News, Television, Women Directors

Can Girls Be a Game Changer?

I found this brief behind the scenes one minute and forty two second piece from the upcoming HBO series Girls created by Lena Dunham and after I watched it I could not help but think that this show could be a game changer.

For anyone who saw Tiny Furniture (and if you haven’t wait the hell are you waiting for?) you know that Lena is a huge talent. She’s got a great voice, she clearly has vision as a director, and she does not hesitate to put herself in the mix as an actor too.

Based on the success of her tiny movie which I’m pretty sure was made for $25,000 she got an HBO deal to create her own show with Judd Apatow as her executive producer.

Now the show is ready to roll out on April 15 and we are starting to get glimpses. I really like what I see. The reason why I think this could be a game changer is that we are so ready for an HBO show that features women. We are ready for a show about real women and while everyone was so excited about the new shows about women last fall on network TV, I found them all to be disappointing and several completely unwatchable. I gave up Whitney in week 3. I had 8 episodes of 2 Broke Girls — which became a show of one liners for Kat Dennings — in my DVR and dumped them. The only one that I can still handle in the New Girl. My hands down favorite new comedy of the season is Up All Night and for all of NBC’s troubles they have awesome lady friendly shows in Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock and now Up All Night.

But Girls will be different because it is HBO, and HBO let’s you talk about vaginas and sex and you don’t have to count how many times you say it. You can just go for it. That’s why it is the perfect format for Dunham who takes the rawness of life, the misery we all go through and makes it fucking funny.

And Girls is different because it is the vision of a 25 year old woman who says in this short clip that she created the series because she did not see a “pop culture mirror reflecting girls my age experiencing the trials and tribulations of being female at this specific time.” And let’s face it. Dunham is not the typical sitcom star and that’s what I love about this too.

And Judd Apatow is taking another step toward feminist redemption by championing Lena and figuring out a way for her to have the freedom to make the show she needed to make. Here’s what he says in the piece. Lena is the “star, the writer of much of it, the director of a lot of it- there’s a pure vision to what is happening on screen.”

Think about it. How cool is it that HBO is trusting a 25 year old woman’s vision. This is a big deal. So just like Bridesmaids we all need to spread the word about this show. Cause the better it does the better it will be for all of us.


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