Tomlin and Fonda together again for Netflix comedy 'Grace and Frankie'

Television has a grand tradition of putting fully formed female friendships onscreen, from Lucy and Ethel to Mary and Rhoda to Broad City's Abbi and Ilana. These relationships can be deep, complex, and - in the case of Broad City - pretty stoned.

These relationships are the great love stories of television. Monica of Friends married Chandler - but only with Rachel and Phoebe would she sit despondently in a wedding dress swigging beers.

Netflix's Grace and Frankie gets that right, sometimes - and when it does, it's a lovely, if traditional, comedy about two women learning how to fall (platonically) in love with each other, even if they don't particularly like each other.

But that's only about half the time.

Created by Marple Newtown High School grad and Friends creator Marta Kauffman, with Howard J. Morris , Grace and Frankie reunites Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda from their 9 to 5 days (yes, their movie costar Dolly Parton shows up in a later episode).

Grace (Fonda) and Frankie (Tomlin) have utter disdain for each other - Grace is an uptight former beauty mogul and Frankie is a hippie-dippie artist - but the two are thrust together in a gorgeous Palm Beach, Fla., home by circumstance. Their respective husbands - Robert (Martin Sheen) and Sol (Sam Waterston) - are law partners, and, as it turns out, lovers who, after a 20-year affair, tell their wives they want divorces so they can get married.

"We can do that now," Sol says.

"I know, I hosted that fund-raiser," Frankie acidly replies.

Its edgy premise belies the feeling of a network episode-driven comedy.

The first episode brings together the two women in sublime comedic glory. There are moments of heartbreaking vulnerability. After learning of her husband's affair, Fonda as Grace pulls off her fake lashes and removes her temporary hair extensions and facelift tape to reveal a look of profound sadness. Tomlin, similarly, has not worked chops this dramatic since Nashville. (Then again, that sadness is offset by a late-episode peyote trip.)

The true goal of Grace and Frankie is laughs, gained sometimes at the expense of genuine feeling but, hey, funny is funny.

Fonda and Tomlin are both gifted at physical comedy, and both are very giving actors, one never overshadowing the other, each giving the other room to be funny, in turn.

When the two are torn apart to deal with the fallout of their respective lives, Grace and Frankie loses much of its magic. It's a broader show, feeling much more like a traditional sitcom than when the stars are paired together.

Grace and Frankie is not particularly revolutionary comedically, but it is rare to find two protagonists starring in a show that consistently references their "remaining years." In any other context, Grace and Frankie wouldn't be about Grace and Frankie. It would be about their kids - played here by Ethan Embry, Baron Vaughn, Brooklyn Decker, and June Diane Raphael - who have their own distracting issues to deal with.

The best love story of Grace and Frankie is that of Sol and Robert. Just as the age of the main characters is a rarity on TV, so is the portrayal of older gay men who are not desexualized: They hold hands, they kiss, they show genuine affection for each other, unlike, say, Modern Family's Cam and Mitchell, who never seem to like each other all that much and didn't get to kiss until the second season. (I should note that even Sol and Robert's storyline pales in comparison to the nuances of the reconstructed Pfefferman family in Amazon's Transparent.)

While Grace and Frankie is in no way perfect, it is still a pleasure watching Tomlin and Fonda vibe comedically together. If only there were more of it.

Grace and Frankie

All 13 episodes premiere on Netflix on Friday.EndText

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