Lena Dunham's "Girls" Is Still The NYC Summer Mood Board
Sweaty, cringe, and desperately annoying. How about it?
Summer in New York City makes people do bizarre things. You only have to spend one 90 degree day here to understand the sentiment. Still, they say it’s one of the best places to experience the season, and most other things, for that matter. There are certain shows that depict life in New York City better than others. "Broad City," for example, hones in on the obscure and perfect ways that you can live here and really do whatever and be whoever you want.
But before "Broad City" came Lena Dunham’s "Girls," the seminal coming-of-age show that chronicles the lives of four women in their early twenties as they navigate life, love, and friendship in Brooklyn. Thanks to TikTok, a whole new generation of viewers are discovering "Girls" for the first time. For others, it's a comforting rewatch—one where we've passed that particular phase of our lives and are watching with a greater understanding of the characters’ flaws, ultimately better connecting us to their narratives. Being a 20-something year-old in New York is both a highly niche, and somewhat universal experience, and the specificity with which Dunham writes “Girls” gives us an opportunity to further relate to Hannah, Marni, Shoshanna and Jessa, and their experiences, insecurities, neurosis and flaws.
But what is it about "Girls" that feels like a blueprint for New York summer?
We have plenty of seminal on-screen references for summer in Italy ("Call Me By Your Name," "The Talented Mr. Ripley") and summer in France ("La Piscine," "La Collectioneuse"), but few for New York in the way that resonates with anyone in their twenties these days. And while "Girls" is certainly visually and thematically different to the film stills that act as moodboard fodder for dreamy Instagram accounts, it’s a much more realistic depiction of how people behave when faced with heatwaves, brokenness (and broke-ness) and mental health issues, compared to, say, Samantha Jones from "Sex & The City" sneaking into Soho House to use the pool on someone’s lost membership card or Serena Van Der Woodsen of "Gossip Girl" escaping to the Hamptons for the entire summer.
In Dunham's "Girls," we are faced with the reality of summer in a city like New York. The subways feel like a dry sauna, the streets smell horrible, sometimes you break up with someone and sometimes you don’t have someone to break up with in the first place. None of it really matters, though, because you live where you live, and your friends are your friends, and, in Hannah Horvath’s words: “You are from New York, therefore you are just naturally interesting.” “Girls” doesn’t shy away from the chaos of summer in the city, but rather embraces it in a way that makes it not only relatable and attainable, but almost desirable with how much fun Dunham has with the layers of her characters.
The summer episodes of “Girls” are some of Dunham’s best. Monogamy is loosely questioned in season 5, episode 7, when Hannah and her boyfriend Fran erupt into an argument about Hannah showing her genitals to her boss, spurring her to say: “So now I’m not supposed to show my vagina to anyone but you, Fran? It’s about to be summer.” The elusive “group chat trip” goes south when the four friends go to the Hamptons together in season 3, episode 7, and the evening turns sour as a result of their messiness when Marnie snaps, “This is not about you, Hannah. This is between us. This was supposed to be a girls only night, but you invited the cast of Magic Mike!”
And of course, there’s the ex episode, when Marnie runs into her ex-boyfriend Charlie, who’s now living a very different life, and makes her question everything. Riding the subway while soaking wet in the arms of a now seemingly dangerous man who is also her ex…sounds like summer behavior.
Let HBO’s “Girls” be your NYC summer mood board this year. Sweaty, cringe, frustrating, messy, free, and desperately annoying. How about it?
