Not to be dramatic, but I think Girls (2012) is one of the best pieces of television to come out of the 2010’s.

I first started Girls in 2022, I watched the first season and really enjoyed it. For some reason, I never went further. Until this year, when I saw it pop up in my recommended. I started at the beginning of the show and was immediately in awe of it. Something just clicked. The show is messy, cringe worthy and hopelessly self aware.

But what I like to focus on, is the immaculate and brutally honest depiction of female friendships, how intimate and formative they can be. How they can be toxic and co-dependent, how they evolve and dissolve and rebuild in ways that romantic relationships are unable to.

Say what you want about Lena Dunham as person, no one can deny that she is a genius, and dare I say, the voice of a generation. With Girls, Dunham strived to create deeply flawed characters, that were, meant to portray real life women. Although, not all women as the main characters are white, privileged and straight women. “I didn’t want to make a show about good people or bad people, I wanted to make a show about people figuring it out.”

And that’s what the core of the show is, girls, figuring it out. Together. The TV show is often compared to Sex And The City, but I don’t necessarily agree with this. At all. Sex And The City has never been a show that appealled to me, the characters seemed aspirational, and actors acting. Whereas, Girls felt more like I was watching the four girls grow up and grow into themselves. They are not confident or glamorous; they’re awkward, self-involved and often times cruel to one another.

Take Hannah for example, depicted by Lena Dunham, awkward, entitled, arrogant and often saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. She spirals, self-sabotages and clings to the idea that being a writer rids her of any emotional accountability. And yet there’s something so honest about her. You may not like her character (I don’t), but that might just be because you recognise yourself in her. I definitely do. Hannah isn’t a simple, or easy character. She’s messy, clouded by her drive to be unique while being completely blind to the way she affects others.

I can see myself in Jessa, Shoshana, Marnie and Hannah, whether I want to or not. Dunham forces us to look at ourselves, to accept that life is not one straight line. I got no satisfaction out of the show, there’s no moral resolution, no redeeming character arc. There is just one thing, the comfort of knowing you are not alone in this. That being lost does not always have to be a bad thing.

It doesn’t sugar-coat the difficulties of female friendship about how awful and beautiful it can be. It shows the jealousy, the neediness, the distance that grows when you’re too busy worrying about yourself. But most importantly, it shows the bond. That no matter what happens, no matter how much they can hurt you, you will always love them.

The lack of accurate depictions of female friendships in film and TV is staggering. So often we’re shown, ride or die soulmates or backstabbing bittersweet rivals. Rarely are we ever shown the inbetween: the resentment that bubbles up at the surfaces, the dependency (Marnie and Hannah), the idealization and romanticisation (Shoshana and Jessa) or the love that is so intense it becomes confusing.

That’s why Girls is so radical. It doesn’t idealise or sanitise these relationships. It shows the frazzled and complexity. It shows friends who hurt one another, who outgrow one another, who drift apart and come back. Not because everything is healed, but because of the love they have for one another, because the understanding and acceptance comes before anything else.

Girls was liberating for me to watch, as it made me recognise the parts of myself I wanted to ignore, my flaws and insecurities. Knowing that some of the traits I had was not personal to me felt like a relief.

The writing and energy in Girls is unique to Dunham, it speaks to a bracket of girls that strive to be great, while more often than not, fall flat on their face while causing an absurd amount of chaos along the way. Girls that often cringe at themselves and use wit as a mask in order to cope with their insecurities.

Girls like us are often misrepresented in Cinema and TV, usually casted off as outputting or ‘arrogant’. Seeing a show that had no villain or hero, no moral story, a very character driven series than plot driven was satisfying. it’s a refreshing and new view that I wish there was more of.

Anyways, I’ll leave this with my favourite Shoshana Shapiro moment.

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