear and desire nothing more than watching people cook under tremendous pressure.
Shahana
Maybe it’s because I’m a shallow person and watching them makes me feel better about myself and my choices, but I love reality shows. If it’s a dating reality show, even better. And now that the greatest reality show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, is coming to an end, there have been some really incisive writing about why. This piece on Vox, by Constance Grady, talks about why the show is ending because the Kardashians just don’t need it anymore, and this one on Buzzfeed, by Scaachi Koul, talks about why it’s ending because Kourtney wants it to.
We hope you enjoyed reading this issue as much as we loved writing it. Please write to us if you have any feedback. We look forward to your emails, comments, tweets and DMs with requests, criticism, recommendations, and anything else that you want to tell us. You can also follow us on Twitter here and here. And if you haven’t already, do subscribe!