Netflix must know something nobody else does because they created a show about old people having sex.
"Grace and Frankie" is a dramedy about two women, who don't like each other, forced together when their husbands of 40 years, law partners and best friends, declare that they are gay and are leaving the wives to marry each other.
Each of the main characters is a tick away from assisted living — in real life. Jane Fonda, as the brittle, entitled Grace, is 77. (And she looks fabulous, by the way.) And Lily Tomlin, as the pot-smoking free-spirit artist Frankie, is 75.
Martin Sheen, the crisply dressed and uptight Robert, is 74. So is Sam Waterston, who plays the sentimental Sol. Only their adult children, each with plenty of their own emotional baggage, look like they could stay up past 9 p.m.
While Grace and Frankie struggle to remember how to date, Robert and Sol find that defining their relationship — to friends, family and to each other — is not as simple as embracing in public. "I'm never going to be done coming out, am I?" Robert asks forlornly.
The show is richer and more charming than "The Golden Girls" or "The Odd Couple," but it is an amalgamation of both. There are lots of hard-of-hearing jokes. Frankie is messy, Grace is repressed.
But because it is on Netflix, it has a bit of raunch. Grace wants the cosmetic company she left to her daughter to run to market Frankie's yam recipe for vaginal dryness. And there are lots of F-bombs.
The show portrays the shock, indignation and sorrow that the two women feel. Grace, who is so confident that she owns the room the minute she walks in, is almost paralyzed with doubt. Frankie, once in love with the world and everybody in it, is filled with bitterness.
Add the kids and it is like "Parenthood," only funny. One critic called it "honest humor."
Frankie doesn't know how to plug in a laptop. But just like all the women I know, she has a fully formed telephone relationship with the tech support guy. Grace, who ran a corporation, pretends to like golf and seafood to please the guy she is dating.
None of them can make a clean break with their ex. Sol embarrasses Robert at a funeral because he isn't the show horse Grace is in public. Frankie and Sol can't find anybody who likes to watch the national spelling bee as much as they do.
I have to assume boomers are the target audience, but I worry for the long-term sake of this series that many in my age cohort don't subscribe to Netflix and don't know what binge watching is. (Netflix dropped all 13 episodes on May 8.). Apparently for now, enough do: Netflix this week renewed the series for a second season.
The show has been criticized for being dated, but it has also been praised as just the kind of show we boomers remember watching back in the day. Like "All in the Family" without commercials.
Grace and Frankie are furious that their husbands get to take the high road because they are gay. If they had been cheating with women for 20 years, they would be seen as cads. And Frankie and Grace resent the fact that Sol and Robert have each other for this last chapter of life while they must face it alone.
Until, that is, they realize they have each other.
When Frankie and Sol sleep together (that's what we boomers call it) one last time before his wedding to Robert, Grace castigates him for confusing her.
"You go home," she barks. "I'll take care of Frankie."
Susan Reimer's column appears on Mondays and Thursdays. She can be reached at sreimer@baltsun.com and @Susan Reimer on Twitter.com.