The last ever episode of The Bold Type is finally upon us. The fashion closet is closing its doors, the dot com is breaking the internet (or something), and Jacqueline Carlyle is leaving Scarlet Magazine. And while I’m very happy for Jane and Kat and all of their ridiculous achievements, there’s only one person I need to see get her happy ending: Sutton Brady.
My girl Sutton has been through the ringer. She grew up poor, with an alcoholic mum. She risked it all to follow her fashion dreams, met the love of her life and lost him after realising she doesn’t want kids, and is now addressing her own problems with drinking head on. We need this happy ending, okay?
I’ve been trying to figure out what it is that makes Sutton (Meghann Fahy) everyone’s favourite (mine included). She deals with just as much shit as Tiny Jane (Katie Stevens) and Kat Edison (Aisha Dee). Jane had a double mastectomy and cheating boyfriend! Kat got fired – twice! But somehow Sutton deals with her shit in a way that is neither annoying nor preachy.
Look, Sutton’s not a saint. That time she slept with her now-married ex-boyfriend because she was going through it? A real low point IMO! But she deals with her shit in a way that isn’t annoying (Jane) or preachy (Kat) and therefore is my eternal fave.
In the penultimate episode, we see Sutton realise some deeply painful truths with her therapist: her divorce from Richard is hitting her hard because it reminds her of her dad’s abandonment, like she isn’t ‘enough’ for either of them. It was the most earned emotional point of the series and completely unexpected, and I hate to admit how much I related to it.
The episode ends with Sutton and Richard staring into each other’s eyes, after meeting to exchange divorce papers. Richard has started the adoption process, Sutton still doesn’t want kids – but is there still some kind of future there? Please, for the love of god, give it to us.
As for the other two – well, The Bold Type is giving them the escapist fantasy land conclusions this show is known for.
Jane – who started as a writer five years ago, left, got fired from her other job, came back, was handed a vertical, and then mishandled her first two staffers so badly one almost quit and the other left because he was horny – is about to become editor-in-chief. WHAT. THE. FUCK.
IN WHAT WORLD, JACQUELINE?
As for Kat, she’s found a cause to champion (very cool), but is being handed full creative control and an eye-watering budget to boot. What happens when one of those companies not hiring formally incarcerated people is a big Scarlet advertiser, hmmmm? (Side note: comparing #DontLookAway to #BlackLivesMatter but with podcasts? No.)
The Bold Type was always about some fantasy magazine land that didn’t exist. No one has a boss like Jacqueline (sorry to my current and former bosses), no one fails up as much as Jane, and no digital website on the planet can run on a few articles a week. As someone who’s lived and breathed digital media for almost a decade (yikes), it’s a lovely bubblebath of ‘what if’ to fall into, while knowing the reality is usually looming deadlines, non-stop accountability, and messy buns instead of chic blow dries. So, for those reasons, I’ll miss it, even if I roll my eyes at it every three seconds.
The series finale airs on Stan tonight, and if Sutton Brady doesn’t get her happy ending, we riot at dawn.
