Just to set the record straight, Grace, played by Jane Fonda, is supposed to be 72 and is also rich, not to mention beautiful and whip smart. Whereas Nick, played by Gallagher, is something of a ditz and is in his mid-60s.
I didn't remember what their ages were supposed to be on the show; 80 and 62 are the ages of the respective actors. (Nick doesn't come across to me as especially ditzy, though.) But of course Jane Fonda is beautiful and smart. She looks better than most 40-year-olds.
I don't think it's that much of a stretch. I have dated a man 11 years older than me in my mid-60s, a man my same age, and was married to a man 3 years younger than me for 30 years. And I hang around with a man 22 years younger than myself. I've discovered that age is arbitrary.
I think it's a huge stretch, not because relationships between people of different ages are impossible or doomed, but because it's just not how things generally go in TV shows or movies (except in movies targeting women, especially targeting older women, in a wish-fulfillment kind of way). Real life is slightly less imbalanced, but not much. In most straight couples -- certainly not all; I've known plenty of exceptions, including my own -- the man is older.
Your stories all make sense. My husband was five years younger than me. And it's not at all unusual for a woman to date or marry a man 11 years older or more. And I hang around with 20-somethings sometimes, too (although friends and romantic partners are two different things and I most likely wouldn't date them).
But let's take movies. I can think of maybe three or four movies in all of film history involving romantic couples in which the woman was substantially older than the man. And in those cases, the fact that the woman was older is a major issue in the relationship (as it is in Grace's and Nick's). (Compare theirs to Frankie's relationship with an African-American man, where race, AFAIK, is never mentioned.)
The most prominent example is probably
The Graduate. The fact that Mrs. Robinson was much older than Benjamin was the whole point -- along with the adultery, of course -- and the reason their relationship seemed doomed and shallow and icky. (Also because the woman came on to the man, in a very bold way, which tends to be a taboo as well, and even more so back then.) It was clear Ben only got involved with her because he was feeling cynical and aimless following college. Elaine, on the other hand, was age-appropriate and sufficiently docile. So Ben's relationship with her seemed "nice" and "natural," though threatened by her evil old mother.
As I'm sure you know, the ages of all three actors were pretty close. Ann Bancroft was 35. Dustin Hoffman was 29. Katharine Ross was 27. So the age difference between Bancroft and Hoffman -- the depraved mismatched lovers -- was only one year more than me and my ex-husband. And Ann would have been eight when her daughter was born.
Sally Field, also famously, has played both the peer and mother of Tom Hanks. Most recently in a movie called
Hello, My Name is Doris she plays an older woman with a crush on a younger colleague. It sounded terrible and I haven't seen it -- I first heard of it in
an AARP article warning people not to see it. But I just watched the trailer and it's full of cringe-worthy ageism. Is Doris delightfully quirky, or a clueless joke? Though looks like it has an "empowering" upbeat ending. So I suppose it's a matter of taste and you'd probably have to see the whole movie to decide how you felt. But I didn't get a great feeling from the trailer.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3766394/Harrison Ford, Al Pacino and Martin Sheen are all several years older than Sally Field. Never say never, but I can't imagine any of them starring in a movie in which they're made into a joke for lusting after a much younger coworker. It would just be a normal movie romance! Harrison Ford was paired with Anne Heche, 26 years his junior, and the age gap wasn't supposed to be a big deal. The closest to Doris I can think of is when Robert De Niro played the intern in Anne Hathaway's company. And his character was much more dignified -- kind of old-school, but in a good way, teaching those whippersnapper millennials a thing or two, not seeming clumsy and insecure and clueless.
Then there's Maggie Gyllenhaal, at 37, getting turned down as "too old" for a role opposite a 55-year-old man. A few years before that, it was portrayed as pretty normal in
Crazy Heart when she got involved with Jeff Bridges, 28 years her senior.
Here's a great illustration of how it works. In "Leading Men Age, But Their Love Interests Don’t," Vulture graphed the ages of a bunch of actors and actresses cast as romantic pairs over the years. All of them show some age gap, often substantial, and only occasionally is the woman older than the man.
More tellingly, the gap between ages grows as the actors get get older. The actor whose romantic partners' ages are closest to his is Tom Hanks. But even in his there's a gap, and Vulture congratulates it for being within a mere 10 years!
If I were John, I would carefully copy all the words and images, highlighting some in larger fonts and colors, for a beautiful presentation. But I'm lazy and it's easier for anyone interested to just click on the link.
http://www.vulture.com/2013/04/leading-men-age-but-their-love-interests-dont.htmlI could talk about age differences in real life, but I've typed enough for now!
