Created by Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman and Home Improvement veteran Howard J. Morris, the most unlikely pairing to ever showrun a Marvel Television project, Grace and Frankie reveals that Matt hung up his mask and his Samurai Flamenco supersuit, retired from the dangerous world of Hell's Kitchen crimefighting, regained his sight with the help of Stark Industries technology and moved to California--under a new name--to build a successful law practice with his business partner and secret gay lover Foggy, who also changed his name as a show of solidarity to Matt, uh, I mean, Sol. I must not be alone in thinking, "We haven't met Jessica, Luke and Danny Rand yet, and we haven't gotten to the formation of the Defenders yet, so what the fuck does this wacky Jane Fonda/Lily Tomlin sitcom shit have to do with the Defenders?"
Daredevil viewers like myself expected A.K.A. Jessica Jones, a show that will be built around the heroine of the Brian Michael Bendis comics Alias and The Pulse, to be the next chapter in the newly formed Defenders shared universe, so Marvel Television's surprise move of suddenly flash-forwarding 40 years later into Matt and Foggy's future as a gay couple is completely batshit. But I admire Marvel Television's ballsiness in taking a breather from the grittiness and crimefighting of the Defenders universe and Trapper John, M.D.-ing the Daredevil franchise for a few light-hearted laughs with Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Sam Waterston and Martin Sheen before getting back to the grittiness and crimefighting. Apparently it doesn't even matter to Marvel Television that Waterston looks nothing like Charlie Cox, and Sheen is way too short to be playing a much older Elden Henson. But then again, bald Pernell Roberts, the star of Trapper John, M.D. (a sequel to the 1970 Robert Altman version of M*A*S*H instead of the M*A*S*H TV show), looked not at all like the original Trapper John, the not-so-bald Elliott Gould, and nobody gave a shit for seven seasons.
I also appreciate Marvel Studios' strategy of attempting to attract a new audience outside of teens and 44-year-old men who still act and dress like teens: older women and gay men, a.k.a. everyone who loves Golden Girls reruns. I'm neither an older woman nor a gay man, but they need some love from Marvel's movie and TV division too! It's great to see Marvel giving them some love now. You would think Marvel would try to pull in those two groups with an adaptation of Millie the Model, but a sitcom about a geriatric and openly gay Matt and Foggy and the effects their newly out relationship and their plans for marriage have on their longtime wives and their grown-up children is a stronger and more sustainable concept, both comedically and dramatically, especially when it's got prestige actors like Fonda, Tomlin, Waterston, Sheen and Joe Morton. All the female or gay Daredevil viewers who were shipping Matt and Foggy, particularly A.V. Club TV show and comic book reviewer Oliver Sava, will definitely get a kick out of the light and quippy Grace and Frankie as they binge-watch the entire series while staying attached to the couch and refusing to shower or change their underwear for one day. Sava said in his review of the Daredevil episode "Nelson v. Murdock" that "When the flashbacks jump to Foggy and Matt taking a drunken walk through campus, there's an undeniable attraction between the two of them, and it almost feels like the scene is building up to a kiss as they sit on some stairs and talk about their future together."
Sava added, "The flashbacks establish an intense intimacy between the characters, and the fight between Foggy and Matt in the present could easily take place between two lovers. Especially with Foggy asking questions like, 'Was anything ever real between us?'"
Well, now shit is real between those two. Hooray for Matt and Foggy, uh, I mean, Sol and Robert! I always knew those crazy kids would get together!
