The cast of "Girls" (from left): Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet, Allison Williams and Lena DunhamHBO
“Girls” comes to an end on April 16 after six seasons, and it’s time to bid bye-bye to the best show about the worst of my generation. The HBO dramedy, created by then-24-year-old writer/actress Lena Dunham, brilliantly tackled difficult issues from abortion to sexual assault . . . while also making an entire pack of millennials look like loathsome narcissists.
The cast of characters on “Girls” were remarkably, unbelievably awful. If you met a single character from the show in real life, you would be talking about how self-destructive they were . . . forever.
That’s true whether it’s Jessa, who deals with her sadness by offering sex to a stranger in the bathroom of a bar, or Marnie, who married a man who consumed an entire bottle of OxyContin every day. Then there’s Hannah, who ends the series pregnant as a result of a one-night stand with a surf instructor. The surf instructor does not want the baby but does think it should be named “Grover.” And there’s Shoshanna, who almost failed to graduate from NYU and has drifted through her 20s without ever finding a real job.
These antics made for good television. It did not make for a good experience if you were a 20-something New Yorker visiting your family in the Midwest. In that case, it meant beginning every conversation with some variation on, “No, my life is nothing like the ones on ‘Girls.’ I am employed, do not have unprotected sex and no one ever offers me a job that hinges upon me doing a bunch of cocaine.”
Millennials — the generation born between 1982 and 2004 — have long been a punching bag for older generations who claim they are lazy and entitled. But if you look at the facts, that’s not so. Admittedly, there are millennials who are as relentlessly self-sabotaging as Marnie and Jessa and Hannah. But you’d have to look hard for them.
You’d be more likely to find a generation of workaholics so terrified of being unemployed that we won’t take any time off. (According to a 2016 survey from Bankrate, one-quarter of Americans between ages 18 and 25 said they’re not using any of their vacation time for the year, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 Americans overall.)
You’ll also find a lot of people who value volunteering far more than the previous generation, according to an AP-GfK poll. And a Pew study shows we’re on track to be the most educated generation in American history.
Plus, hey, you’ll also find outrageously successful creative entrepreneurs like, oh, Lena Dunham.
While the show captured a lot of what makes millennials funny — our reliance on apps and social media, our affection for some truly ridiculous fashion trends like overalls and tiny hats — it didn’t go very far in capturing what makes us a driven and socially involved generation.
Instead, it made it harder for every millennial to disprove the myth that we were all insanely entitled — no matter how hard we work.
It’s difficult to convince an older generation that you’re a worker bee when Hannah Horvath is on TV quitting her cushy job at GQ with no backup plan, or Shoshanna is telling a potential employer that her interview is just “a trial run-through before . . . I interview for a job I’m really passionate about.”
God, but for the days of “Sex and the City.” At least that HBO show made the behaviors of a generation of women seem glamorous.
Back in the aughts, everyone used to play a fun game where they tried to decide if they were a Carrie or a Charlotte or a Miranda or a Samantha from “SATC.” But that never happens with the characters on “Girls” because no one wants to be those women. (Though if we were playing — I’m the girl in Season 3, Episode 4, who faked her own death to escape a friendship with Jessa.)
And while we may not yet have a show that captures our ethos as well as “Friends” nailed the sweet-slacker vibe of Generation X, there are certainly some current shows that come closer than “Girls” ever did.
“Love” on Netflix is a great take on millennials who may be neurotic and difficult but do not steal money from a baby clothing store for drugs (yes, that happened on “Girls”). “Search Party” on TBS is a hilarious depiction of millennials in Brooklyn that grasps everything from the semi-glamorous, semi-sad parties sponsored by a water-bottle company to being stuck in a job that, like Shoshanna, “you’re not really passionate about” but, unlike her, do not decline. The upcoming “Girlboss” on Netflix also looks like it should be a really fun watch (about millennials who want to work!).
Who knows? Maybe Lena Dunham could even use her tremendous talent to write one. It could be called “Women.”
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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