Why I’ll miss the brave, flawed bril­liance of Lena Dunham’s Girls

I was a late-bloomer to HBO’s Girls and, once I final­ly start­ed watch­ing it, it took me around two sea­sons to decide whether I actu­al­ly liked it or not. The fact that I had made it through two sea­sons obvi­ous­ly sug­gest­ed that there was enough to like about the show to keep me com­ing back, but for the life of me I couldn’t put my fin­ger on exact­ly what the attrac­tion was.

I wasn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of Lena Dunham’s Han­nah Hor­vath – in fact, at times, I cov­ered my ears, inca­pable of lis­ten­ing to yet anoth­er self-absorbed whiney mono­logue, and this is some­thing I usu­al­ly only ever do when my part­ner is watch­ing some grue­some hor­ror movie and I’m try­ing to drown out the crush­ing of bones and the gush­ing of blood.

Yes, that’s how much Hannah’s nar­cis­sis­tic mus­ings grat­ed on my nerves; at times, I would have pre­ferred lis­ten­ing to The Walk­ing Dead’s sound­track of zom­bie-slaugh­ter. And yet I con­tin­ued to tune into the lives of four infu­ri­at­ing­ly self-cen­tred 20-year-old women on a week­ly basis, deter­mined to find out what it was that kept draw­ing me back in. Then one day it final­ly clicked: these girls are real, well-round­ed per­son­al­i­ties, and they’re not afraid to be ass­holes – I’d even go as far as to say, they thrive on being assholes.

Hav­ing rewatched the entire series in order to pump myself up for the grand finale, I realised that what ini­tial­ly unset­tled me, iron­i­cal­ly, were the three things I crave the most from exact­ly these kinds of TV shows: cred­i­ble pac­ing, body diver­si­ty, and ful­ly fleshed char­ac­ters. In all hon­esty I was so thrown by see­ing a show that nailed all three counts so per­fect­ly, it took time to process. Girls brought a new vision to TV, one I had nev­er expe­ri­enced before – not only do Han­nah and Jes­sa proud­ly show off bod­ies I can actu­al­ly iden­ti­fy with, they also own every part of their warped per­son­al­i­ties in a man­ner only few oth­er TV writ­ers allow their char­ac­ters to do.

Whether we’re look­ing at Shoshanna’s obses­sion with sta­tus and her unjus­ti­fied snob­bery, Marnie’s vex­ing sense of enti­tle­ment, or Jessa’s chaot­ic dri­ve for self-destruc­tion – ulti­mate­ly, they are all in search of some­thing and they are fierce­ly unapolo­getic about their behav­iour en route to find­ing it. In so doing, the show has become an uncom­fort­ably com­i­cal study of mil­len­ni­al atti­tudes and the real emo­tions behind a ridiculed, lost gen­er­a­tion depen­dant on Zoloft, online gurus and celebrities.

Though every char­ac­ter under­went vary­ing degrees of per­son­al growth spurts this sea­son, not all were as sat­is­fy­ing as we would have hoped. But then, here­in lies the beau­ty of this show. There are plen­ty of things that are far from cred­i­ble when it comes to their lifestyles – Han­nah and Marnie’s artis­tic career paths, Shoshanna’s apart­ment ver­sus her non-exis­tent salary, Adam’s insane­ly loud and vio­lent expres­sions of cre­ativ­i­ty in an apart­ment block with­out ever hav­ing been threat­ened with cops – but these dis­crep­an­cies are reme­died by the down-to-earth depic­tion of real, human expe­ri­ences that don’t always have a hap­py ending.

I would have loved to have seen Shoshan­na (Zosia Mamet) suc­ceed in Japan in sea­son five, and I even would have been hap­py to see her rekin­dle her rela­tion­ship with Ray (Alex Kar­povsky), which reached a touch­ing­ly inti­mate lev­el in the series’ finale sea­son. Instead, she was denied this sense of per­son­al growth by hav­ing cho­sen to mar­ry what seems like the first best bid­der. And while her character’s anti­cli­mac­tic end­ing may have irked me, it befits Shoshanna’s inces­sant search for depth in shal­low waters.

The same is true for Jes­sa, who, hav­ing come to terms with her faults in her rela­tion­ship with Han­nah and the oth­er girls, is some­how left surf­ing the ambi­gu­i­ty of pur­ga­to­ry – although she was giv­en a chance to redeem past indis­cre­tions, she was not grant­ed any type of out­look on her future, pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive. Her open-end­ing, as nerve-wrack­ing as it may be, pays trib­ute to her char­ac­ter who, sim­i­lar­ly to Eli­jah (Andrew Ran­nels), was nev­er par­tic­u­lar­ly root­ed through­out the entire run of the series.

How­ev­er, unlike Jes­sa, Eli­jah came out on top in Girls’ final sea­son, and I was ecsta­t­ic to see Dun­ham, Jen­ni Kon­ner and Judd Apa­tow expose Ran­nels’ true poten­tial by allow­ing him to take cen­tre stage in his episode ​‘The Bounce’, which sees him pre­pare for his role in the musi­cal White Men Can’t Jump.

It had already been announced that Girls’ final ever episode, ​‘Latch­ing’, would only include one of Hannah’s friends, in an attempt to avoid the sit­com-style mon­tage approach usu­al­ly reserved for show finales. And while it worked well in that clo­sure was already found in the penul­ti­mate ​‘The Good­bye Tour’, ​‘Latch­ing’ was guilty of being a series’ finale that teased new beginnings.

With only Han­nah, Marnie and Loreen and Hannah’s non-latch­ing new born Grover present in a whol­ly new, sub­ur­ban envi­ron­ment, it felt more like a final sea­son open­er that should have been titled ​‘When Girls Become Women’. Although it did lit­tle in terms of offer­ing a sat­is­fy­ing end­ing to an impor­tant TV era, it cel­e­brat­ed six years of inex­plic­a­ble bonds, mad­den­ing char­ac­ters and mem­o­rable dia­logues in true Girls fash­ion – in oth­er words, this episode like many before will age like wine: the longer you let it sit, the clear­er the inten­tions of the writ­ers will become, and the bet­ter it will become.

In its final episode, Girls revis­its the strongest hate-love rela­tion­ship on the show in order to pro­vide it with a much-need­ed con­clu­sion brought on by Becky Ann Baker’s incred­i­ble Loreen. Feel­ing inad­e­quate and des­per­ate­ly want­i­ng to out-friend all of Hannah’s oth­er friends, Marnie takes it upon her­self to help raise Grover – not because she par­tic­u­lar­ly wants to, but because, as always, she needs a new sto­ry­line that will prove to her­self and oth­ers that she is indeed a good, self­less person.

She takes on the task with the same Google-schooled con­vic­tion as she did her divorce, and all the while you can see the Insta­gram-style film reel she imag­ines her­self fea­tur­ing in inside her head. Her inten­tions are par­tial­ly good as she tries to sup­port Han­nah through her breast­feed­ing issues, but her rea­sons for stay­ing are more caught up with lever­age to hold over Hannah’s head in future years than any­thing else.

Bring­ing Marnie and Han­nah back togeth­er for ​‘Latch­ing’ feels like a con­scious deci­sion the writ­ers made to empha­sise that per­son­al growth doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly apply to all areas of your life, and it cer­tain­ly doesn’t hap­pen overnight. Togeth­er, Marnie and Han­nah quick­ly fall back into their for­mer, self-obsessed and com­pet­i­tive habits, but left to their own devices – whether this means Face­Sex­ing some guy, or hav­ing it out with a ran­dom teenaged brat – they find the space to grow into the women they are meant to be.

A reveal­ing con­ver­sa­tion with Loreen makes Marnie realise the tox­i­c­i­ty lev­els her friend­ship with Han­nah has reached, com­pelling her to seri­ous­ly con­sid­er her future for the first time in a long while. And Han­nah, who had already exhib­it­ed signs of mater­nal warmth in episodes like ​‘Gum­mies’, final­ly comes to under­stand what moth­er­hood con­sti­tutes in all its lone­ly, emo­tion­al and fright­en­ing glo­ry and, as always, she makes no excus­es about her behav­iour whilst find­ing her way.

Going out on a breast­feed­ing metaphor, Girls rein­forces the mes­sage it has been relay­ing all along: just because Hol­ly­wood notions and social media war­riors dic­tate bonds can only be formed in one par­tic­u­lar, all-approved man­ner, it doesn’t mean that the same approach works for every­one. Whether you’re feed­ing on for­mu­la, or have latched on to liq­uid gold – we’re all just wing­ing it in this thing called life, and the source of your nour­ish­ment doesn’t mat­ter as much as the love with which it is made.