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Oh my goodness, GIRLS! Who would’ve thought that the most important thing to ever happen in our whole lives would be a TV show, let alone a TV show that we would love, hate, and then be “ok” with before we even saw the first episode. Life is so unpredictable. It does seem odd to me (only me, not to anyone else) that there was so much hype surrounding this show, and retroactively Lena Dunham’s 2010 film Tiny Furniture, when no one really cared too much about Lena Dunham’s 2010 film Tiny Furniture when that was a thing. Some people certainly saw it, and I’m sure it won the Sundance award for “Best” or something along those lines, but it wasn’t written about on every blog the way that every blog would make you think they wrote about it, with the way they’re writing about Lena Dunham’s Girls now. Why is that? Is it because Judd Apatow? Is it because Bridesmaids? (Yes, right?) Whatever the reason, it is certainly very much a thing. And we certainly have to talk about it and pick the whole thing apart after only watching the first 35 minutes of it, because we HAVE a job.
So I would first like to say that I did like Girls. Not as much as I thought I would, but definitely enough to continue watching. We are living through a Golden TV Era, so it’s hard not to be very judgmental of shows that probably would have been judged a lot more nicely if we all stumbled upon them in a Non-Golden (pre-Friends?) TV Era, like if we found out about Girls on a message board when we were in high school, but here we are. Gotta judge because The Wire and also Parenthood. Girls was very watchable, though! The characters were entertaining, though I do wish they were connected more than just each knowing Hannah or being someone’s boyfriend. So far it seems even more Hannah-centered than originally expected, and that expectation was very Hannah-centered. But I look forward to watching them. And Chris Eigeman was in it, which is perfect! And the parents (mom from Freaks and Geeks, dad from the TV version of Honey I Shrunk the Kids) were interesting and seemed like the most realistic humans,with a realistic human dynamic, out of any of them. Overall it is a Will Watch Again.
But, I do have a fair amount of problems with Girls as well. One problem — and I do feel like this is maybe a problem that has come more out of the “hype” rather than just a problem that would have existed naturally in the show — is the expectation of reality. How “real” the characters are supposed to be, and how realistically the show is supposed to portray being a young person surviving in the Big City either with or recently without your parents’ help. I’m just not sure what this reality is based on, given who is telling us about that reality. (Lena Dunham, daughter of artist Laurie Simmons, girl who has had a very good life so far in the not-being-broke department.) I certainly don’t think that because Lena and the actresses who play the girls in Girls (Allison Williams, daughter of Brian Williams; Zosia Mamet, daughter of David Mamet) are people who have never really known anything other than a comfortable/VERY comfortable life that the only roles they’re entitled to write about and/or play are those of girls with comfortable/VERY comfortable lives. I’m not sure that watching Lena Dunham live in New York and buy lunch every day would be much more interesting than watching her complain about not having money to buy lunch every day. But the problem comes in with the fact that Lena Dunham is writing this series about girls her own age who live a lifestyle that she has only ever heard about, and really not even THAT, BUT that she is writing it in realtime. Her life as it would be happening now, if she were broke. Stories don’t need to have perspective to be interesting, but I think that in general they do need to have perspective to be trustworthy and worthwhile. We can all see people living this life right now, just as well as Lena Dunham can. So I’m not sure that we need her as the representative to tell their (OUR?) stories.
Not only is the lack of perspective something that makes me question how worthwhile the “real” quality of Girls is, but also, who is this reality “real” for? (Other than Lena Dunham, I assume?) Do we all cuddle with our friends at night? Do we all take showers together in the morning so we can chat? Ladies? Are we all terrible? Would we all take the extra $20 left for the maid in our parents’ hotel room? Watching Lena Dunham be Lena Dunham is one thing (and that thing is Tiny Furniture), but watching Lena Dunham be Lena Dunham and tell me that it’s The Everywoman is a whole other thing, and a thing that is incorrect and confusing, at best. (At worst it shows just how insular Luna Dunham’s work is, that she perhaps truly believes this is The Everywoman, which doesn’t say much for her ability as a storyteller in non-Lena-Dunham-based stories.)
Finally, after watching the episode I realized that there wasn’t really a point that I laughed throughout it. Though there were comedic moments, like when Hannah had a cupcake for breakfast and the boyfriend walked in on them in the bathroom, they were not especially funny. So that is a problem. Girls is not terribly realistic or relatable, and it is also not terribly funny. So what then? Ladies?
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I enjoyed it. It wasn’t SUPER AWESOME, but I pretty much never feel that way about the first episode of a show. I think that it takes a little while to get to know the characters, and it’s hard to tell how funny something is when you don’t know where they’re coming from.
Sometimes it takes 4 seasons for a show to hit its stride.
Ugh, do we really need to watch this? We get it, ladies. You have your periods. I don’t need to sit through a whole show just to find out about that.
I really liked this episode, but I am so ready to turn on this show, cos obviously I’m too cool to like things that I am supposed to like.
Also – is the girl in the pink Juicy sweatsuit (AKA Peggy’s cool lesbian friend) played by Rafael Nadal?
Kelly, that “dad from the TV version of Honey I Shrunk the Kids” is Peter Scolari. And he will forever be known as “the other guy in Bosom Buddies”.
Also, he’s now in a Broadway play about Magic Johnson and Larry Bird which I find very difficult to wrap my head around as a concept.
Why was it so hard to accept? I could see him pulling off a good Magic Johnson.
Also, the name of the play is “Magic Bird,” which makes me think there has to be at least one hilariously misinformed fan of phoenixes in the audience every night.
i find it a concept that is VERY easy to wrap my head around
Nope. Peter Scolari is the small-screen Wayne Szalinski 4 lyfe. That show was totally underrated and maybe the last truly enjoyable thing John Landis has done.
Anyone else laugh at the scene of her on opium on front of her folks begging for $$$? As part of the begging parents for $$$ generation, I thought the overdramatic-ness of the situation was played really well.
Also, so much to-do about the sex scene out there on the interwebs, and so much of it misplaced. No, its not supposed to be alluring; yes, its supposed to be kind of gross and unpleasant; and no, we don’t need to wring our hands or wholeheartedly approve of the character’s decisions as some sexual representative of her generation and gender. She’s just a lady with a creep of a guy making kind of gross choices… can’t we all just kind of neutrally accept that as a thing people do?
Yes. But how does it compare to the show “Gilmore Girls”?
Due to similar words I have been unable to disassociate the association I made betwixt the two early on and I refuse to watch this new show until I get positive confirmation that it is at least as good as “Gilmore Girls”.
This is the answer that the public needs/craves/demands.
Girls are pretty. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.
It was not chill to hear them talk.
No matter how many times I read it, this comment always makes me smile.
I haven’t watched it yet, but I’m gonna. But also, I’m much more excited about VEEP…can we talk about VEEP you guys? Or do we have to wait to see it to talk about it? It looks great!!! Mini-Arrested Development reunion!
VEEP=The Thick of It: US Version! Yay!
I saw about five seconds of the preview before we switched off the TV and I immediately got that impression and I hope I was right. Am I the worst for imagining that particular style of mockumentary could be as much a genre as “The Office”‘s style became? Halfway between Gervais and West-Wing-era Sorkin?
the nice guy was so BRUTALLY nice even my vagina shriveled up and died.
that’s just “labia saturation,” a side effect of there being too many shows about women on TV.
i started typing up a pretty long-winded explanation about why i didn’t like this show, but i can’t do it. i just fucking hated it so much. so much entitlement. so much bullshit.
I know people like these girls. They graduated and expect to get some brilliant job right away and when they realize that getting a great job isn’t that easy and they pout about it. Some of the people I know have this “idea” that they want some fabulous job that allows them to travel tons and have a nice apartment and give them all these perks. Those jobs exist, but it takes a lot of hard work to get to that point, and some people just don’t get that.
Another reason I hate this show is because like, it’s all about money. How someone survives to live in New York is their own business, money is so personal. I live in New York and I am in my mid-to-late twenties and I don’t ask my friends how much they make or where their money comes from. That being said, I moved out of my parents house when I was a senior in high school and have had some pretty shitty jobs because, that’s sometimes what you have to do to pay your rent and pay your bills. Now I have one job and it’s exactly what I want to be doing, but it took a lot of hard work and over ten years to get it.
I laughed when the dad told her she was going to drink a whole cup of coffee.
i laughed very hard when that shirtless weirdo pulled off her boot and then spiked it onto the ground…and throughout the episode because it was funny.
i laughed when she tried the opium tea and said “This does NOT taste like Twix”
I didn’t really feel sympathetic towards any of the characters except the Mom. I don’t really think I was supposed to relate favorably with her, but I did. The rest of the characters? I found them kind of annoying. Like, these aren’t real people? And if they were, I would not want to be around them ever?
I also did not laugh.
So yeah, thumbs down from me.
I also think maybe I couldn’t get over the fact that my parents haven’t helped me pay for anything since I was like 19 years old, so once I found out the main character’s “plight,” I couldn’t get past this sort of sense of superiority (unearned as it may have been). I dunno. I just couldn’t relate.
I liked the show, but I also related more to the mom than anyone else. I’m going to be exactly that kind of mother. “I just want a fucking house by a lake!”
I heard someone on twitter talking about a new show on HBO created by “LD” and got really excited for more Curb-Your-Enthuisiasm-esque goodness. That misunderstanding will make it very difficult for Girls to not be a disappointment.
It’s weird you say that because I actually compared this show to Curb last night. I feel like Girls can have the same polarizing effect on the audience that Curb does. I love Curb more than anything, but can totally understand when people don’t like it because they don’t like Larry David. It is one of those shows where if you really think about it, people CAN justifiably dislike it. I feel like that applies for Girls as well. I hated it, but can understand why people like it and in return, I hope they can understand why I don’t.
i refuse to over-analyze show’s like this – and other music, movies, etc – that seem to have the whole internet in a tizzy as to living up to this “hype” when all that does is create more hype while simultaneously fueling said hype and argue about it, which makes it IMPOSSIBLE for any person to have a valid opinion about it. It turns everyone into characters in a Woody Allen movie.
PERSON 1
something something pretentious Ingmar Bergman pretentious something
WOODY ALLEN
[rolls eyes]
Person 2
something something pedestrian comment Ingmar Bergman pedestrian comment
WOODY ALLEN
can you believe this idiot? something something snarky comment
it was funny. i thought they did a good job of establishing characters and telling a funny story setting up future funny stories involving many of the same characters. vjust like a pilot should!
being almost the same age and in the same situation as them, i identified with a lot of the feelings and situations, which is probably what they set out to do.
taking Kelly’s argument that the honesty of the characters portrayed on the show is invalid b/c the people on it do not necessarily have the exact experiences of the characters they are portraying? do you think we should dismiss the validity of The Wire because David Simon is not black and has never sold crack?
Can’t we all just settle down for 30 minutes a week and watch a well-done show written by a lot of funny people without having to take a life-or-death stance on it?
Right. I haven’t watched the show at all and don’t plan to, but I think the argument about authorial authenticity that Kelly made (unless I misunderstood it) was a dubious one.
It’s impossible for just about any TV show to be “real” or “realistic” for anyone but wealthy, entitled people, because those are the people with the ability to make TV shows. Poor folks generally can’t produce TV shows, hence we have a movie about Indian slums by millionaire Danny Boyle, not an actual resident of the slums.
The problem is less with the people who are producing the shows or movies than with those who claim that they are “real”.
to be fair, david simon and pretty much everyone involved with the writing/producing of The Wire had either been a reporter or a cop or a lawyer/judge in baltimore before working on the show. i recommend reading The Wire: Truth Be Told, it’s super interesting!
and “to be fair” Lena Dunham is a girl who has lived in New York and is friends with other girls in New York. the fact that maybe she hasn’t really struggled financially is irrelevant.
i wasn’t comparing the two, i was just noting that david simon et al actually did live a lot of the experiences portrayed in the wire :/
I didn’t like it because I couldn’t relate to it at all and in some strange way, I was kind of loving how much I hated watching the show. But the more I think about, if I were to make a TV show about my post-college years and how I was completely independent, had plenty of my own money, and was still a miserable asshole, I’m sure not many people would find that interesting and/or relatable either. So I guess the point is yes Kelly, we are all terrible.
If there’s not a ton of getting blackout drunk on happy hour dollar drinks and kicked out of bars/thrown into a cab home, I won’t be able to relate either. My 20s were too cool, you guys.
Umm, I’m in my mid 30s and that pretty much still describes most weekends.
but what about NYC 22?? did you guys watch that? I liked it! Richard Price forever.
I really couldn’t relate either. I’m not an asshole, so my parents still totally bankroll my groovy lifestyle.
It’s easy to mock, but there is something to said about exploring how the myth of NY turns people into delusional over-spenders. I see it all the time: editorial interns with a sliver of income dining at Red Rooster three nights a week and charging Marc Jacobs bags in order to fulfill some vision of what they think their life is supposed to be.
Others have written far more eloquently about how NY engenders the American Dream, but on steroids. It’s easy to see why it’s ridiculous, but it’s more common than a lot of people would like to admit.
I related to the one line about how that guy never texts her back and laughed a little in a sad way. I will probably keep watching unless they all turn out to be horrible people.
A few things:
1. “The characters were entertaining, though I do wish they were connected more than just each knowing Hannah or being someone’s boyfriend.” This is literally how I am connected to everyone in NY — via others’ tenuous romantic ties. I see that as 100% realistic.
2. Dunham’s world is insular, which she has admitted many times in interviews, which is why int never should have been called ‘Girls,’ as if it were about any and all young women. (Also, the fact that it’s called ‘Girls’ and not ‘Women’ is also pretty problematic for me. but anyway.) This show is about young white women with family ties to privilege. That’s fine. And the characters are worth watching, but the show’s pitch to viewers should have been focused on “this is not ALL women, but rather a very specific subset of women of a certain age at a certain time in a certain place.
3. Tiny Furniture was crueler than Girls will be because episodic comedy-drams simply can’t sustain the anguished aimlessness over a whole season, much less multiple seasons. It would be too boring and alienating.
4. I liked girls but I’m starting to think it’s less of an Eastbound and Downlike comedy and more like a Todd Solondz non-comedy. It’s funny, but not ha ha funny.
See, I found “Girls” to be appropriate. I thought Lena was poking fun at their maturity level.
I get that, but it’s just another of those lazy literal-minded titles.
Yeah, but how many TV shows actually have clever titles? The only ones I can think of are “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Peep Show” because they don’t automatically tell you what the show is about but make sense once you watch the show.
Um, ever heard of Cougar Town?
everyone just seemed like the worst slug humans
I have no need for another Sex and the City prequel. Next.
At least Patricia Field didn’t have any involvement in this. But I was really offended by that one girl’s pink velour sweatsuit and Tiffany bracelet. I didn’t think anybody still dressed like that.
I would much rather watch a show about an anorexic, homely writer eating pages from Vogue than dinner than this.
I would watch a TV show that is just a live stream of your SATC prequel fan fiction tweets. Those were the best.
That was a fun morning. I will try to think of some more. Lizzing, you in?
Real Talk, the amount of episodes I’ve seen are inversely proportional to the vitriol I have for the show. I’d have to do research to get more blood out of that stone, and I’d rather have my eyes ripped out.
I’ve hate watched them all and you were on the nose.
We could do prequels to this show?
A Spence/Trinity/Stuyvesant girl watches her inbox, waiting to see if she’ll hear from Wesleyan or Oberlin first. #girlsprequel
I gotta check out those tweets. Where can I find you awesome people on twitter (I never use twitter so forgive me)?
This may be my favorite one I wrote:
The debutant is sad that no one noticed her new Kate Spade purse, which is just like the other four but in green. #SATCprequel
Yes! Please post your twitter handle!
Also, the mom had THE best line of the night: I just want to sit next to a fucking lake!
Loved her.
I did too!
That line made me feel bad for my own mom and how much money she has given to her own adult children (totally willingly and without opium-tea-induced begging) that she and my dad could be spending on themselves.
Actually that is mostly what I got out of Girls last night, a lot of “I should just offer to pay my own cell phone bill already, bleah.”
I saw her on Craig Ferguson on Friday or Thursday and found her to be so insufferable that listening to her just describe the show took years off my life. Also, I hated Tiny Furniture.
Also, as she spent half the interview describing Renn Faire games she obviously was not a part of and make continuous efforts to let everyone know as much, it seemed difficult to see how she could get the show’s premise down successfully as she seems like the type to have a Wikipedia knowledge of something and no sympathy/empathy/curiosity that would allow her to be a decent writer or actress or producer of anything that isn’t explicitly about her. And if that is what Tiny Furniture actually is… Oh man. Can someone please take this girl’s golden ticket away because there are so many MANY more writers and actresses and producers and trust fund kids who better deserve the attention she has received.
My thoughts exactly. I saw her on Conan last week and she seemed awful.
Lena Dunham is the male version of Michael Cera.
YES.
She reminds me of Willow’s wife. You guys remember that movie, right?
DVR’d this and have not had a chance to watch yet. Based on this review, I’ll look forward to being simultaneously quite interested and super annoyed, which are about on par with my expectations.
I feel like this is the type of thing that is understandably embraced with wide open arms by the writer types as its only reason of existence is to validate and over-glorify their own lives as privileged, what-I-have-to-say-is-so-damn-important (it probably isn’t!) personalities.
The idea that she’s writing a freaking memoir at age 26 says it all. It is also not funny… at all. I think HBO/everyone oversold it – because of Judd Apatow – when it’s actually a “light drama”. As for Kelly’s comment about her real life disconnect, I do not hold it against the show as it is clearly about young women like her who want to be “independent” but don’t want to take on the full responsibility and are enabled by their parents.
Having said that, I didn’t completely hate it and I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt for at least 3 episodes.
Hello everyone. The first episode is on YouTube if you’re trying to make it in New York and can’t afford HBO:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrQfvq9RfM0
Damn it, Patrick! Where were you when Ben and Cam were unsure of how to make it in America?
The sex scene with that guy was true comedy. Hilarious. I don’t get the criticism of a lack of perspective or realism. For one, reality is boring. And, there were things that did ring true. Like, no one I know in Brooklyn is actually from New York. They all come from the boonies of the midwest or upstate NY and seemed to have this idea that just showing up in the Big City was all they needed to do to be successful and now they’re spinning their wheels. I don’t think Lena Dunham is claiming to be the voice of a generation. Just her character is.
I completely agree. Also, the fact that she’s writing a memoir at the age of 24 is a criticism of people who think they have so much to say about everything even though they haven’t experienced much. This point is illustrated in the scene when she asks her parents to read her memoir and it’s only five pages.
This is my book.
I’d be more interested in reading Gabe’s review of this show. I hated all the characters on this show. I’m not much older than them and like, ugh. I could go on and on about it but it would just make me more irritated. They are the worst.
Ferguson Darling! Where have you been hiding???
I love your avatar.
I love this show despite being a 34-year-old married woman who came from a lower-middle-class/sometimes poverty-level upbringing and struggled through the slums of post-college adulthood with little-to-no help from my parents for about 10 years before finally landing a real job. While I find the privileged lifestyles of these “girls” (which I feel is an appropriate term, as I thought of myself as a girl throughout most of my 20s) to be very irksome, I relate to the whole wanting to be an artist thing but not wanting to have to work for it. But yeah, I would definitely not be paying the rent for an adult child for two years after he or she graduated college. Go get a job at Starbucks like the rest of us did!
Maybe they’ve been comparing this show to the wrong series? Maybe this is an Ab Fab prequel.
i liked it. a lot. but i was expecting more spot-on lines like the “you think that cus you are 11 pounds overweight you know struggle?” “i am 13 pound overweight and it has been awful for me my whole life!” of the trailer. i thought that was funny.
I am interested to see where this will go.
i did not love it. but i liked it.
it appeals to a limited audience, but i’m pretty sure that specific audience are people who often have hbo.
i like that it captures the alienation of not quite feeling like an independent adult but being under a lot of pressure to be one, ‘girls’ in a weird pre-adulthood phase. obviously dunham’s character is supposed to be somewhat obnoxious in her entitlement and her memoir writing, i don’t think you are supposed to sympathize with that or necessarily like her. but it’s mocking what this generation of post-collegiates has been told to value, what kind of self-awareness they have, their particular types of immaturity, and how shitty it is to be spit out into a crap job market with little success for anyone starting out.
But what about the fact that they live in Brooklyn yet there are NO people of colour there?!
Oh wait, I forgot!
They had a homeless black man.
Ugh, I hate everyone involved.