Girls: Do You Watch It?

cartera45 · February 13, 2013, 11:09am

That doesn’t necessarily make that young woman any less narcissistic.

musicamusica · February 13, 2013, 11:44am

“The guys are all hot” I hardly think so. Did you think that the herione addict was hot? Or Chris O’dowd? Ummmmm with the exception of the 42 yr old character…I think virtually ALL the guys are schlubs or dorks. Just a matter of taste, I suppose.
And yes, 24 year olds tend to OBSESS on relationships.

alexissss · February 13, 2013, 12:31pm

@tpt
This.
If I ever grow up to become so egotistical, I’d give my friends permission to repeatedly slap me.

Seeing moms okay with their daughters being similar to Hannah, well. Very interesting.
LOL My mom would beat me for that.
Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration.
I do wish we as young people would be more community oriented. Think more about how society works and what’s best for it.

megpmom · February 13, 2013, 12:41pm

There are many ways to be 24 years old in America and “Girls” just shows one of them. It is a small subsection of our culture. It is probably odd, or scary or just plain “wrong” to many people but it does exist. I, for one, would not want all of my bad choices from my 20s on TV, but this is the generation of reality TV - there is no privacy. And, at least “Girls” is fictional. I am more disturbed by Jersey Shore, the Bachelor, Buck Wild and all the other so-called reality TV.

BalletMom · February 13, 2013, 12:42pm

Ummm the very fact that she is depicting these characters in such a self absorbed way means (to me) that she is poking fun at her very privileged self. Yes, there are many selfless 20-somethings out there doing great things, but many more are not! The show is not supposed to be teaching us how to live!

Sent from my DROID X2 using CC

musicamusica · February 13, 2013, 12:56pm

Yes Ballet, self absorption IS the theme of the program. Just look at the reaction of actor Patrick Wilson after Hannah goes into self obsessed speech at the end of the day. And I wonder at all the overtly sexist, racist, and down right horrible programming on television and what show gets the most flack? GIRLS.
Why do you think that is?
And please…if you only know the show from arbitrary YOUTUBE clips, don’t bother answering the question.

megpmom · February 13, 2013, 1:11pm

musica: I have no idea why people have such a hard time with Girls. I enjoy the clever dialogue, the realistic impulsiveness and recklessness of being young, the believability of the characters. I don’t look at all TV as morality plays - some of it is just plain fun and entertaining. I could do with out all the nudity but I realize that it serves a purpose - breaking down barriers, exposing biases, making us uncomfortable. I say kudos to Lena Dunham - she has really got America talking.

musicamusica · February 13, 2013, 1:33pm

And I think we can all agree that “Jersey Shore” would be a much better show if only Snookie would join “Teach for America”.

Sorry…I could not resist.

mstee · February 13, 2013, 2:02pm

Haven’t tried watching. My hubbie accidentally watched it last night, woke up to it on HBO after falling asleep on the couch. He said he didn’t get it, but I guess it was a spicy enough episode to keep him watching the whole episode.

NorthMinnesota · February 13, 2013, 2:07pm

I don’t have a hard time with the show. I just don’t think there is “clever dialogue” so I don’t watch it anymore. No “believability of characters” in this part of the country. :)

cartera45 · February 13, 2013, 2:13pm

Ha! I doubt Snookie is that opportunistic.

ignatius · February 13, 2013, 5:19pm

I just asked my 22 year old if she or any of her friends watch the show. She answered “no” but a girl she knew in high school really likes it and posts about it on Facebook. She qualified that comment with a “but that’s not necessarily a good thing …”

Neither my 24 year old or my 26 year old watch it either …

sewhappy · February 13, 2013, 6:01pm

Tried. Didn’t find it entertaining. Tried again. Didn’t find it entertaining.

Actually, kind of depressing, not funny. What can I say? I guess suppose to like it but can’t.

JHS · February 13, 2013, 6:16pm

My 26-year-old daughter, a TFA-alum Greenpoint resident (exteriors for the show get filmed on her block), watches it pretty regularly. She is plus-minus about Dunham, but then she is plus-minus about almost everything; she generally admires Dunham’s writing. She loved Tiny Furniture as soon as it came out, and followed Dunham’s web series long before Girls happened. She gets annoyed at the characters’ self-absorption and their un-self-conscious extreme privilege. But I suspect she wishes she had as many opportunities to make the wrong choice as they do, and that she, too, could meet some of those awful straight boys. (Not much chance. She works full time, and goes to grad school almost full time, so does little else, and both environments are almost straight-boy-free.)

Somewhere on the Web there is a video of my daughter and her ex-housemate watching and reacting to the first episode of Girls. “Girls On Girls”.

I’ve only watched it a couple of times, because I don’t have HBO and it hasn’t risen to the top of my Netflix queue yet. The last full episode I saw – from Season 1, when they all went to a party in Bushwick – was awfully good. I was also really impressed by Dunham’s interview with Terry Gross a few months ago.

By the way, to the poster who claimed there had been no TV show based in New York with a nonwhite central character since The Cosby Show: How about Ugly Betty? Not to mention In Living Color.

alwaysamom · February 13, 2013, 7:11pm

How about 30 Rock? And as for non-comedies, several of the one hour procedurals, based in NYC, have minorities in their ensemble casts - Law & Order, Law & Order SVU, The Good Wife (although supposed to be in Chicago, it’s filmed in NY), Elementary, Person of Interest, Unforgettable, Suits (although filmed in Toronto, based in NYC), Rescue Me, ones I can think of offhand, in addition to some that I mentioned in an earlier post.

musicamusica · February 14, 2013, 12:10am

Well it’s not popular but it is talked about. Even on this thread-- posters who had never really seen the program still felt compelled to post negative opinions. And every media blogger on the planet seems to have at least one take on the show.

alh · February 14, 2013, 10:09am

Thinking this would be interesting, I searched “Girls On Girls” - no success, but lots of rather risque sites and also some sex ed. Is there a way to narrow the search criteria? If you were actually intending to share the clip?

JHS · February 14, 2013, 11:18am

I considered, but decided against, adding a caution not to search for the video under that title. You will probably be getting gross pop-up ads for weeks! Sorry.

JHS · February 14, 2013, 11:33am

I also decided against linking to the video (which probably would violate the TOS anyway). But here is a substantial excerpt from the essay my daughter wrote to accompany it, which may be of interest to the parents reading this thread:

I have lived in Greenpoint for almost two years. The new HBO show Girls, from (privileged, slightly skewed, and mostly very funny) wunderkind Lena Dunham filmed down the street from my apartment all summer, announcing its presence with neon fliers and behemoth white trailers. This subtle adjustment of the neighborhood landscape by television crews is not a rare occurrence, since Greenpoint is regularly the background on shows like The Good Wife and Law and Order. It usually stands in for a working class neighborhood that looks a little too nice for brutal crime (we have pastel vinyl-sided houses!), or an industrial backwater that looks just seedy enough for the sinister to materialize (we have warehouses and graffiti!). But it is rare for shows that film in Greenpoint to actually explicitly take place here. Usually Greenpoint, like the rest of New York, is standing in for something that it isn’t, quite.

Girls is a little different, at least on the surface. This Greenpoint is clearly sort of ours, with its hapless twentysomethings who talk like us and walk like us and make terrifyingly stilted emotional choices that are perhaps a little close for comfort. But not really. Despite my similar background to the “girls” of the title and my pricey liberal arts education, I have never come close to begging my parents for thousands of dollars a month while high on opium tea. Nobody else I know has, either. But I’ve also never been on a television show, and I don’t run with the most happening crowd. Therein is the challenge for Girls, which clearly seeks to be somewhat realistic while maintaining a compelling narrative. So we have little stunts like the opium begging incident, girls taking baths together, and the shameless moment like when our protagonist Hannah steals the twenty dollars her parents left as a tip for the maid after waking up in their empty hotel room. The parents are gone, and on their way back to the Midwest—and one gets the strong sense that Hannah won’t actually be cut off financially, now or ever. This is not going to be a show about someone getting a real job, because that certainly does not make for good television.
. . . .
Before my roommate and I watched Girls, we talked about identification. It’s assumed, and mostly rightly so, that we’re the target audience for this show because we are, or know, the characters. But in watching it, I (like a lot of other people who have written about it on the internet) couldn’t quite decide if Girls was the television show I want to identify with right now. If my neighborhood is a television set, why not spend my time with something that challenges me a little more than my own life? Maybe the extended adolescence of Girls is what we need, if not for the characters on television to grow, for us to find ways to work around their somewhat daunting example and get ourselves off of the set.

cathymee · February 14, 2013, 11:45am

I personally know a young man, just turned thirty, living this exact lifestyle in Willliamsburg.In the artsy scene, writes a “zine” and a blog, works in a gallery.Just got a book contract (mainstream!) after his blog “blew up” and got him interviews on national TV and newspaper writeups. Very priveleged,Rich kid determidly living w/o support from Mom and Dad. Has a sexually ambiguous artisit girlfriend who fancies herself a Frieda Kulhoe (spelling) lookalike,eyebrows and all.Thinks he’s being “ironic”, went to a Monster truck Rally to celebrate his 30th birthday…thats the present he asked Mom and Dad for! Extremely self involved.
Have a nephew (age 40, not ironic) living in Greenpoint where Girls is filmed, who says they arent too bad on filming days but Smash, when they come to film are the worst!Seems everything NYC centric films their exterior scenes there.

Girls: Do You Watch It?

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