Back in 2012, and only two years after her debut feature-length Tiny Furniture, Lena Dunham created and starred in a show about a group of four millennial women navigating their tumultuous twenties and general life in New York City for HBO. The immediate comparison that springs to mind is most likely Sex and the City, albeit slightly more contemporary and with characters a decade younger–and with significantly less financial stability–which is not completely lost on the writers, as Shoshanna Shapiro (Zosia Mamet), the group’s frequently overlooked youngest member, even says this to her eccentric free-spirited cousin Jessa Johansson (Jemima Kirke) in the very first episode, comparing her extravagant lifestyle and behaviour to that of Carrie Bradshaw. The group’s remaining two members consist of the ambitious, and at times naive, Marnie Michaels, played cogently by Allison Williams, and the quartet’s centerpiece Hannah Horvath, an outspoken aspiring writer played by Dunham herself. Horrendous hook-ups, looming evictions, struggles to channel energy–whether it is creative or career driven–and the ineluctable feeling of uselessness and wasting your potential while living out your mid-twenties: Girls pretty much chronicles the expected scenarios and tribulations of a comedy series with its setup, except for the fact that it is completely ameliorated by the guidance of Lena Dunham and her caustic pen.
The writing, and particularly the dialogue, are easily the show’s strongest suits. In keeping with the tradition of the myriad of other great American comedy series of the naughties, the show creates no false illusions about its characters by shrouding them in a layer of charm and likeability, nor does it attempt to sanitise them or make them alluring whatsoever (30 Rock, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Eastbound & Down, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia all being shows of the 2000s that abide by this sardonic formula). The pilot focuses on Hannah after her parents inform her that they will no longer be paying her rent, and ends with her making one final attempt to convince them to keep bankrolling her writing endeavours, announcing, “I don’t wanna freak you out, but think that I may be the voice of my generation. Or at least, a voice. Of a generation”. Unfortunately, she does this while high from an opium infused tea and collapses, exclaiming that she’s “going to die like Flaubert in a garret”. The very next episode centers around Jessa organising an abortion, while the other three wish to show their support for her after committing to her difficult decision: which results in her failing to show up for her appointment, leaving Hannah, Marnie and Shosh waiting frantically at the clinic. Palatability is absolutely not the intention with the characters here, and their behaviour becomes increasingly self-centered and erratic as the show progresses. Season four has an episode towards its midway point that illustrates this tremendously, as Hannah is experiencing a horrendous breakup and wants nothing more than to lie in her bed, but is instead plagued with visits from all of her friends, who each insist on their own methods being the most optimal to cheer Hannah up (Shoshanna rapidly talks over her with her quickfire cadence; Jessa slaps her in the face; Marnie, her best friend, fails to show up on time). Yet, through these chaotically sordid characters, Dunham manages to create something that is honest, displaying such raw and uncompromising interactions, no matter how frustrating, blemishes and all.
Despite the quippy and oft cutthroat dialogue, some of Girls’ more profound moments occur when there’s silence. A season two episode where Hannah spends an almost idyllic twenty-four hours playing house with a charming doctor named Joshua (played by Patrick Wilson), ends with a quiet sequence of her packing her things and getting ready to return to work after their connection goes awry–and of course, after he encouraged her to skip work the previous day. The fifth season sees Shoshanna take on an idyllic job opportunity in Japan, and when her unhappiness and dissatisfaction finally begin to resonate in a restaurant, surrounded by her newly made friends, she walks away down a desolate street as AURORA’s cover of “Life on Mars?” plays and the credits roll (the soundtrack is severely of its time, but fitting nonetheless). Even during the more understated moments, like a brief scene of Fran looking at Hannah, who is avoiding his gaze, and considering making amends over a fight that they are having, and instead chooses to look away and drop it. As much as each of the characters want so desperately to be heard, no matter how painful or cringe-inducing what they actually have to say is, it is often when they are left dialogueless that they are at their most expressive.
Although antithetical to the show’s name, it cannot be discussed without mentioning its boys. Adam Driver had his career launch from his role as Hannah’s outlandish boyfriend, Adam Sackler. The sage oddball older brother-type character, Ray Ploshansky, is played by Alex Karpovsky, who is initially introduced as a friend of one of Marnie’s ex-boyfriends, and the manager of the coffee shop that Hannah reluctantly ends up working in, but is eventually incorporated as more of a main character. Hannah’s old college boyfriend Elijah Krantz (Andrew Rannells), who realises that he is gay after the fact, becomes a more recurring presence as he navigates the woeful dating pool of men in New York alongside the gang. Girls certainly does not elude the danger that men are capable of, but it rarely fails to highlight how ridiculous and comical their angry outbursts can be. Marnie’s musician partner Desi (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is persistently emotionally manipulative–so much so, that a partition wall in their open plan apartment that he attempts to build without consulting Marnie first goes unfinished, leaving steel bars visible and framing her in a domestic prison–which eventually becomes serious once Marnie discovers his OxyContin addiction and gets rid of his pills. The sequence of his feeble attempts at retrieving them may incorporate a horror-like score and imposing Dutch camera angles, but the absurdity of his ludicrous behaviour does not go unnoticed, as Hannah and Marnie eventually lock him out of the house that they are staying in, leaving him frantically knocking on the windows from the outside. Adam is also far from being emotionally sound, and his frequent irrational outbursts are daunting to those around him, yet the farcical nature of his actions are not glossed over (like when he continuously beats the dashboard of a car to get the radio to stop playing on a road trip with Hannah and Shosh to retrieve Jessa from rehab). In what is perhaps the show’s finest piece of dialogue, Hannah’s mother offers her a piece of cautionary advice about Adam, saying to her, “I don’t want you to spend your whole life socialising him like he’s a stray dog, making the world a friendlier place for him. It’s not easy being married to an odd man”.
The show aired its sixth and final season in 2017. Almost ten years on, there are obviously aspects that have aged–moslty things like the episodic storytelling, which has largely fallen out of fashion due to the streaming model of television taking over–but perhaps the most alien aspect to many people watching today is Lena Dunham’s brutal honesty. Her humour is razor sharp and far from comforting, but it does not come wrapped in a layer of irony, or with any meta-commentary to deflect its blows; nor do the more sobering moments arrive with any half-baked didactic lectures to patronise viewers. If the humorous scenarios that the characters get themselves into beckon the hysterical occurrences of Sex and the City, then the show’s more contemplative and quiet endings ring closer to those frequently utilised towards the final stretch of The Sopranos. Episodes of Girls ending with moments like Ray crying on a bench with a stray dog that Adam found, after travelling with him to Staten Island and botching an attempt to return it, mimic similar dramatic yet subtle conclusions used in The Sopranos, such as the episode that ends with Tony attempting reconciliation with Uncle Junior over his Varsity comments while he’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and we are left unsure whether Junior’s tears are from Tony or the show playing on his TV (both shows have their own variations of bittersweet closures, but nevertheless the taste that these evocative endings leave in viewers mouths is not entirely dissimilar).
Critical reception to Girls has varied, with the earlier seasons receiving more praise that eventually fizzled away with each passing season, and the usual vitriolic misogynistic drivel that appears with any women lead shows was also inevitably, and unfortunately, quite present throughout its run. Public opinion is certainly swaying, as more people are rediscovering the show with sources like the Girls Rewatch podcast, and also thanks to the release of Lena Dunham’s new memoir Famesick. In retrospect, Dunham’s claims about being the voice of a generation, while certainly ridiculous in its context, may have actually been more portentous than pretentious.
