Girlfriends

This show started out good, and has gotten better and more assured throughout its run. Comparisons to "Sex and the City" and "Living Single" are fair, but only tell half of the story. As the show has developed, it has made such comparisons necessarily reductive: "Girlfriends" combines the best of both of those predecessors and throws in other elements to make a series which is both thought-provoking and one of the most raucously funny projects on TV today. Its location in UPN's Monday night "ghetto" is both a blessing and a curse: it gives "Girlfriends" a firm foundation within the target African-American audience, but it limits the show's ability to reach out to other audiences. I wish more people would seek it out; I'm pretty sure they'd love it as much as I do. During the third season, scripts have continued to tackle serious subjects with greater and greater success, while keeping the laugh count as high as ever (much higher than 90% of comedies on the air). The performances remain strong as the characters are taken through much more than usual sitcom paces. This show actually has the nerve to tell real stories, rather than growing stale out of fear of change. The producers have managed to keep the viewers laughing while becoming the leading fictional forum for racial issues and simultaneously earning its feminist bona fides (including an A+ rating from NOW).

The sitcom is a dying art. There's hardly any narrative TV left in general, and there are way fewer quality comedies than dramas. Girlfriends deserves way more attention, and though it is good for their ratings to be herded in with the rest of the "urban" comedies on UPN, I think it's heads and shoulders above any of the other shows. In fact, and no offense to fans of other UPN fare, I think this show is surrounded on all sides by just plain awful programs - the writing on the other shows is a notch above Saved by the Bell. (maybe that's a *little* too harsh).

The dialogue and the acting on Girlfriends is sophisticated and natural at the same time. The five leads have great chemistry and timing. I think it's taken a few seasons (and the smart decision to get rid of Joan's lame voice-over fantasy bites) for the comedy to become less broad and for the characters to develop past "types", but that's always the case when you have to set up a sitcom world. Every sitcom I can think of starts out with stereotypes and builds character depth as the seasons goes on.

Even in my position as a white chick (maybe a little more attuned to African American culture than the average), I think I can say that most shows about middle-class black people are terrified of seeming "too black", they've got Cosbyitus. Girlfriends seems to be more on the inside-track.

Maybe the show isn't representative of every woman in the black community, or the black everywoman, but who says it has to? Sex in the City sure as hell wasn't representative of 30something white women in New York. We want a little escapism, and Girlfriends offers all the pretty people and the pretty houses and the pretty clothing (the BEST-DRESSED show on TV by far! Who is their stylist??), *and* the polished writing and performances.

Oh, yeah, and it's ***hella funny***.

I love this series way back in 2000 still wholesome 22 years later. I kinda find Joan controlling, bossy, judgmental, thinking she's better than everyone else, lowkey narcissistic. Everything had to happen at her house or she wouldn't attend or it wasn't as good as it would have been if it was to be at her house. Then turns around and make everyone feel like she's always there for them. She's that bourgeois friend with the money, status, right family and money connections, who's always there to help her friends out but later uses it to gaslight them about how good she always is to them. She's a victim of her very restricted/protected privileged conservative upbringing.

Toni is the insecure girl who tries too hard to breakfree from poverty and the smalltown countrygal image, she ends up materialistic, self-centered, selfabsorbed narcissistic, but in reality all that is just a front for her fears, insecurities&low selfworth. I feel the others ganged up on her most of the time, they're just plain mean to her, made her the ass of jokes, I can see why "she" left the show. The show lost it's pepper after Toni keft, Jill-Marie nailed that role, it was never the same after she exited.

Lynn was the typical Aquarius. She's over-educated, whimsical, philosophical, but lots of talent&potential. She's hopelessly incapacitated by her identity crisis. She's the open-minded, sexually liberated and artistic woman, very smart, intelligent, acting lazy, spoilt brat, hoochymomma airhead as a way to fit in, deal with her identity crisis and fit in. She seems to have fear of rejection, using sympathy to sponge on her friends. She is the one whose easy to talk to and you can turn to because she's not judgmental.

Maya, the typical ghetto fabulous teen mom, who married too young, yet grounded with some solid values. She's ambitious and determined to rise above her past mistakes and follow her dreams, nonetheless. She's the levelheaded, wiser one among the four.

I love Girlfriends!! I hope it's around for a long time. It's good to see black women in good roles and not playing the "Shaniqua w/ blue hair & long fake nails" type. A good show for black women. A little like Sex & The City, but with a little more sassiness.

This is the show that taught me to look at TV shows for what they are: writers' impressions of what life "somewhere" for "someone" is like. No, this show doesn't portray all of my personal experiences as a Black woman, but it also doesn't portray what I think my life is going to be like as an attorney, either.

If it's funny, then it's funny - and 'Girlfriends' is funny. Just because the stars are Black doesn't mean that it is necessarily there to represent the "Black" experience. Nor does it have to. No more double standard for me. I recommend this show to everyone - not just Black women.