Notes on The Bold Type finale — Rolling into future with reflections on ambition, growth, and self

Language: English I could not help put a brake on the binge when I saw the first four seasons of _The Bold Type_ 10 months ago on Netflix. Immediate viewing after the second wave of coronavirus helped me with a healthy dose of peer coping, especially because I was staying with my family during lockdown. The homelike bonding between the three protagonists Sutton [Meghann Fahy], Kat [Aisha Dee], and Jane [Katie Stevens] was like a cucumber cooler on a hot May Day. But it was also the work [and life] lessons of their boss Jacqueline Carlyle [Melora Hardin] that helped me make sense of the professional void I felt I was in, especially because I had lost my mentor to COVID-19 that month. The resonance was obvious because like the three women at Scarlet, I am also a young journalist trying to navigate the big bad world of the celebrity jungle, public perception, adulting, and the beast that is Mumbai [New York in their case]. I was satiated after watching the four long seasons of The Bold Type, only to realise that there’s a fifth one! — but it hasn’t released in India. It took almost a year for the fifth and final season to drop. So far, I have braved another COVID-19 wave, close friends’ weddings, and moving into a new house. The Bold Type has also found a new home on Amazon Prime Video. What has remained constant is the familiarity. Sutton, Kat, and Jane feel like the next-door roomies I catch up with when I visit Mumbai. Thanks to the four-season binge, the foundation is so solid that separation only feels like a natural progression now, as opposed to a rude imposition.

Which is why it was easy to bid goodbye to them. It was easy to stomach a very brief reunion [the last season has only six episodes] because you get they don’t have more to say. With friends, whom you’ve known for so long or at least known as closely, there isn’t much to say beyond a point. It’s also why I could see Kat — or Jane — no! Sutton — or was it Jacqueline? I could see one of them nodding to me as I used cues from their lives to apply in my world. But that’s what slice-of-life storytelling like The Bold Type plays with too. A character undergoing an emotional or professional dilemma puts that aside to focus on that next interview or that next meeting — hears the subject or a colleague talk about how they dealt with a similar situation in their lives — and then follow the same path as if it was directed to them. It’s a convenient plot device but also, undeniably relatable.

*Spoiler alert ahead* I have turned to The Bold Type — particularly the pep talks of Jacqueline — for answers. When she tells Jane she can’t let her rejoin Scarlet days after she left because she got another enticing offer — “You have to live this failure.” That was a lesson in loyalty and ownership. Or “You didn’t fail me. You just failed. Sometimes you’re just going to fail. That’s what it means to be a professional.” These mantras feel all the more reassuring in the final season when Jacqueline offers Jane to fill in for her as the editor-in-chief. But after interviewing Hip-Hop artiste Frankie Williams, and hear her say, “I quit because after a point, it wasn’t about my music anymore. It was all about what people expect of me,” Jane decides to not take up the offer. She realises she’s a writer first, and is too young to give up on that. Maybe she was taking Jacqueline on her word from a past season, “Looking back, that’s exactly why it was the right decision. Because it was the one that scared the shit out of me.” Jacqueline, aware that Jane learnt the ownership and loyalty lesson the hard way, reassures her, “Letting go isn’t easy. It requires courage and conviction.”

But letting go of The Bold Type and the space it filled in my life was fairly easy. A lot of the arcs come full circle — Kat and Adina get back together, so do Sutton and Richard. As for Jane, she goes back to being a writer. But for the sense of that ending, she says she will quit Scarlett to travel the world like her mom loved to but couldn’t for too long. That’s again a rather convenient progression given a journalist’s salary — whether in New York or Mumbai — but you feel like hugging and bidding goodbye to Jane like Kat and Sutton do. Because beyond a point, it’s not all about speaking your mind about how naïve your friend is, but smiling through that feeling, hoping and encouraging her it works out, and then preparing yourself how you’ll console her when it falls apart. *Spoiler alert ends*

The three friends, who started their journey in the first episode by holding hands and screaming against a Subway train, don’t feel the need to do that anymore. They still scream, but bang in the middle of a New York street.

The Bold Type is a smiling reminder that ambition and growth need not always be one-track. They could also entail coming back to where you were when you started out — because that’s where you want to be. And having gone through the drill of trying out all alternatives to ensure you were in the right place to begin with, you return to that space with more conviction, and more courage. For letting go doesn’t always imply letting go of your comfort zone, it also involves letting go of temptation. The Bold Type is streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.