Middle-Aged Women Are Getting Their Due on TV
The Waves: Gender, Relationships, Feminism
Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 903 Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2022
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate managing producer Asha Saluja and Slate senior editor Shannon Palus discuss women and aging on television. Through two seemingly unrelated shows—HBO Max’s And Just Like That and Showtime’s Yellowjackets—they dig into how these shows portray their protagonists for better and worse, and what makes the relationships between women compelling in both shows.
In Slate Plus: Was it feminist that Carrie was an anti-hero in the original series of Sex and the City?
Recommendations:
Asha: The album Urban Driftwoods by Yasmin Williams.
Shannon: Swabbing your throat for COVID and this Lululemon yoga mat.
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Susan Matthews, Shannon Palus, and June Thomas.
Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. |
| 0:06.7 | This is the waves. Welcome to the waves. |
| 0:14.0 | Slates Podcast about gender, feminism, and this week at least, women aging on television. |
| 0:20.0 | Every episode you get a new pair of women to talk about the thing we can't get |
| 0:24.6 | off our minds. And today you've got me, Shannon Paulus, Slate Senior Editor covering |
| 0:30.2 | Science and Health. And me, Asha Salugja, managing producer for slate podcasts. |
| 0:36.0 | We're here this week to talk about two TV series that are giving us juicy female |
| 0:40.2 | protagonists then and now. |
| 0:42.8 | Showtime's new Yellow Jackets, a thriller |
| 0:45.8 | that timeline hops between a group of teen girls |
| 0:48.5 | experiencing a major trauma and the fallout |
| 0:51.2 | they face in their 40s, and HBO's. and the |
| 0:53.9 | HBO's Sex in the City reboot and just like that which is causing all kinds of |
| 0:59.3 | of conversation as it revisits the life of Carrie and her friends in their 50s. |
| 1:04.4 | Shannon, why did you want to talk about this? |
| 1:07.0 | I can't stop thinking about these shows. |
| 1:09.0 | Both of these shows have been getting me through quarantine in the winter lately. |
| 1:13.2 | They're both being released the old-fashioned way |
| 1:15.5 | on a weekly basis, which means that I have this appointment viewing |
| 1:20.4 | again in my schedule, which is really nice. |
| 1:22.8 | And they both feature middle-aged women |
| 1:26.0 | with the shadow of their younger selves hanging over them |
... |
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