Aging, by itself, is a major change for people to adapt to in the later years of their lives, but what if one adds a divorce and finding out a key part of one’s life was basically all a charade. All these curveballs occur within a short time span of each other to the characters Grace and Frankie in the television show with the respective name. In the pilot television episode of the show, Grace and Frankie, the title characters must come to terms with the monumental news that not only do their respective husbands of 40 years want a divorce, the husbands want to get married to each other as they are in love with one another (Kauffman & Morris, 2015). Grace and Frankie, both in their seventies, grapple with the fact that the people they each have lived with and known for over half of their lives, are not the husbands Grace and Frankie believed them to be. Each woman copes in her own way to deal with the life-changing news about their husbands being gay and wanting a divorce. Frankie engages in drug substance use to find her new self, while Grace decides to try and hide away from the potential judgement from friends and neighbors by moving into the beach house co-owned by each couple. Overall, in the pilot episode of Grace and Frankie, the issues of divorce later in life, and gay partners coming out to family members are the key issues that take on a new meaning when people are in the later years of their life. One of the major changes that face both Grace and Frankie in the
