issue fifty-nine

we are the daughters of the Scarlet union you couldn’t burn: remembering The Bold Type

There is a wound in my heart that has yet to close. No amount of time or healing could make it so, and it’s because the show is cancelled and it's not coming back. Y’all, I miss The Bold Type.

we used to be a real nation! indivisible!

This isn’t entirely due to the Meghann Fahy Renaissance currently occurring or Aisha Dee’s incredible performance in Sissy or Katie Stevens’ baby shower with llamas, or being obsessed with Melora Hardin’s fabulous DWTS run, but not entirely not due to those factors. While looking for something nostalgic to revisit over Thanksgiving, I began to work my way through Season One for the first time in a while. School happened, life happened, and I came back to Season Two (and the following rest of the show) to console me in my stress and ailment during finals week. That’s all done now, and so is my rewatch, so let’s unpack.

I’ve loved this show since high school, despite its many bumps and bruises. Not quite the grown woman’s Girls but certainly the poor man’s Sex and the City, this Freeform dramedy filled a sugary sweet niche in network television for the formative years of my development thus far, and serves as a delicious time capsule of what the most idealized version of magazine publishing could have resembled in 2019. (Mostly) balanced to surround three leads — Jane Sloan (writer), Kat Edison (social media manager) and Sutton Brady (assistant turned stylist) — this series takes viewers through the minutiae and big moments that defined this microcosm of millennial life in New York: life at a women’s magazine, of course. 

One of the main criticisms The Bold Type (I just figured out this double entendre this week because of a timely tweet please forgive me) receives is that it presents unrealistic, rose-colored glimpses of life for women in their 20s. To that, I say OF COURSE IT DOES! Is the universe that (almost) elected Jane EIC of a multimillion dollar premiere publishing magazine at 28 (?) with 3 years of professional writing experience and like 3 weeks of editorial management under her belt supposed to be one of reason? You’re telling me a chance encounter in the fashion closet brought these three women to a bond this unbreakable? My theory is that this issue stems from the show’s refusal to treat its protagonists as real people as opposed to media fairies who kinda buzz around through the power of tequila and love, but oddly enough, this approach works for the general silliness of it all. We come to this place for magic, etc, and thus you have to suspend disbelief for a bit to let yourself absorb it. 

The thing that really made me stick out the rollercoaster of five seasons this show compiled by the end of its run was its mains; there isn’t a weak link in terms of performances (character design, now that’s a later conversation!) and the heart of each actress who brought her character to life ensured that I was eager to return to their world every week, even when it was corny and the wardrobe was bad and the plot was going nowhere. I stayed there. 

This leads me to the crux of my journey with the show, as well as that of many viewers in the core audience of the show. Up until Season Four, I have to admit that a lot of the core trio’s problems and progressions seemed…let’s say, inconsequential. There was a lot of back and forth, a lot of hemming and hawing over events and conversations that ended up being pretty insignificant. Of course, big breakups and moves still made waves to push the characters around a bit, but it was all just fun and games. Suddenly, the two part behemoth of Season Four struck us, unsuspecting and unprepared. 

Part A of Season Four has a lovely build, with enough change (Scarlet going digital) and enough familiarity (Pinstripe being a loser, Kat and Jane having a woke-off) to set up new plot points. The wardrobe takes things up a notch; I love Jane’s haircut and Sutton’s velvet blazer she has in like 4 gradient shades of teal. Kat is healing things with Adena, Jane is gaining control of her pitches and editorial sway in the workplace, and Sutton is striving for a promotion. By the halfway point of the season, it seems that the ladies are on an incline and taking strides forward in the name of positive growth. Their problems are those of real, mature women, and they handle them in stride and solidarity. Then, the horror ensues. 

I want to preface this breakdown with the fact that I have always hated Richard Hunter. Not only in a Andy’s-boyfriend-from-The-Devil-Wears-Prade way, but genuinely in a why-is-this-general-counsel-creep-preying-on-an-assistant-15-years-his-junior-way. From the first episode we see him interact with Sutton, we watch Richard emphasize how their relationship will hurt HIS career or HIS reputation, and has a complete and utter lack of understanding of his relative power to her or the people around him. He complains and whines, and even though he may be nice to look at, viewers never get a sense of any real romance from his relationship with Sutton; forbidden office hookups and a million dollar apartment do not a healthy relationship make. Somehow, through Suttard’s ups and downs, they arrive at an engagement and a (almost) shotgun wedding at a bar sponsored by Sutton’s latest paid partnership with Hogsmith Beer. 

When Sutton receives word that she’s received the Stylist promotion at Scarlet that she’s been working towards for her entire career, she’s been planning to move across the country with Richard and influence full time. Confronting him about his decision moments before they ascend the altar, Sutton pleads her (very reasonable) case for staying and Richard throws a hissy fit and storms out. Once he returns, consoled by a pep talk from his boss EIC Jacqueline Carlyle (Hardin), he promises to work with Sutton through this obstacle and reaffirms his love for him. The crowd cheers, Sutton parties through the worst wedding look I’ve seen in a good minute, and the viewers watching at home have a ball.

The thing about the peak of a rollercoaster is that it sets the rider up for a hurtling freefall, which is exactly what 4B felt like. Suddenly, Kat loses her job at Scarlet and almost goes to jail in the process, Sutton and Richard do long distance marriage for months and Jane has to heal from her double mastectomy after breaking up with her loser boyfriend and subletting to her male coworker. It gets worse! Kat decides vigilante justice isn’t for her and becomes a bartender at an exclusive women’s club where she meets, debates and beds a conservative ginger pundit who happens to be the daughter of…the CEO who fired her (all of this occurs after her brief tryst with Tom Austen as Cody, my personal favorite love interest for reasons completely totally unrelated the The Royals, of course). Jane starts pursuing a romantic relationship with her direct subordinate employee (who she literally hired within the month prior) and has a general breakdown in self confidence. And Sutton, my poor final girl, suffers a miscarriage after a surprise pregnancy, decides she doesn’t want kids and gets consequently gaslit, left and divorced. 

Though S4E14/15 are probably some of the best performances Fahy gives on the show, nothing compares to watching the scenes of Richard throwing a tantrum to reframe the entire narrative of his relationship with Sutton to justify disrespecting her decisions about her own body and life. It’s just such lame behavior that you have to scream at your screen and urge Sutton to FREE YOURSELF, GIRL! WE’RE GONNA GET YOU OUT OF THERE! After this tumultuous breakup, Sutton goes to her hometown and falls into the self-fulfilling prophecy of her hatred of her mother by sleeping with a married man and becoming an alcoholic. 

The final scenes in the finale of Season Four have such a distinctly miserable tone to them that they’re practically painful to watch; this is a result of the show pulling back the curtain and tossing the rosé-colored glasses. Through grief, loss, and a rock-bottom attempt to endear audiences to the cyclical nature of adulting-as-a-woman-today, The Bold Type picks off each character in a narrative sentencing that results in irreparable damage and seems to be inspired by unrecognizable motives. In an attempt to finally take its heroines seriously, it hurls as much pain as it can at them and hopes they can keep their heads above water long enough to bounce back. 

Spoiler alert: they never couldn’t quite bounce back. The fifth and final season, delayed by COVID, shifting showrunners and budgeting issues appeared on viewer’s screens as a sloppy, rushed ramshackle compilation of the show’s former sheen. An entire episode is focused on Jane drinking too much shroom tea and being a bad boss as a result. Though every ending was wrapped up (somewhat) nicely and the season featured plenty of feel good moments, one couldn’t help but feel dissatisfied with the band-aids placed over the deeply revealing wounds of the prior season. Even the gooey final scene of the series finale, which features all three mains huddled in the fashion closet at the office for one last pep talk, rings hollow and over-soundtracked. One couldn’t possibly believe that that was it, and yet it is. In the middle of quarantine, this conclusion came and went and sunk the public memory of a series lost to the tides of post-millennial cringe.

In the changing world of television and changing genre of female friendship narratives, I think The Bold Type fizzled out because it tried to walk the line too often. Besides this show being generally unserious and entirely incorrect on a lot of things, it tried to straddle a boundary of changing the world through diverse representation, and the fantasy world its characters operated in. How could a show that insisted on making Kat hate herself for her blackness for an entire season stage a productive or even funny conversation with Jane about her white privilege? If the cast needs to publicly call for creatives who look and live like them to take control of their stories and do their hair and makeup, how are we supposed to find any gratification from the Diversity Win moments the show relishes in? The Buzzfeed level feminism becomes almost unwatchable by the conclusion of the show, which demeans the few moments of clarity and interesting discourse it inspired over the years. The series became tired of itself in the rat race of media pretending to have compassion for justice, and audiences got tired even quicker. 

Had chances been a little different and the right people been in the right rooms, this show could have been cemented as something legendary. Nevertheless, these three girl bosses persevered. I remember them not as battered, confused victims, but passionate and fiercely committed to each other against all odds. I can still see a bit of myself in each of them, and for the parts that I can’t, I can always skip an episode.