I’m reaching the conclusion of my annual Girls rewatch. Say what you want about Lena Dunham, but you can’t deny her genius.
I genuinely believe that, out of all the women in that friend group, Hannah is the most tolerable.
Media paints Hannah as this devil—annoying, narcissistic, selfish and, worst of all (their words, not mine), fat.
How dare a just okay-looking fat woman show her tits on television? How dare she write her character having sex with attractive men? How dare she?!!!!
If you hate Hannah, there are parts of your own personality that you cannot stand.
Hannah doesn’t say anything that most of us haven’t thought.
“I have work, then a dinner thing, and then I am busy trying to become who I am.”
“I think that I may be the voice of my generation. Or at least a voice. Of a generation.”
“I made a mistake trying to repurpose you.”
“I hate everyone who isn’t you.”
“I know I always said he was murdery in a sexy way, but maybe he’s murdery in a murder way.”
“I think I just feel how everyone feels—which is I have three or four really great folk albums in me.”
“Oh, hello, you fucker! Are you kidding me? Where did you go? Who am I supposed to talk to if you won’t answer your fucking phone, okay? That anorexic, Marnie? Fucking Shoshanna? Or my stalker ex-boyfriend? It’s not like any of them will talk to me. I don’t blame them, ‘cause I cut off all my fucking hair! And now you’re off somewhere, just livin’ it up, wearing a crop top, you probably got your vagina pierced, and you’re not answering your phone and you’re forgetting about everyone who’s fucking it up here. So I hope you’re having a GREAT time. LOVE YOU!”
Hannah speaks in a way that is annoying, selfish, narcissistic, needy, grandiose and, most importantly, honest. Hannah doesn’t say anything that most twenty-somethings haven’t thought. She just says it out loud.
But out of all of her friends, she’s the only one who shows up for them in any real magnitude.
Jessa “needed” a ride from rehab. Hannah, Shosh and Adam road-tripped to pick her up. Hannah is present during Caroline’s birth. Hannah reassures Shoshanna about being a virgin. She goes to Marnie’s wedding and calms her neuroticism.
Hannah consistently and continuously showed up for people who couldn’t give less of a fuck about her.
By the end of the series, their friend group has crumbled.
Jessa did the unforgivable—fucking Adam and then proceeding to fall in love with him. As a result of her guilt, she spends most of season five avoiding Hannah and, when they do hang out, Jessa calls her boring and a lazy writer. The funny thing? I choose to believe Hannah would have given them her blessing if Jessa had just been honest.
Marnie is the male-centered female friend who actively floats on the periphery because she’s preoccupied with chasing dick and trying to find meaning. Then, when her friends forget about her and stop inviting her out, she gets pissed.
She shows up for Hannah in the end because she wants the validation of knowing she’s a “good person.”
Marnie failed at one thing and then let it ruin the rest of her life. She spends five seasons trying to quell the anxiety that paralyzes her. She’s annoying.
Hannah is honest and very aware of her shortcomings. I think the problem for people is that she doesn’t care to apologize for them.
But that’s the heart of Girls: drama, honesty and vulnerability.
Which is why, when I finally sat down to watch I Love L.A. last fall, I was shocked by how little I cared.
Because what made Girls brilliant wasn’t that Hannah Horvath was likable. It’s that Lena Dunham was willing to let her be embarrassing.
Maybe it’s because I’m an East Coast baby, but holy shit, how is Los Angeles so boring? It’s not funny. I don’t care for the characters. It was just okay.
Watching I Love L.A. felt like scrolling social media. Everyone is hyper-aware of their own coolness. Every joke feels engineered to be clipped and posted. The characters aren’t messy enough to be real and they’re not funny enough to compensate.
That weird sardonic attitude that permeates the show makes them unlikeable. Not in a cool, Hannah Horvath intellectual way, but in the sense that it feels like the equivalent of giving Ray Ploshansky a spin-off show.
And I hate Ray.
The beauty of Ray, though, is that he was usually correct about most things. He was just unpleasant to be around.
I’m tired of television executives chasing “the next voice of a generation” by assembling a cast of people who all share the same detached, internet-poisoned sense of humor. The detachment is what is such a turn-off. Generation Z is so committed to avoiding their own inadequacy that it makes us so boring.
I don’t find Rachel Sennott or Ayo Edebiri to be funny in the slightest. Bottoms was so unfunny that I started wondering if being gay was a requirement to understanding the sense of humor.
Girls, at the time, was controversial. An average woman living a messy, vulnerable life. Everyone was broke, struggling and incredibly annoying.
I Love L.A. seems to be running on fumes.
No one cares about the Los Angeles elite because they can just scroll Instagram or TikTok and see the exact same thing without being subjected to the person’s personality.
The genius of Hannah Horvath is that she felt like someone you knew. Or worse—someone you used to be.