Girls

Whenever a programme starts with that little HBO interstitial where three letters signifying Home Box Office slowly appear on a background of grey fuzz, you know you’re in for a touch of quality.  It’s like the royal seal on a box of Weetabix (although I wouldn’t say that was my favourite cereal).  This is the home of The Wire, True Blood and, er, Sesame Street.  Thus, Girls came with high expectations.  This was compounded by inordinate fuss during its 2012 launch.  During a couple of trips to New York that year, its four lead cast members’ faces were plastered on every bench and phone box I strode past, gormlessly imagining I was in a boxset of my own, what with all the sidewalks, yellow taxis and ironic exclamations of “I’m walkin’ here!” in my best Brooklyn accent.

The internet whinged about nudity and nepotism.  But no TV show has ever needed to please everyone.  Where did all this expectation and entitlement come from?  If anything, we were mirroring exactly the behaviour at the heart and soul of Girls: selfishness.  The four main characters are each so obsessed with themselves that their friendships crash and burn along with most other elements of their lives.  This is real life.  It’s cruel.  I’m writing this because I want people to read it.  You’re reading it in case you can spot that it isn’t any good.  So, when a show is all over the news, everyone has something to say about what’s wrong with it.  If it doesn’t tick all our boxes correctly, then we feel we have the right to be outraged.

But this is all in the past now.  Six seasons of Girls exist out there and if you haven’t watched it, you should.  Later series slipped out with far less attention and the narratives therefore had a chance to blossom and mature with less scrutiny.  After all, everything is someone’s truth (even Bromans).  So let’s talk about Lena Dunham’s truth at the time of its inception: young people coming to terms with adulthood, an unfriendly city that gives you just enough love to keep you in its palm, recalibrating your expectations of what your life will be, wanting to be loved.  Sound familiar?  The comedy and the drama, therefore, come from the characters’ journeys through these truths and the fact they are inevitably at odds with each other.

So who the fudge are these people?:

Hannah Horvath

Hannah is the main girl of Girls, around whom most other girls in the show orbit.  This isn’t due to her magnetic charisma, but because she is raw AF.  She can’t have nice things because she ruins them.  Just when you think she has achieved compassion with someone, she comes out with something that reveals it’s all about her, no matter what.  We all know a Hannah, and we all are a Hannah.  Also, her clothes fall off almost constantly and we just need to make our peace with that.

Marnie Michaels

Growing up impossibly handsome, I can identify with what it’s like to be judged first on breath-taking looks.  Note the irony.  Marnie’s self-obsession is compounded by how others treat her, from a mum who just wants to be her cool friend to men who can’t believe she’ll go near them.  It’s nice to be pretty, but it clearly just leaves you as lost as the rest of us.

Jessa

I’m not putting the surname as I never noticed it once across all 62 episodes, so I can’t be pasting it out of Wikipedia now.  I never really got the purpose of Jessa.  She seems like a lost child from The Osbournes with her transatlantic drawl.  She gives me accent whiplash.  Jessa acts as a filter for the other characters’ wilder acts, the result of lost inhibitions.  I’m torn with saying she’s either the least interesting or the most enigmatic.

Shoshanna Shapiro

By far my favourite girl.  Every line and every word that comes out of her mouth is so well observed that you never want it to end.  She’s the sensible one with actual drive, though she goes through the same challenges that force her to question everything about herself.  I can only imagine how much fun Shosh was for Zosia Mamet to play (an actress who is unrecognisable in Mad Men).  Series 5, episode 3 where we get to see Japan through Shosh’s eyes is one of the most mesmerising and magical things I have ever seen.  I’m smiling as I think about it.

Officially speaking, these four are the actual Girls the titles refers to (I’ve decided).  In addition, there’s a deep and rich supporting cast of awful relations and equally damaged male love interests.  One is now even the naughty Jedi (or something) in the new Star Wars films.  In Girls, Adam Sackler is played by Adam Driver as a fairly grumpy man-child, so it’s great to see him doing the same thing with a light sabre.  But no, I’m just jealous – he’s a very exciting actor and you feel every emotion along with him throughout his relationships with Hannah and others.

But if Shosh has the best lines of any girl in the show, it’s Elijah Krantz who has the best of any boy.  While the girls seem to delude themselves regarding the extent of their self-obsession, Elijah owns his without apology.  Yet, he and Hannah somehow make a shared STI (HPV) seem like a friendship goal.

How can a show about selfishness be gratifying viewing?  I’ve just told you, it has the HBO logo thing at the start.  Plus, it’s only thirty minutes, New York looks beautiful throughout, the soundtrack never misses, it’s funny, it’s sad, it’s realistic and pure fantasy, and it doesn’t really do anything you expect it to.  That, and naked people.