A Message of Intergenerational Love Avocado Toast: This Millenial Web Series is a new form of therapy

Avocado Toast:

THIS MILLENNIAL WEB SERIES IS A NEW FORM OF THERAPY

WORDS BY NAIMA KARP

Avocado Toast is the perfect name for the adventures of two millennial BFFs navigating the complicated process of adulting. Their parents and the rest of the world misunderstand them. To be fair, they don’t even really understand themselves.

This Canadian web series is a take on Workin’ Moms set in the years before the women become mothers, when they are advancing to other milestones in their lives. This is fitting, since one of the leading ladies, Perrie Voss, worked on the Workin’ Moms TV series herself.

The show follows the complicated trajectory of two childhood BFFs as they grow out of childhood and blossom into the fiery, independent goddesses that we get to know as Molly, played by Heidi Lynch, and Elle, played by Perrie Voss. The banter is hilariously relatable, but so are the more vulnerable moments of the show.

*Caution: Spoilers ahead for several Season 1 episodes, including the finale.

A rift occurs between the two friends when Molly comes back after living in London for a couple of years, only to surprise her bestie with a new morsel of knowledge—she’s into women. One woman, to be precise, as she tells Elle, “I’m just Molly” after being asked about her orientation. Even though Molly’s mom and Elle celebrate this news, it’s still a complicated journey of self-exploration for Molly. She works in a high school, where she eventually has a breakdown about her newfound bisexuality. While questioning her own identity, Molly takes it a step further by breaking up with her London lover, since she isn’t quite ready to take further steps in the relationship while coming out to the world.

Molly’s best friend Elle is going through something just as intense, though different. Her mom and dad are getting divorced, and Elle has just witnessed her mother’s infidelity with a much younger man. Sometimes it’s hard to pack all the themes they cover into their 10- to 15-minute mini-episodes. Still, the creators manage to do it in a refreshing yet heartfelt way that touches on nuances of nostalgia, going out of our comfort zones, and growing into the person we are beyond our childhood fantasies of ourselves. Another relatable theme in this web series is the intangible millennial concept of self-care that we’ve prioritized but still can’t really define. In episode 3, Molly tries to find herself through various outlets, like adult colouring books and yoga poses. But later in the episode, her friend tucks her into bed, offering a dose of steadfast comfort and familiarity. Are all those other things acts of self-care, or is this intimate moment an act of healing in itself?

In episode 5, Elle has an apparent vendetta against her mom’s new man. It makes sense since her dad is deeply hurt and hiding away in their cottage up north. But it’s also a poignant moment that shows how we never really grow up when it comes to relationships with our mothers. We’re transported back to that helpless and angsty tween who feels as though their world is crumbling. When Molly comes out to her mother, her mother surprises the audience with her own reveal—she’s been in a polyamorous relationship with her husband for years. Both Elle and Molly’s moms are woke for their respective generations (Elle tells her friend, “Your mom gave my mom her first vibrator in the ’70s,”) but still, Molly is shocked and slightly disturbed.

In a later episode, Elle and Molly attempt to tackle self-care once again by reconnecting with nature at Elle’s childhood cabin, where her father is staying. Unfortunately, the opposite ensues. The two get into a blowout fight, and it’s a raw one that many of us can relate to. Issues from over the years start to bubble up, eventually leading to Elle explaining her desire to sabotage her mother’s new relation-

ship. Molly declares, “I don’t think I want to be friends with someone who can’t handle it when I’m calling them out because they’re being a c*nt.” Elle feels like friends should support each other even when they’re making bad decisions, and Molly wholeheartedly disagrees. The fight is painful, but real. It’s the most broken-down moment of honesty we’ve seen between the two so far, and we can understand both sides. Do you support your friend through the car wreck you see coming? Or do you warn them of the ensuing disaster for the sake of their own well-being? Their relationships with their parents are very different, which is perhaps why the women see things from such opposing perspectives. Molly has always had a close and open relationship with her mom, while Elle’s mother–daughter relationship hasn’t always been smooth sailing, especially since the two of them run a company together. Elle often pokes her mother with ageist jabs, reminding her that a client passed up a collaboration to go for a “younger and more current ad agency.” After the epic cottage face-off, Elle returns to work, only to tell her mother that she plans to start her own company. Yet an important takeaway from this millennial show is the parental perspective. Moms deserve to be happy too! Still, they feel a need to “put a smile on forever for the sake of our adult children.” These moms may have reached certain milestones, but they deserve romance and happiness, even if it isn’t with a conventional or fairytale ending. Themes of self-judgment and internalized shame are dominant for all the maternal characters in this show, beyond Molly’s coming out. They portray how, regardless of whether the world judges us, we will always judge ourselves first, and they show that self-acceptance is the most important step. Elle’s mother is shamed by society (including her daughter) in an ageist way for wanting to be with a younger man, while Molly’s mom is judged for her casual sexcapades within her long and faithful marriage. These parts of their lives take them out of the roles of mothers for a moment, which is threatening not just for their kids, but for society. As co-creator Lynch put it to me, “I think mothers especially receive mountain loads of unfair pressure to be perfect and completely selfless 24/7.” The moms have a touching conversation in which Molly’s mom tells her friend, “We have to choose not to be shamed.” Afterward, the two drink and dance, and for a moment, they don’t seem very different at all from their 30-something daughters. No matter how old we get, we’re never really done learning new things about ourselves. Lynch explains, “I think the power of creating narrative content is that by exploring these moments where characters work through moments of internalized shame and then grow to a place of self-acceptance, maybe we (as audience) can learn to be kinder and gentler with ourselves when going through those same moments.” Some might complain that the conflicts at the end remain unresolved, but I believe that’s part of what makes Avocado Toast stand out from a crowd of neatly tied-up season finales. Elle finally lets her guard down with a new relationship and embarks on her new professional venture, whereas Molly runs off to En-

gland to win back her ex-lover’s heart. Fights between long-term friends aren’t always solved with quick apologies and emotional hugs. Sometimes, childhood friendships have an expiration date, require personal space to reflect, or start again entirely from scratch. This show dismantles all the stereotypes of millennials (aren’t you obsessed with the title?) but also those of their parents’ generation, which is a perspective we don’t see from too many shows. You can easily binge Avocado Toast in a couple of hours, and by the end, you’ll feel like the third leg of the tripod in Molly and Elle’s weird and wonderful friendship. In the next season, we can look forward to further explorations of topics like race and privilege, which Season 1 set the foundation for. As Heidi Lynch puts it, “The beauty of getting to develop a second season is now that we have characters established, we can dig deeper.”

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