Is There Any Value For Men In HBO's Girls?

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At the behest of the AskMen editorial staff, I watched the premiere of HBO’sGirls on Monday evening. I know it aired on Sunday, but I don’t have HBOand for reasons that have yet to be explained to me, AskMen refuses to buy me asubscription. Come on guys, it’s a business expense. If Eastbound & Downand some soft-core porn for one of your writers doesn’t qualify as a taxwrite-off, I don’t know what does.The idea was that I’d watch itand then talk about how a male audience might relate to it, and I will -- or at leastI’ll try to. But let me just say right off that bat that for me, the show (or atleast the pilot) was borderline unwatchable.To quickly summarize, the showcenters around a girl named Hannah who lives in New York City and is writing her memoirs(at age 24). Supporting her are her very hot best friend, a really lame friend, the reallylame friend’s sojourner British cousin, and a goofy-looking love interest whowon’t respond to her texts but will still bang her when she resorts to calling andshowing up at his door. The whole crux of the show is that Hannah is going on her secondyear of an unpaid publishing internship, and now that she’s three years out ofcollege her parents have abruptly decided that she needs to support herself. Compelling, Iknow.The ol' rich parents problem

Conceptually, there are a few themes here that men can relate to. Everyone experiencesthe pain of being weaned off the parental teat at some point or another, be it as soon asyou turn 18 or when you graduate college and eventually find a job that pays you enough tosubsist on your own. I don’t care how self-sufficient you are or how longyou’ve been that way; at some point you were receiving a great deal of parentalassistance, and then one day you weren’t. There are plenty of people whose parentscoddle and support them well into their 20s before suddenly expecting them to know how tobe “real” adults with little preparation, and the show seems to address thatwith more realism (I suppose) than, say, a sitcom would.Similarly, it lookslike the show will tackle the ambiguous nature of relationships for some modern20-somethings. The protagonist’s love interest is introduced in the mostuncomfortable way possible and is portrayed as what people who were lame in high school orcollege refer to as a “douchebag bro” (albeit with a bohemian Brooklynsensibility). Still, their relationship will resonate with a lot of viewers of both sexesin that it’s very one-sided. She purportedly “likes him a lot,” whilehe’s non-responsive and can only be reached when she calls and invites herself over.On the other hand, her hot friend deals with the exact opposite issue -- a doormat of aboyfriend who’s so nice to her that even Hannah describes him as having a vagina.The show does seem to explore some themes that will appeal to both genders. While itdoesn’t approach any of them with much subtlety, it does present them from an angleI don’t recall seeing before.Am I supposed to like any of these people?

My main problem with Girls is that the plot and the characters come off aslazily developed. The protagonist, Hannah, is introduced to us with the likability of anew neighbor installing a sign declaring himself a sex offender. She’s 24, iswriting a memoir that even she admits she hasn’t lived yet, and doesn’t thinkshe should have to work to support herself if that means doing anything counter to“becoming who she is.” To make things even more ridiculous, her parents cutthe cord completely and without warning. There’s no notion of giving her advancenotice or even of forcing her to find a paying job. I have plenty of friends surviving onparental input and plenty who are dealing with having to go it alone for the first time,but none are as entitled as Hannah nor as impetuous as her parents. There’s a broadfield of realism between “living entirely off your parents” and “beingforced into immediate and abject poverty,” but HBO missed the target area entirelyand instead focused on the two hyperbolic endpoints. In doing so, they manage to alienatethose who’ve never had it easy while simultaneously belittling anyone who’sever accepted so much as a few dollars in aid from family members. Continue Reading

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