Girls5eva

A cluttered, ropey but remarkably likeable slice of nostalgic millennial foolishness from Meredith Scardino - strongly reminiscent of Kimmy Schmidt but lacking its consistency somewhat. It's held together by a strong central cast, some incredibly sharp observations on contemporary (and early 00s) pop culture and a bottomless well of surreal asides and over the top scenarios. Good solid silly fun with some real heart mixed in there too. Thoroughly deserves its deeper continuation on Netflix, although sadly it still seems to have found it's audience really.

Tina Fey is a hit maker. You can see her signature on fast smart comedic writing. This is a cute show that is highly entertaining. One of those you have to watch a few times to catch every joke. Still wish Titus Andramadon would show up here.

Girls5Eva takes the trope of the nineties girls bands, most obviously Spice Girls, and turns it into a great where-are-they-now comedy. Several times I just laughed aloud in every epidode.

The theme is that the girls were, at best, a B level group with one hit record and an exploitative manager. The flashbacks show them at their supposedly prime. Roll on the years and none have been subsequent entertainment successes. Their previous careers forgotten until a popular rapper samples their hit and the group decide, some reluctantly, to make a comeback. However one of the group is dead and the decisions they made as ill informed youngsters now haunts their attempts.

Every character shadows the music industry stereotypes. I just laughed at the sight jokes and also the nostalgia.

I wasn't sure how much I would like this one because this had many of the same producers and writers from "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," and I couldn't make it past the first 10 minutes of the first episode of that one. But "Girls5eva," the reunion of a Spice Girls-type group from the 90's, is much better, and much funnier. The four main players - Sarah Bareilles, Busy Philipps, Paula Pell, and Renee Elise Goldsberry - all do a great job. Goldsberry is probably the MVP of this group, because she's very funny, and she can actually sing in real life. Bareilles is in real life the most successful singer, but she's mostly the "straight-man" here among this group, and leaves the funny lines to others. Philipps is very funny, buy my favorite is probably Paula Pell. Her casting in the show itself is funny, because she plays someone who has aged so poorly compared to her counterparts that in the flashback scenes, her character is the only one who's played by a different, younger-looking actress!

Clearly this show has the same writer's room as it's got that hyper-rapid insane jokes-per-minute thing that those two shows share and that makes future re-watches rewarding because you're pretty much guaranteed to have missed at least half of them.

Also - the girls are all super talented (especially Dawn), the songs are catchy as hell - there's not much to not like. I can guarantee the bad reviews here are from the folks don't like the fire hose of over-the-top surrealist pop-culture jokes being fired at you.

Renée Elise Goldsberry is doing a perfect "Jenna from 30-rock" impression in a lot of ways. It's sometimes jarring to be looking elsewhere and hear her voice and think "Jenna!" then turn around and see Renee. Maybe it's just me.

Anyway, big thumbs up from me!