If this post makes me seem behind the times, I don’t really care. I don’t watch TV, don’t even have cable, and I’ve seen exactly two movies in the past year: Django Unchained and Gangster Squad. I vaguely followed the media fracas around Girls when it debuted last year, and by “vaguely followed” I mean I just slapped my forehead at the idiotic accusations of racism against the show’s writers. I’m half-convinced that Lena Dunham hired Ryan Holiday or some other media manipulator to gin up a completely bogus controversy that would stir interest in this otherwise unwatchable show.
No really, Girls is garbage.
It’s not funny. It’s not truthful. It’s not even entertaining in a “so-bad-it’s-good” kind of way. All of you people in the manosphere who think that Girls somehow espouses red pill truths are completely wrong, and even if you were right, so what? Am I required to rubberstamp every piece of shit that crosses my desk just because it reaffirms my worldview? If Lena Dunham is the voice of my generation, I don’t want to be part of this generation any more. Will you GenXers take me?
Here are the big reasons why Girls sucks.
1. Lena Dunham is intolerably ugly.
Dunham isn’t the ugliest actress working today, but she’s certainly trying to snag the top (bottom?) spot. She was already dealt a bad genetic hand in her gargantuan cow thighs, tiny breasts and flat ass, but she’s inexplicably decided to worsen the problem by refusing to exercise in any way, giving her a stomach that protrudes out further than her chest, flabby arms and a hideous double chin. Combine that with her freakishly translucent skin, tasteless tattoos and premature aging caused by a poor diet (she’s only a little older than I am and she’s already developing forehead wrinkles) and I almost feel like I should offer her condolences for whatever life-threatening disease she’s fighting.
And yet, in some lunatic inversion of common sense, Dunham is the only actress on the show who ever gets naked.
Okay, that’s not quite true; in one episode, we get a nude scene from Dunham’s character’s mother, the only woman on the show I want to see naked even less. Who’s the idiot at HBO who green-lit this? Girls has a veritable plethora of attractive women, from Allison Williams (who resembles an old high school crush of mine) to Jemima Kirke (who resembles one of those shapely Russian women who pose nude for Met-Art or Femjoy). Even Zosia Mamet, with her creepy beady eyes, is decent-looking. And yet they never show us more than their thighs, leaving us to watch Dunham’s numerous vomit-inducing sex scenes, where she looks like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man getting stabbed with an icicle.
The worst part is that the idiots in the mainstream media are heralding Dunham’s disturbing lack of shame as a great leap forward for American culture. “Omigod it’s so wonderful that a REAL woman is being depicted on TV!” What the fuck is wrong with you people? Since when was there a law that requires entertainment—something we engage in to escape the dreariness of our existence—to be a perfect mirror of our everyday lives? I have to look at fat, pasty white girls every day, at the bank, the gas station, the supermarket and more, and they usually have bad attitudes and bastard spawn along with their jiggling rolls.
Why would I want to watch fat, pasty white girls for fun?
2. Girls is not funny.
This is easily one of the most badly written shows I’ve ever watched. The worst part is that Girls is crummy on purpose: it’s firmly rooted in the mumblecore aesthetic, one of the most loathsome cultural movements spawned in the history of film. For those of you not in the know, mumblecore is a genre conceived by upper middle-class Brooklyn hipsters featuring non-professional actors, ugly cinematography, “realistic” improvised dialogue, and thin plots revolving around the tedium of post-college life.
In other words, it’s the kind of movement that could only be spawned by arrogant trust-fund nihilists.
Prior to Girls, Lena Dunham’s only artistic achievement was the mumblecore film Tiny Furniture, and it’s clear she learned nothing from the experience. The bland, wordy dialogue in Girls makes watching it, particularly the early episodes, an exercise in frustration. The pilot episode is so bad that were it not for Dunham and her co-stars having rich and famous daddies, it wouldn’t even be fit for public access TV. There’s no wit, no bite, no filter, just a nauseating smugness that permeates the entire episode. The only time I even chuckled was during the scene where Hannah passes out while talking to her parents because she can’t handle her opium.
In the show’s defense, the second half of the first season is a little funnier, but even then, the writers seem hell bent on sucking out what little comedy Girls has, like a clown mainlining helium from a balloon. Every time the show actually starts to get good, Dunham and her girlfriends find some way to wreck it. For example, the scene at the end of episode five, where Hannah walks in on Adam jerking off, starts off funny but deflates quickly due to the poor writing:
Adam: Does it turn you on, to watch me touch my own cock?
Hannah: Kind of, yeah.
Adam: Or does it disgust you? Do you think I’m really bad?
Hannah: No, I don’t think you’re bad. I mean, everyone does it—
Adam: You think I’m pathetic and disgusting?
Hannah: Yes, actually.
Adam: You do? Why?
Hannah: Because there’s a woman standing less than ten feet from you and all you can do is play with your own cock.
Adam: Is it bad?
Hannah: It’s really bad. It’s pathetic and bad and disgusting and weird and lazy.
Adam: Plus, if you have a big cock, you should use it on a woman.
Hannah: It’s not that big.
Adam: It’s not?
Hannah: No. Maybe that’s why you don’t want me to touch it; maybe you’re embarrassed because it’s not that big.
Adam: Maybe…
This is the kind of writing that you’re supposed to have beaten out of you before you finish your freshman year of college. And this isn’t even the full scene; it goes on for another two minutes, the dialogue constantly circling around the point. The other great scenes in the first season come from episode eight, where Adam pisses on Hannah while she’s showering and when Jessa and Marnie get picked up by a high-strung businessman who tries to guilt them into a threesome. The former is about the only scene in the show that is actually done well, because it’s short and gets to the point, while the latter is—once again—ruined by the fact that it drags on too long.
3. Girls is blue pill to the core.
This is the biggest sin of all. Lena Dunham has duped about half of the manosphere into thinking that her show is somehow espousing anti-feminist truths about sex and women. The reality is that Girls is a box of blue pills in red pill packaging. It’s a celebration of the flakiness and uselessness of modern young women disguised as a satire, in the same way that Stuff White People Like and Portlandia are self-gratification disguised as self-abasement.
It’s true that Girls’ protagonists, with the possible exception of Mamet’s character Shoshanna, are self-absorbed, ignorant, lazy shits. Marnie is a flaky snot who detonates her relationship because she can’t handle dating a man who actually respects her the way society tells him too. Jessa is a carefree slut who causes pain and grief to those around her, whether she misses her abortion appointment to have sex with a stranger she met in a bar or incites a gang of punks to beat up her boss. Hannah is the worst of all, a mooch who callously uses her friends, who leads Adam into thinking that she’s interested in a relationship only to dump him at the last minute, who thinks her parents are obligated to endlessly fund her frivolity.
The problem is we’re supposed to root for these characters.
Girls is framed in such a fashion that we’re required to sympathize with the main characters and view their flaws as pluses. For example, the pilot episode ends with Hannah waking up in her parents’ hotel room, trying to order room service on their dime, then stealing the tip they left for the maid. We’re clearly intended to feel sorry for her because her miserly parents and selfish roommate have reduced her to stealing from the poor just to survive.
The supposed “red pill” elements in the script—Hannah’s and Marnie’s relationships with their boyfriends—are clearly framed in a pro-feminist manner. Yes, Adam is an aloof asshole who makes Hannah live out his sick sexual fantasies, like pretending that she’s an eleven year-old girl that he’s raping. But their relationship isn’t framed as a result of Hannah’s hypergamous impulses and poor decision-making, but as a result of how she’s misunderstood and mistreated by the world at large. And when Hannah misleads Adam into falling in love with her, only to break his heart at the last minute, he’s treated as mere collateral damage in her quest for self-actualization.
She’s an empowered independent woman! She doesn’t have to honor her commitments if she doesn’t want to, you sexist misogynist pigs!
I could go into greater detail with Marnie’s and Jessa’s relationships with men and how they fit the same script, but you can figure it out on your own. Girls is yet another example of the mainstream media co-opting underground culture for its own purposes. Much in the same way that the Clash was designed to de-fang punk rock, or how Tom Wolfe’s books were designed to neuter gonzo journalism, Girls’ primary purpose is to inoculate an entire generation of women against the red pill.
“So what if you’re fat and slovenly? You’re fine just as you are, girl!”
“Stuck in relationships with losers? It’s not your fault, you’re a strong, smart woman and guys simply can’t appreciate your awesomeness!”
“Parents cutting you off, making you get a real job? They’re just big meanies who don’t understand your genius!”
It depresses me to see guys in the manosphere praising this cultural gentrification as a good thing.
I should mention that this post was based solely off of the first season; the second season isn’t yet out on DVD and I have no intention of watching it. I don’t need to lick every turd in the litter box to know I’m dealing with a pile of shit.
Click here to buy Girls: The Complete First Season.
Read Next: Day Bang: How to Casually Pick Up Girls During the Day by Roosh V