HBO’s Girls clearly still need their parents

I caught the series premiere of HBO’s Girls the other night. While I won’t be watching again, it certainly left me with plenty to say. In a nutshell, it may be well done, it seems fairly accurate, but who on this earth does it entertain?

I suppose you could simply chalk up my distaste for this show to my age. I’m certainly not the target demographic for Girls, but perhaps when you reach over-40 there’s just no need to watch young post-college graduates make angsty life mistakes … especially ones you never made. Again, maybe you can chalk all that up to my age, or more specifically the age I was raised in. As a teenager of the ’80s, the decade of economic affluence (and the start of the bigger-better-more state-of-mind, which probably ruined the economy for the 21st century), I was a teenager with a job — the norm back then. I learned about a good work ethic from an early age, which is something parents should still provide for their children, even in the depressed economy in which we now live. You don’t need a good economy to instill a good work ethic.

As a parent, I’m completely horrified that parents only 10-15 years my senior could have screwed up their children as much as the characters in Girls. I can’t begin to figure out the recipe for what created this generation, certainly a combination of poor parenting, technological advances and societal pressure. But I can definitely say that any parent who would bankroll their child’s New York dreams for two years while they worked for free are definitely enablers; they are not doing Hannah any favors. Get a second job … waitress at night … do something to show you have even a little self-respect, the inklings of a work ethic, something to show your parents that they did something right. Even turning tricks, as opposed to getting pity sex from that disgusting beast of a boy, would have been a step in the right direction; at least it would bring in some money.

As a parent, you want to help out your child and give them what they need; I get that. I also get the difference between need and want. If my son ever needs a rent-free place to live, his room at our house is always available to him. Yes, he’ll have to do chores and help prepare meals, but the door is always open. If he truly needed to live in a different location, I could likely be convinced to give him a named amount of supplemental income for a specified period of time to help him get on his feet. But there is no way I’d enable him to work for free for years without him showing a little initiative. However, the show did a lot to show us that Hannah’s parents really weren’t communicating well with her. It’s very possible parents like that can produce a daughter like Hannah. It’s just not fun to watch.

It’s certainly ironic that Peter Scolari plays the role of Hannah’s father. It seems to me he has a thing or two to teach his daughter about living independently in the city. Remember that little old show from the early ’80s called Bosom Buddies, starring Scolari and Tom Hanks? Well, they didn’t expect their parents to bankroll their “independence”; they both had steady, paying jobs and found a creative way of living cheaply. OK, I’m not advocating the deception of posing as women to get cheap room and board (not like I advocated becoming a whore two paragraphs ago …), but I am celebrating the creativity and real independence of these two young people.

I get that Girls compared themselves to Sex and the City in a completely tongue-in-cheek way in the pilot episode, but Sex and the City was a much more appealing show on so many levels. First of all, we had four independent, self-sufficient women living their dream. About a decade older than the girls on HBO’s new show, about the most irresponsible thing they did was carry a credit card debt. Shopping addiction is much preferred to this viewer over opium and angst.

When all is said and done, I’m horrified that Girls is likely an accurate portrayal of a certain sector of the 20-something generation, and if that’s your idea of entertainment, then you’d probably really enjoy what the creator has brought to the screen. It’s funny, in the sense that it’s so real the characters said exactly what I was thinking (or complaining about to my husband). For example, when Hannah, was having sex with that gross boy (whose name I have blocked from my memory), I yelled “shut up!” to the television set, just before he said to Hannah, “Let’s play the quiet game.” This happened in a couple of other spots during the show as well.

Reading this interview with the series creator, it makes me think she has me right where she wants me. I’m somebody’s mom, who tuned in and got freaked out. Damn her.

On another note: Sex and the City: The Complete Collection (Deluxe edition) is the Amazon Gold Box Deal of the Day. You’d do yourself a service by enjoying this series. And I thought I could make it through this post without proclaiming the men of Sex in the City are so much hotter than the boys in Girls, but apparently I could not. I vote Mr. Big and Aidan any day.

Clacked by Debbie McDuffee
on Apr 23, 2012 @ 15:41 EST5EDT