Girls

I went into the first episode of Girls with pretty low expectations. I figured that it would maybe be another Sex in the City, with some pointless softcore porn here and there, but I decided to try it out. It is now, along with Game of Thrones, one of my favorite shows on television. In fact, when we get a fresh set of shows on the DVR, Girls is always the first show that I want to watch. It is fresh, funny, and also a bit depressing at times. This is definitely not Sex and the City. That show was glamour and lightheartedness. This show, on the other hand, is about that bad experience that lots of people have coming out of college called "the quarter life crisis".

The tone of "Girls" is somewhat dark, cynical humor. It is about four young women out of college a year or so. They live in New York City, but unlike the Sex and the City ladies, they are struggling financially and, overall, they aren't very happy people. There are Sex and the City posters in a lot of scenes, as if to remind you that you are NOT watching that show. Their jobs are deadend-ish in nature, or just plain nonexistent. They have lots of what looks like unsatisfying or awkward sex. There is an undercurrent of disillusionment and shattered dreams with all of the plot lines. Graduating from college and moving to New York City, isn't the world supposed to be your oyster? Since you still have youthful good looks, freedom, and income, shouldn't your 20s be the most fun part of your life? Maybe for some, but that's not how it works for a lot of people. For some folks, either men or women, the years immediately after college are when you find out that the world truly doesn't care about you, or that you don't have the talent to do what you wanted to do. It is when you grow apart from your college boyfriend or girlfriend and wake up one day to find that you have nobody of significant romantic interest in your life. It is when you find out that there are jobs out there that are horribly boring and unsatisfying.

I normally get annoyed by the excessive (and often boring and pointless) sex in HBO's original series, but it fits into this series just fine. This show centers around the trials and tribulations of young women in their early to mid 20s, and one problem that they all share is an unsatisfying sex life. Having been raised and gone through college with today's "hookup" culture, the men in their lives are lazy. They barely have to lift a finger to get laid and they don't need to be romantic to seduce a woman at all. They have sex and then somebody goes home right after. If you are looking for one big feature to distinguish this show from Sex and the City, I think that this portrayal of modern sex culture would be it. Sex and the City portrayed it as glamorous and empowering for women. This show (and I am not sure if this is intentional) portrays it somewhat the opposite. Hannah has been having sex with her partner, Adam, for a long time, but she barely even knows him. Marnie has a long time boyfriend, but she's not turned on by or in love with him. The relationships that these women have are shallow and unsatisfying.

The themes are interesting, and the writing is clever too. The one liners are usually funny. The hijinx are sufficiently wacky and unpredictable. If you have shared experiences with the characters in this show, then I think that you will "get" it, and that you will find it funny. If you haven't, then this show might not appeal to you. If you were turned off from the show by its marketing or because you didn't want to see another "Sex and the City", then I highly encourage you to give it a look. Especially if you feel that you can identify with some of the characters. As a 38 year old man, I still could, despite being older and, well, male. This show doesn't appear to be too popular, and that disappoints me, because I really want there to be a second season.

First off, this show is definitely not for everyone. I absolutely loved it from the jump, and I tried to get a few friends into it that didn't get it at all.

The characters are mostly unlikeable, so you watch this to kind of laugh at the mess and chaos, and there is some very good comedy and drama here. The writing is clever and cast is good. One of my absolute comfort shows, it always makes me feel good and makes me chuckle. The only think I think is really unfortunate about Girls is that the main girls are hardly ever together as a group. At most they are 2-3 together, and it's too bad because when the four girls are together it's always hilarious. I guess it's realistic for girls at that age, but I'd love it if they were together more.

I hadn't been following the show yet but decided to get caught up since all the episodes were available on demand, and since they are nice and short it didn't take much time.

I have mixed feelings about the show. I'm definitely not in my twenties anymore, and even when I was my situation was different from Hannah's (I was broke and struggling through art school without any family support, and not in New York). That was years ago--Hannah could theoretically be my daughter--yet I recognize and sympathize with a lot of what goes on in her world. A good bit of the show is funny and smart, and I do care about her--she's afraid and a little lost and going through a series of disappointments. I get how it feels to have something to say and find yourself (or others) questioning whether it really needs to be said, which must be really rough when you've spent the last few years in a crucible of complete focus on self-expression (grad school). I'm just not sure I like her. And maybe that's OK, since Hannah doesn't seem to like herself very much despite little bursts of ego and a chronic exhibitionism--but the occasional moments pop up where it feels like I'm supposed to cheer her on when I want to shake her instead. Her motives seem hollow, and too focused on trying to actively *impress* others, which could be intentional. It's hard to tell if she's having trouble being herself or if the trouble IS that she's being herself. Maybe the generation gap is to blame, or maybe there is no message and she's just packaging up and delivering a slice of life without any adjectives or claims printed on the box. And there is certainly more going on in the show besides the protagonist's character study.

I'll continue watching to see how Hannah progresses. There is value in the writing, and it's pretty original. Feels a little like a graphic novel (a la American Splendor), weirdly. Glad to see Zosia Mamet after being introduced to her on Mad Men, and hope her character (Shoshanna) is allowed to grow out of what appears to be comic relief. Also good to see Becky Ann Baker again, the warm and authentic mom from Freaks and Geeks. She's less cuddly here but just as real.

If you're in your twenties you may well like this more than I do. If you're {ahem}older you might like it more than me anyway. But it's certainly worth watching an episode or two to find out.

In the 2012 male dominated world of TV shows, Girls has been a welcomed addition. The fact that its main character is also the show's creator, writer and often director, makes it even more welcome. But, as an avid consumer of films and TV, I cannot rate Girls more than 6 (and I am being generous for the previous reasons). The most obvious comparisons to Lena Dunham's "Girls" is Sex & the City, both because of its 4 female leads living in NYC , and because of the emphasis on friendship and relashionsips. However, to me, Girls is more similar to any mumblecore movie (think Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha) or to a certain extent TV shows like Freak and Geeks or Love (unsurprisingly, Judd Apatow is an exec producer). Ordinary stories about ordinary people with ordinary feelings and ordinary ideas who somehow believe to be extraordinary. The show is well crafted, the acting is good, and the characters are believable, but like the whole mumblecore genre, it is too focused on the inner life of middle class, self obsessed, ordinary people and so it risks to be just as boring as the people it tries to portray. I do applaud Lena Dunham's courage in exposing her imperfect naked body and inner psychological issues, especially given the abuse she had to go through (even on this website with some of the reviews gratuitously cruel). However, I doubt that is enough to make good TV for a sustained period of time. Interestingly for a show written by a girl for other girls, the male characters (Adam, Ray) are a lot more interesting and have a lot more life in them than any of the female characters, except for Hannah. While the boys in the show have interests and thoughts,the girls are defined by their relationships with men (or lack thereof). We learn more about the internal life and motivations of a marginal character like Thomas John in his two minute monologue than about Marnie or Jessa during the entire first season. It's true that except for Carrie, the characters in sex & the city were also fairly thin, but that show was a hell of a lot more fun. Finally, since Lena Dunham is now heralded as the bulwark of modern feminism, does it really matter if the writer/director/producer of a show is a woman when the female characters she creates are so thin?

First season is fresh with original, young, interesting quirky characters. Their stories intertwine and we get to enjoy some weird side characters and situations.

The script is witty and often funny. The modern soundtrack offers lots of nice gems.

Except for the nonsensical last episode, the bar is pretty high and I'd give it an 8 out of 10.

With the second season instead the freshness is gone.

The writer, director, protagonist, monopolizes the scene with her weirdness and sexual life that stops being interesting and becomes trite and annoying. Until we get that under the weirdness there's something pathological.

A case study of psychological disorders? Maybe, but I don't like it mixed with the not-funny-anymore comedic attempts and the constant exhibition of unrealistic weirdness from almost all characters.

Even the soundtrack choices are bad. 4 out of 10.

I gave up with the end of season 2.