I finally watched Girls ...

Okay, so last month, I got dumped, and I invited one of my best friends over. We started watching HBO's Girls.

It was my first time.

Sources:

https://www.theringer.com/2022/04/15/tv/girls-hbo-pilot-10-year-anniversary-lena-dunham

- The equation of Dunham with her show was understandable; a 25-year-old with a premium cable show is already media catnip, let alone one who writes, directs, and stars in it. But the blurred line also made it hard to separate analysis of Girls from Dunham’s own status as a cultural lightning rod, prone to making the kind of ignorant comments that necessitate citing “a ‘delusional girl’ persona I often inhabit” in her subsequent apology. In the same statement, from 2016, even Dunham seemed to collapse art and life, admitting of said persona, “That’s what my TV show is, too.”

- Girls arrived at a time when TV was experiencing a kind of behind-the-scenes revolution. Two years before, comedian Louis C.K. had one-upped legendary showrunners like David Chase and Matthew Weiner by not only writing his FX sitcom Louie, but also starring, directing, and editing as well, all on a shoestring budget. The Louie model helped catalyze an influx of career filmmakers into television, from heavyweights like David Fincher to indie trailblazers like Karyn Kusama. Girls was often compared to Louie, though the former’s portrait of oblivious young womanhood anchors a very different perspective than the latter’s divorced father of two.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/girls-may-be-flawed-but-its-feminist-legacy-will-last-a7577211.html

- Fans of Girls have meanwhile hailed it precisely for its rejection of the inanely slick sensibility of its predecessor series Sex and the City, whose trailblazing installation of a variety of idiosyncratic female characters on international screens it mimics. While the girls’ friendships in Dunham’s show may be far from problem-free, these relationships get more air time than is customary for much mainstream television.

- And there’s an appealing honesty to the imperfect characterisation of the leads. As Hannah puts it to Marnie (Allison Williams) in season six’s second episode: “it can be pretty hard to have observations about other people when you’re only thinking about yourself – I would know”.

- Girls offers a rare combination of physical and verbal comedy with a serious undertone. At its best, it is unparalleled on contemporary television in its attention to human rhythms, its virtuoso casting, direction of actors and skewering of outdated social mores.

http://msmagazine.com/2012/04/14/flawed-women-and-feminism-in-lena-dunhams-girls/

- Sex and the City‘s portrayal of friendship, sex and relationships were often undercut by an overriding interest in consumer culture and designer fashions. Hell, I’d never turn down a Chanel bag, but I recognized that this was a lifestyle that the majority of young women could never access. Girls, on the other hand, encompasses the joy and sadness of what it’s like to be an under-employed, uncertain 20-something woman in a post-sexual revolution and economically downtrodden world.

- Despite their privilege, the characters are struggling, at least in a middle-class way. Hannah has been working at an unpaid internship for more than a year. Her friends lament that their liberal arts degrees have left them in severe debt and underemployed while they live in cramped and shitty apartments that they can’t afford. In an economic moment when 12 percent of women ages 20-24 are unemployed and another 40 percent work part-time, it’s refreshing to see a mostly accurate depiction of the world of few and low-paid jobs. However, at least in the first three episodes, Girls has failed to acknowledge how very white the cast is, and how women of color would offer a different perspective on these 20-something dilemmas. I am curious to see, as the series progresses, if Dunham will bring such a perspective into the show.

https://variety.com/lists/greatest-tv-shows-of-all-time/happy-days/

- It’s taken a decade for “Girls” writer, director, creator and star Lena Dunham to get her due for the groundbreaking HBO comedy. Time has mellowed out the once-fever-pitch discourse around nudity, representation and supposed nepotism, allowing the sharp comedy and brutal honesty to stand on their own. The pilot positioned a quartet of downwardly mobile, alliteratively named New York millennials as a counterpoint to “Sex and the City,” trading aspiration for closely observed cringe. That Dunham, just 26 when the show premiered, was so consistently conflated with her character is at once a product of misogyny and a testament to her performance. Lena is certainly not Hannah, yet each woman was right to brand herself a voice of a generation.

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2012/04/girls-writer-responds-critique-girls-horrible-joke/329117/

- Lesley Arfin, who responded to complaints that there were no black characters, save for a single homeless guy, in the first episode of the HBO show, by tweeting, "What really bothered me most about Precious was that there was no representation of ME."

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/04/girls-through-the-veil/256154/

- There has been a lot of talk, this week about Lena Dunham's responsibility, but significantly less about the the people who sign her checks. My question is not "Why are there no black women on Girls," but "How many black show-runners are employed by HBO?" This is about systemic change, not individual attacks.

- With that said, I think storytellers--first and foremost--must pledge their loyalty to the narrative as it comes to them. I don't believe in creating characters out a of desire to please your audience or even to promote an ostensible social good. I think good writing is essentially a selfish act--story-tellers are charged with crafting the narrative the want to see. I'm not very interested in Lena Dunham reflecting the aspirations of people she may or may not know. I'm interested in her specific and individual vision; in that story she is aching to tell. If that vision is all-white, then so be it. I don't think a story-teller can be guilted into making great characters.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/girls-hbo-racist_b_1451931

- Where are the think pieces taking networks to task for the millionth procedural about a troubled male cop or the millionth comedy about a guy who has problems with women? Why are we holding Lena Dunham's feet to the fire, instead of the heads of networks and studios? That troubles me, not least because it's easier (and lazier) to attack a 25-year-old woman who's just starting out than to attack the men twice her age who actually control the industry.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230929210717/https://www.thehairpin.com/2012/04/where-my-girls-at/

- Girls is good for girls. But which girls? If this show succeeds, what other shows will get made because of it? Probably a half dozen just like it. Who wins, then? And who loses? Girls was supposed to be for the people, by the people. It is for people like me — weaned on Sex and the City, amused by the simple charms of Gossip Girl, and weary of the bromance comedies that rolled through theaters the last two summers like a never-ending heatwave — who were hungry for something relatable, something real. It’s a tricky time in America to talk about race and belonging, but deep down, I’d hoped that this should would somehow get past the same challenge of all the BIG shows that came before it — Friends, Party of Five, Sex and the City, Gossip Girl — that failed to weave a main black character at the show from the jump.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/arts/television/adam-driver-christopher-abbott-alex-karpovsky-of-girls.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/arts/television/lena-dunhams-girls-returns-to-hbo.html

•There is lots of good television, but comedies that are fresh and original as well as rigorously downbeat are harder to find — particularly when it comes to the depiction of women in their 20s. “Girls” drew so many accolades and so much media attention — Internet champions, television appearances, magazine covers and [a multimillion-dollar book deal for Ms. Dunham](http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/lena-dunham-sings-book-deal-for-more-than-3-5-million/) — that it quickly started a backlash that was as disproportionate as all the initial fuss. So the measure of Season 2 lies in how well Ms. Dunham and her colleagues withstood all the pressure and stayed true to the original conceit.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/goodbye-girls-as-lena-dunham-cast-execs-overshare-show-oral-history-970777/

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/girls-finale-how-brooklyn-changed-show-994435/

- Since the show’s debut, boutique and craft retailers that helped establish the ethos of Williamsburg and Greenpoint have been elbowed out by a variety of chains. In the show, this tension was channeled through a b-story involving competition between local, independent coffee shops (Girls made Cafe Grumpy a minor tourist destination). In the season five finale, Shoshanna created a “safe space” at Cafe Grumpy decorated with signs that read, “Trust the Government.” But in reality, those independent coffee shops were joined by a Dunkin’ Donuts that opened on Bedford Avenue in 2013. Starbucks followed a year later, just around the corner.

- The evolution of Brooklyn during Girls in many ways mirrors the fate that befell Manhattan’s notably uncool Meatpacking District after another HBO show, Sex And The City made that once post-industrial neighborhood the central playground for its gallivanting fictional characters.

- Williamsburg was hardly a secret when Girls launched, but as the show draws to a close, one has to wonder what role the show played in eroding the neighborhood’s reign as an epicenter of indie cool.