Kevin R. Elder, my Co-AD at the theatre, recently told me that I should watch the HBO show Girls. He said he thought I'd like the writing. I had read a bit about it and all I knew was that it was being likened to Sex and the City.
I watched it and I really, really liked it. I see Kevin again (as I do most everyday) and he tells me that after a positive critical beginning, it is getting a lot of bad press and reviews. This interests me so I go home and search around.
Here are my thoughts on all of this (and I will digress here now for a bit...)
A long time ago there was this show called Sex and the City. I had heard about it but I didn't have cable and didn't watch a lot of tv at the time. One summer, I went on tour with my theatre company. On this tour with me was a young man who had recently broken my heart and his GIRLFRIEND who (and she had every right) hated my guts for reasons I don't care to go into it. I loved my theatre show, my company members, being on tour etc. but by the time we got to Winnipeg (which was the last stop) I was pretty collapsed. It was July in Manitoba so it was 175 degrees with 125% humidity. The lady Byron and I were staying with was a little bit coo-coo pants as she actually kept track of how much toilet paper we used. However, she had dvds of the first season of Sex and the City. I was all done with everything at this point so Byron (also exchausted from the tour and probably from taking care of me all the time) and I watched them. And I loved them.
I was 29 years old, confused, making bad choices, in love with a complicated unavailable man, etc.
I became a very big SATC fan. This show also got a lot of flack.
It's trite.
It's not real.
All those women do is eat and drink and that is not realistic. When do they work? How do they stay so skinny? How do they have money? This could never happen in real life. Etc.
Who fucking cares?
I get home from tour and thanks to a birthday I become a 30 year old female artist, semi-broke, working 3 jobs, dating jerkfaces, always trying to lose those last 10 pounds that will totally fix everything that is wrong in my life.
Why do I want to watch a tv show about what's real? Why would I want to watch a show about 4 women going to work, cooking chicken breasts and stupid vegetables for the week, selling their clothes to Buffalo Exchange for some extra cash? Seriously? I wanted to escape and have a good time. I wanted to go to my friend Kristin's house with 4 dvds and a bottle of vodka (which started as cosmopolitans and then just became shots of vodka) and watch TELEVISION. It's television.
Okay, I digressed a lot. My point is that the tv show Girls is not realistic perhaps. They're not terribly likeable.Yes, if some of these girls were my sister or friend I might be like, "Buck up and get a fucking job." but they're not. They're pretend. I like watching their bad choices and stupidity. I like the writing and think it is clever and funny and dirty.
Maybe I am secretly afraid when I like something considered trite. I'm a leader of an experimental theatre company. I fancy myself a writer, a reader, an artist, a world traveler.
But everything can't be the fucking Sound and the Fury, you know?
If critics don't like it, why don't they go write a show about real life with likeable people?
Jeez.
Thanks for letting me bitch. You rock.
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