The other night I saw Ann-Margret on Michael Douglas‘s Golden-Globe-winning The Kominsky Method.
The Netflix show appeals to me because Michael Douglas still looks good at 74, and also, the show jokes about physical aging.
Well, make that men’s aging. Sandy Kominsky (Douglas) takes Viagra for sex, and Flomax for other prostate issues. He talks to his friend Norman (Alan Arkin) about these geezer problems, and he always has to pee.
But here’s what gets me: the women on the show. Kominsky is dating his student Lisa (Nancy Travis), probably twenty years younger—blond hair, beautiful, with a teenage son. Sandy’s hair may be thinning and grey, but no grey-haired woman for him!
Norman’s wife has died, and he is still grieving when her widowed best friend asks him out. Reluctantly, he goes. And get this. It’s Ann-Margret! We see her at a table in a restaurant with Norman. He’s not ugly, but he looks his age. Whereas Ann-Margret is drop-dead (sorry) gorgeous. She does not look her age, which is an unbelievable 77! Strawberry blond hair, peaches and cream complexion, oozing sex—and she wants to be with Norman?
(Maybe she, too, has urinary incontinence. Is she doing Kegels under the table?)
I like The Kominsky Method. Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin make a good comedy team. And Sandy’s daughter Mindy, played by Sarah Baker, is a great character. But where are the other normal women?
It just seems a bit sexist.
Late Bloomer in a Small Pond 