In Which I have Opinions

From time to time I read The A.V. Club. There are articles that I enjoy and agree with their opinions.  More and more, I find myself going "really, guys?"  My ire began when they re-watched Avatar: The Last Airbender.  I disagreed with their assessment of the final episode.  I'm not going to go into details as I know of some friends are still in the process of watching it for the first time.  Largely, I ignore the website as I feel like it's a bunch of hipster writing reviews.  The other day one of their reviews for Girls came across my twitter feed.  It frustrated me.  I've watched Girls, and hated it the whole way through.  At first, I was intrigued because main stream media seems to really hate the show due the main character being homely.  I shrugged at that.  Then the indie media keeps heralding it with great praise for its feminist stances.  So I watched it, didn't enjoy it, and thusly complained to TheGirl about it.  I kept watching the show to see if it would get better, and to figure out exactly what I didn't like about it.  


The reality: it’s a show about average, white, hipsterish girls living in NYC.  It's the hipster version of Sex in the City. The difference being that the first couple of seasons of Sex in the City were actually good. Most of the characters in Girls are horrible people, only it's not funny or intriguing. Shows about horrible people are nothing new, and usually make for great TV.  Often they are funny like Seinfeld, or are in the dramatic vein of Big Love. The main character, Hannah, has a horrible boyfriend that has temperamental artist syndrome i.e. he’s an aspiring playwright.  In one scene, he urinates on her in the shower because he thinks it's funny.  The sad part isn't that she puts up with it.  The sad part is that he loves her, and when he fully commits to her she thinks she isn't good enough to be loved by this chump.  Then I end up rooting for the boyfriend for a second until the riot grrrl in me kicks in saying um no we all deserve better than that.  
That’s the real crux of why I hate this show.  It’s so heavy handed with how it’s hard to be a woman in the city.  So let’s everyone be victims, and not stand up for ourselves b/c you know that’s hard and stuff.   I find myself rooting for the average girl who isn't all that inspirational, but has the only story line that is trying to discover something about herself.  If the characters don’t evolve in the slightest then what’s the point?  I’m sure some feminist studies major will write a paper about how Girls is changing media with its vulnerability.  Girls isn't changing anything. Every time I'm almost on board with the show, the plot device shifts so hard I'm crushed under the weight of what the show is pushing me to believe. Good art is subtle. This is not subtle.
TheGirl and I finally watched the last season of Big Love.  That’s a show that can be hard to love as the subject of polygamy is hard to take.  The writers did an amazing job at portraying all the characters.  It’s insane that a television show centered around a polygamist family actually ends up being a feminist show while a show centered around white girls in Brooklyn is far from that idea. Through five seasons we watched Nicollette Henrickson struggle from being a victim to a survivor of a history of abuse at the hands of fundamentalist chauvinists.  I realize Girls is still in its first season, but I'm doubtful that Hannah has that much growth in her. And how had is it to survive being white and privileged? If nothing has ever really happened to the characters then where is the plot line supposed to go?
The girls in Girls went to college, that's how most of them met. Hannah was an English Literature major. She's a writer. Maybe it's naive of me, but how can you go through a program in which the feminist movement is featured so prominently only to be such a weak, shallow character. We are twenty years past the Riot Grrrl movement. You can't tell me that Hannah wouldn't have had a Bikini Kill poster in her dorm room, or didn't at least listen to Sleater Kinney. Why can't I have empowered women in my media? I want Girls to be more than it is because it has the potential to be great if the writers could just know when to stop. You can be vulnerable and strong at the same time.