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HBO’s Girls (2012-2017) details the lives of four young women two years out of college struggling to navigate life in New York City while balancing careers, love, friendships, and growing up. But while it was airing, Girls was met with complaints about the characters, subject matter, and writing. However, it performed well during award season and is slowly becoming recognized for its brilliance as people rewatch it and a new generation discovers it for the first time. 1Holtermann, Callie. “Why Are So Many People Rewatching Girls?” The New York Times. 16 March 2023. Accessed 9 June 2024.
Girls highlighted all the insecurities and setbacks of growing up. Viewers watched the characters fall apart spectacularly, struggling to put themselves back together. It was indicative of millennials and the early 2010s, and most of the hatred of the show stemmed from society’s frustration with millennials. New Yorker critic Emily Nussbaum described the show as:
“merely the latest in a set of culture-rattling narratives about young women, each of which has inspired enough bile to overwhelm any liver.”
2Bradshaw, Lara. “The Critical Investigation of HBO’s Girls: Feminist Test, Quality, and Happy Womanhood.” Picturing the Popular, vol. 34, no. 1, Spring 2014, pp. 32-38. Accessed 9 June 2024.
While the characters are unlikable, this distaste is unfair. They are all selfish and narcissistic, but nothing unrealistic. Part of the reason people were so angry at these girls was because they saw their own worst tendencies blown up and put on screen.
Meet The Girls
To fully understand the brilliance and narcissism of Girls, you need to meet the girls themselves.
Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham)
Hannah (Lena Dunham) is the self-proclaimed voice of her generation (or a voice — of a generation). After being financially cut off from her parents, Hannah dreams of being a writer but struggles to actually write. She is possibly the most unlikable character of the series, as she is the most selfish and entitled. When her editor dies, her main concern is the fate of her book. She steals the spotlight from her boyfriend, Adam, by telling him she is moving to Iowa minutes before his Broadway debut. She picks fights and feels as though she is entitled to a dream career and compensation, without putting in much work.
Despite her flaws, Hannah is widely seen as one of the most relatable girls in the group. She struggles with transitioning from college to becoming a proper adult and makes many mistakes along the way. She dreams of becoming a writer but struggles to hold herself accountable.
One of the most frustrating things about Hannah is how she never follows through with anything: she is a writer for GQ but then quits and she briefly attends an MFA program at the University of Iowa then drops out. While all of Hannah’s quitting shows her entitlement, it exemplifies exploring options and failing in your 20s.
The best episode to get to know Hannah is “One Man’s Trash.”
Marnie Michaels (Allison Williams)
Marnie (Allison Williams) is Hannah’s best friend and roommate. Marnie starts out seeming the most put-together of the girls. She has a long-term boyfriend, works at an art gallery, and is intelligent and organized. As the series progresses, it’s clear Marnie is deeply unhappy in her relationship, and her life further spirals once she is laid off from her job.
Marnie ends up doing a complete one-eighty in her life when she becomes a singer and marries her bandmate, Desi; she transforms from being the most aspirational of the group to being the biggest mess. Marnie’s intensity, shamelessness, and control freak tendencies make her extremely unlikeable for most of the series. Underneath all her clinginess (she once said, “I want a nod to my cultural heritage, which is white Christian woman”) she is loyal, competitive, and passionate. 3“Wedding Day.” Girls, season 5, episode 1. HBO. 21 February 2016. She goes for her dreams without fear of what people might think and is always there for her friends when needed.
The best episode to get to know Marnie is “Panic in Central Park.”
Jessa Johansson (Jemima Kirke)
Jessa (Jemima Kirke) is Hannah’s friend from college and a free spirit. She presents a carefree attitude on life as she loves traveling, sex, and once:
“just bathed in a stream then ran through a field to dry off.”
4“Wedding Day.” Girls, season 5, episode 1. HBO. 21 February 2016.
Jessa’s life isn’t as glamorous as it seems; she marries a banker on a whim; enters a destructive relationship; craves a closer relationship with her father; and gets kicked out of rehab. Perhaps the worst thing Jessa does is date Adam, Hannah’s ex-boyfriend. Jessa knows what she is doing is wrong and chooses to do it anyway.
She is always honest and intensely herself without considering how her words might hurt people. Her carefree but destructive attitude is best exemplified when she says:
“I’m going to look fifty when I’m thirty. I’m going to be so fat because I’m going to be full of experiences.”
5“It’s a Shame About Ray.” Girls, season 2, episode 4. HBO. 2 February 2013.
The Best episode to get to know Jessa is “Video Games.”
Shoshanna “Shosh” Shapiro
Shoshanna Shapiro, or Shosh (Zosia Mamet), is the youngest of the girls, and Jessa’s cousin. She is a student at NYU and like Jessa, is intensely herself and is known for her iconic hairstyles and fast speaking. Shosh starts as the most innocent of the group, but slowly grows up and drifts away.
The rest of the girls typically ignore her and don’t include her in their drama, despite her always supporting them. Shosh has an on-again off-again relationship with Ray, an older man, and always sees the best in him. She has a superiority complex but once she graduates and does not immediately get a job, Shosh realizes how difficult it is in the real world.
The best episode to get to know Shosh is “Japan.”
Addressing The Controversies
If HBO wanted controversy in their shows; Girls delivered. (The full list of controversies is enumerated here.) From the very first episode, Girls was plagued with controversies. 6Moylan, Brian. “A Complete Timeline of All the Controversies Girls Started.” Vulture. 12 February 2017. Accessed 9 June 2024.
The show takes place in Brooklyn, New York, one of the most diverse places in the world, and has entirely white main and supporting characters. There are lots of nudity and gratuitous sex scenes. The entire premise of the show consists of privileged upper-middle-class white women complaining about how miserable their lives are.
The main characters are selfish, narcissistic, and — at times –unlikeable. A majority of the criticism for this show is valid. However, the inclusion of nudity and the flawed characters displays the bravery and vulnerability of the writers and actors. Dunham was and is criticized for her nudity on screen, but this mostly stems from the fact that she does not have the “ideal” body type that fits into heteronormative culture.
Dunham does not have a problem with herself and viewers shouldn’t either. It is important to note that Dunham wasn’t just an actor in the show, she was also the creator and one of the main writers. She decided to show her body on screen to add to the realism of the show and the vulnerability of the character.
As for the characters being unlikeable, they have undesirable but realistic, personality traits. Part of what makes watching this show so uncomfortable, and, at times, cringe-y, is that viewers see all of their own worst traits in the characters. 7MacDonald, Sarah. “Revisiting HBO’s Girls feels like a time capsule of youth, failure — and grace.” CBC Arts. 10 February 2023. Accessed 9 June 2024.
Furthermore, while fictional, Hannah and Jessa have similarities to their actors, Dunham and Kirke, respectively. Dunham has OCD like Hannah and Kirke’s upbringing in New York was similar to Jessa’s.8 Tolentino, Jia. “On Finally Watching Girls, a Different and Better Show Than I’d Been Led to Imagine.” The New Yorker. 13 April 2017. Accessed 9 June 2024.
Playing a character similar to yourself and having all of your flaws broadcast on television for millions of people to watch and analyze takes a great deal of introspection, courage, and self-awareness. This should be applauded, not criticized. Viewers don’t need to love every character, but they do need to understand where their actions come from.
These characters possess the entitlement that millennials were accused of having as they entered the workforce. As millennials were the target audience, a lot of the anger and frustration they felt at the characters is now being recognized in themselves as more people are turning to rewatch Girls.
The Breakdown Of Friendships
Girls was never shy about fights and showed tension in relationships and friendships. The four girls are all supposed to be best friends, but they don’t always act like it. They often have fights that end in tears and seem like the end of the friendship. Characters don’t recover by the end of the episode, or even by the end of the season, portraying lingering hurt and betrayal.
In the season one episode “Leave Me Alone,” Marnie and Hannah have a huge fight, accusing one another of being self-centered and a bad friend. The fight ends with Marnie moving out of the apartment, and even by the series finale, their friendship never fully recovered. They constantly bicker and take breaks from their friendship.
“Beach House” (Sn 3, Ep 7)
One of the most iconic fights of the series — season 3, episode 7 — occurs in “Beach House,” where Marnie plans a weekend getaway for the girls as “a good opportunity to have fun together and prove to everyone via Instagram that we can still have fun as a group.” 9“Beach House” Girls, season 3, episode 7. HBO. 16 February 2014.
Marnie is overly controlling and tries to force everyone to have fun her way and gets angry when Hannah invites more friends to the beach house. The girls all get too drunk, resulting in a fight where they all air their grievances against one another and it quickly gets nasty.
Shosh calls out Hannah by saying, “Seriously, I have never met anyone who thinks their life is so fascinating. I wanted to fall asleep in my vomit all day listening to you talk about how you bruise more easily than other people.” 10“Beach House” Girls, season 3, episode 7. HBO. 16 February 2014. Shosh also tells how she feels left out of the group, while Hannah and Marnie take turns attacking each other for once again, being self-absorbed and bad friends.
This episode ends with all the girls dancing together on the sidewalk, but it’s not an entirely happy ending. All the pent-up anger towards each other that had been brewing since the start of the series was released during the fight, but there was no apology, resolution, or attempts made by anyone to change their behavior.
“Goodbye Tour” (Sn 6, Ep 9)
This theme continues through the end of the series. In the second to last episode, “Goodbye Tour,”11Girls. Season 6, Episode 9: “Goodbye Tour.” 2012-2017. HBO. Hannah arrives at Shosh’s apartment only to realize that Shosh is having an engagement party.
Hannah was not invited to this party and she didn’t even know Shosh was engaged. All the girls meet in the bathroom for one last big fight. Shosh cut Hannah from her life because she was tired of feeling left out, as Hannah never told Shosh about her pregnancy. All the bickering through the years reaches a boiling point, and it seems like the girls will never be friends again.
From what viewers can see, they won’t be. The end of the episode shows each girl dancing at the party on her own (in contrast to the ending of “Beach House” where after the fight they all dance together). Hannah and Jessa both apologize to each other, but it doesn’t seem like they will continue their friendship — the apology feels more like a goodbye.
Jessa and Shosh don’t appear in the series finale and viewers never see either of them interact with Hannah’s newborn baby. Marnie and Hannah remain friends, but even in the finale they bicker and have the same arguments they’ve had for six seasons.
Girls (2012-2017) — “A Finale Without Friends”
As viewers, we watch television for escapism. When watching a show, we want to spend time with our TV friends in their perfect TV world where no problem is so large that it can’t be resolved by the end of a twenty-minute episode. Girls doesn’t do this. The characters’ selfishness and fights have real-life consequences that their relationships don’t recover from.
In shows like Friends (1994-2004) and How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014) characters will date their best friend’s ex, and the drama is played for laughs and everyone is usually forgiven in an episode or two. But in Girls, when Jessa starts dating Adam, she and Hannah’s friendship never recovers. The penultimate episode shows them having a tearful and heartfelt apology, but Jessa is nowhere to be seen in the finale after the birth of Hannah’s baby.
There is comfort in sitcoms and other comedies because the friend group stays together and they never drift apart, but this isn’t representative of real life. Girls captures the heartbreak, natural drifting, and breakdown of friendships and other relationships. This happens in real life to real people and drifting away from friends is an unfortunate reality of growing up.
It might not provide escapism, but Girls is a more accurate portrayal of real, flawed, young women and how they navigate the world. The frustration people feel with the characters isn’t unwarranted: they often make silly decisions and act in their own best interest while disregarding the feelings of the people they are closest to. However, the characters are indicative of the early 2010s and millennials and how hard it can be to grow up.
Girls acts as a mirror held in front of millennials (even though these character flaws apply to other generations as well). Many people may feel offended and called out by having their flaws so well portrayed on television. Others find comfort in realizing no one is perfect and other people battle similar feelings of selfishness and self-loathing, as well as feeling lost.
Social media bombards false images of perfect lives — friendships and relationships — causing people to feel especially isolated when their lives might not be as perfect as everyone else’s seems to be.
The point of the series is best summed up during Jessa and Hannah’s apology to one another, “We were all just doing our best… Our best was awful.” 12“Goodbye Tour.” Girls, season 3, episode 7. HBO. 9 April 2017. Growing up is hard and we are far from perfect, which Girls showed audiences time after time.
References
- 1Holtermann, Callie. “Why Are So Many People Rewatching Girls?” The New York Times. 16 March 2023. Accessed 9 June 2024.
- 2Bradshaw, Lara. “The Critical Investigation of HBO’s Girls: Feminist Test, Quality, and Happy Womanhood.” Picturing the Popular, vol. 34, no. 1, Spring 2014, pp. 32-38. Accessed 9 June 2024.
- 3“Wedding Day.” Girls, season 5, episode 1. HBO. 21 February 2016.
- 4“Wedding Day.” Girls, season 5, episode 1. HBO. 21 February 2016.
- 5“It’s a Shame About Ray.” Girls, season 2, episode 4. HBO. 2 February 2013.
- 6Moylan, Brian. “A Complete Timeline of All the Controversies Girls Started.” Vulture. 12 February 2017. Accessed 9 June 2024.
- 7MacDonald, Sarah. “Revisiting HBO’s Girls feels like a time capsule of youth, failure — and grace.” CBC Arts. 10 February 2023. Accessed 9 June 2024.
- 8Tolentino, Jia. “On Finally Watching Girls, a Different and Better Show Than I’d Been Led to Imagine.” The New Yorker. 13 April 2017. Accessed 9 June 2024.
- 9“Beach House” Girls, season 3, episode 7. HBO. 16 February 2014.
- 10“Beach House” Girls, season 3, episode 7. HBO. 16 February 2014.
- 11Girls. Season 6, Episode 9: “Goodbye Tour.” 2012-2017. HBO.
- 12“Goodbye Tour.” Girls, season 3, episode 7. HBO. 9 April 2017.