In the first episode of “The Bold Type’s” second season, a fashion assistant decides to break up with her boyfriend, an older man who works for the board overseeing the Cosmopolitan-esque fashion magazine where she works. “It’s a gamble, but I am putting my money down on my career,” she tells him. “And believing that love will fall into place.”
There’s something refreshing about seeing the women on this earnest Freeform series, about the rising staffers at fictional Scarlet magazine, place more emphasis on their careers than their romantic relationships. It’s similar to what is happening on “Younger,” a TV Land dramedy that stars Sutton Foster as Liza, a 40-something woman posing as a 20-something book editor.
Although “The Bold Type” and “Younger” have comedic elements, they draw more inspiration from Carrie Bradshaw than, say, Liz Lemon or Leslie Knope. Both series are successors to “Sex and the City’s” unique brand of single-city-girl life, but they stand out because dating partners consistently take a back seat to the 9-to-5 grind for the main characters. Yes, “SATC” was built around the (successful) career of its heroine, but work always seemed a little too optional in Carrie’s Manolo Blahnik-filled universe. It is central in “The Bold Type” and “Younger” in a way that it isn’t in most romantic TV dramas — particularly those about young women.
On “Younger,” Liza is a divorc?e who discovers the long gap in her work history, years devoted to raising her now college-age daughter, means no one in book publishing is willing to hire her. When she shaves 14 years off her r?sum?, she gets a job as an assistant at a prominent Manhattan publishing house. While Liza finds love with Josh, a tattoo artist closer to her daughter’s age than hers, and an even trickier connection with her unsuspecting boss, Charles, her work always comes first. By Season 5, Liza and her colleague turned friend, Kelsey (Hilary Duff) have launched their own imprint, dubbed Millennial.