Girls (Season 1)

Such a rags to riches story.

We women live in terrible times. I know this because of the show Girls.

I knew we were in trouble with Girls from the very first episode, when Lena Dunham's pathetically reckless Hannah consents to passionless doggie-style rape with border-line mentally handicapped Brooklyn loser, Adam. The scene, like so many others in the series, is so desperate to spark repulsion and awkwardness from the viewer that it fails to elicit just that, instead merely calling attention to itself as a show desperately craving a post-modern gag reflex.  

Girls is a disaster of epic proportions, a show so self-conscious and pandering that it's constantly distracting from itself. In ignorantly assuming to be the voice of a voiceless generation, Lena Dunhum's despicable series actively refuses to partake in any substantive statements or opinions on the current role of women (girls, if you prefer). Instead, these twenty-something liberal-arts-grad heroines repeatedly demonstrate disregard for their so-called best friends and lovers, and worse, any semblance of respect for themselves.

Such irresponsibility is inexcusable, especially considering the current media and political debacle concerning women's rights in contemporary American society. That being said, such despondent observations of our generation's trails and pitfalls might be excusable if the narrative cared an iota for the basic tenants of character development. At the end of the first episode, Hannah leaves her parents' hotel after being cut-off financially, a precedent that presumably would result in her character evolving from an economically-challenged post-grad to an empowered, independent protagonist. No such luck, as Hannah succeeds in making increasingly stupid mistakes in her social life and career, even engaging in activities that border on disastrously harmful-- namely, offering to fuck her 50 something grope-y boss and then blackmailing him when he refuses. Such plot developments, which are wholly inconsequential to the plot anyway, are horribly damaging in the context of media depictions of women, considering that Dunham has made it clear that her aim in writing the show was to represent the lives of twenty-something women.   

Irregardless of this, the show refuses to have its characters account for their foibles and change their lives for the better. In this respect, all the female leads, not just Hannah, are boggling suppressed. Take "bohemian" (whatever the fuck that means) Brit Jessa, who can't simply meet with an ex-boyfriend without screwing him in order to prove that she's still desirable since he got a new girlfriend. Meek Shoshana is a virgin, and so obviously she can't engage socially with anyone without coming off as insanely awkward and so completely out of touch with  social conventions that she unknowingly smokes crack at a Bushwick party, strips, and runs down the street screaming (isn't this girl, like, 22 years old?) Even prissy career woman Marnie, who seems to kinda have her life in order, can't take the first step in actively pursuing a crude sexual encounter with a misogynistic sleeze-bag artist when he says, "The first time I fuck you, I might scare you a little because I'm a man" (ew). Instead, because she is so turned on, she runs and hides in the bathroom to ferociously masturbate....at her place of work, nonetheless.

Offensive anti-female depictions aside, the show suffers from repeatedly inane and unfunny plot devices-- such as when Hannah visits her hometown and has (awkward, of course) sex with a charming pharmacist and her father falls in the shower while having sex with her mom. Or when Jessa babysits and loses her employers children in the park. Or any other of the countless pointless scenes that do nothing to advance the plot or spark engaging conversations about gender and sex.

It is ironic that these four women have been referenced in the context of 90's- era Sex and the City. Would Samantha Jones run to the bathroom at the first sexual advance? Would Carrie Bradshaw be defeated by a molesting boss, or humiliate herself with an emotionally abusive fuck-buddy? Come now, let's not pretend that the characters of Girls, all played by the daughters of famous millionaires, are any more "real" than those of Sex and the City; their characters are just as insipid and contrite and shallow as those of the former , except at least the former featured women who acted on their own accord, and appeared earnest in its own botched goal to achieve a notion of female empowerment.

The only thing Girls achieves is portraying the self-hatred and resentment we feel about ourselves, a pervading marginalized group with no identity and no clue on how to move forward.

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