THIS PAST DECEMBER, as my mailbox. overflowed with screener DVDs of prestige films and television shows designed to capture my vote for the Writers Guild of America Awards, I did what any respectable resident of cozy season would do: I pressed play on Partner Track, a playful romantic comedy series that the Netflix algorithm had been trying to convince me to watch for months.
The trailer promised beautiful clothes, pretty people, and humor as Ingrid Yun, played by Arden Cho, brings viewers into the world of a Korean American woman trying to make junior partner at a top-flight (and nearly all-white) law firm while balancing the flirtations of an earnest philanthropic millionaire and a cheeky senior associate who is also a rival. The show delivered on the trailer's promise. But it also delivered something else-a stealth climate change plotline.
In her attempt to make partner, Yun works hard to close a deal wherein a large oil company, the ironically named Sun Corp, seeks to buy a smaller, family-run firm called Min Enterprises. But in a twist that's absent from the book on which the series is based, Sun Corp ultimately has one goal in mind: gutting Min's clean energy division.
That surprised me.
Years of working as an environmental reporter have given me what 1 jokingly call climate goggles. When I go outside, I see traces of climate change everywhere, like delicate tracks through a forest. But it's still very rare to see climate plotlines on my television.
"We always said that the goal of this show is to be a fun, frothy rom-com," says Georgia Lee, Partner Track's showrunner. "But if we're able to sneak in some commentary about stuff like structural racism and sexism, then we would be happy to do that. And if we can give a message about clean energy and the environment, so much the better."
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