HBO's Girls: A Review

Clip Spot: So Much Potential

Lena Dunham's new comedy on HBO, Girls, is a show anyone who's interested in good story-telling, intelligent and honest discussion of gender and sociality, and brilliant humor should see. If shows like New Girl, Whitney or whatever other excuse for entertainment is out there claiming to tackle woman- and girl-hood have been in your radar due to incessant marketing by mainstream networks, you will - thankfully - forget all about them after seeing this show.

The pilot was awkwardly and honestly funny. And awkward and honest is rarely a bad combo when it comes to comedy. Anyone who has the bug of creativity will be bound to relate to Hannah, the main character. Hannah's an only child. She's 24, has graduated with a major in English, and is working, well, interning, in the mecca of the publishing world: New York City. The daughter of two professors, Hannah thinks that she can rely on her parents supporting her till her internship gets converted into a job.

Alas, over a dinner of pasta and chardonnay, her parents inform her that after two years of supporting her post-college, they have decided to let her fly solo. And this is when the story gets awkward, hence promisingly good.

Hannah's a hub of insecurities which she seems to be able to turn into a strangely bearable self-mythologizing parody are what make the show. And, boy, there are plenty of great ones.

I like this. I like it because it's closer to anything real that girls, women, and the creatives encounter when trying to do real life. Thankfully, voices like Lena Dunham are bright, loud, and funny enough to drown out all the other nonsense that network TV tries to push people into liking. A narrative is only good when it is relatable. That, this show is.