Pop culture has long taught us that the worst possible thing that could happen to a woman is for her to end up alone – with cat ladies serving as warnings of the fate awaiting anyone left without someone to love her. By those standards, the premise of Grace and Frankie should have been the beginning of the end for its main characters: two septuagenarian frenemies discovering that their husbands had been having an affair for two decades. How easy it would have been for them to check out of their final chapters and simply run down the clock.
And yet this week, when Netflix’s longest-running original series drops its final episodes, it will also be the end of one of television’s greatest female friendships, brought to life by the irresistible chemistry of Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, real-life friends for 40 years.
