Girls (HBO – 2012-2017)
“I think I might be the voice of my generation…or at least a voice of a generation.” With that, Lena Dunham’s series about a fresh-out-of-college, would-be writer and her overprivileged, narcissistic, Brooklyn-dwelling friends burst onto the scene and into a million hot take pieces about what millennials just don’t understand about the “real” world. However, when you peel back the layers of Dunham’s Hannah Horvath and her ragtag group of urban elites, you realize this series knows exactly how broken and in over their heads these characters are.
The series does an excellent job capturing a certain type of brokenness only a 20-something with big dreams and bigger anxieties can truly understand. Dunham and writing partner Jenni Konner were never afraid to allow their characters to wallow in the uncertainty and indecisiveness you feel as a young person, where every path seems as equally available as it does fundamentally inaccessible. Who do you want to be? What kind of life do you want and with whom? Is it even possible to go out on your own and make something of yourself without submitting to all your basest of flaws or reverting to the status quo from which you so desperately wanted to break free?
These are the questions this show tackled, and it did so with an incredible degree of humor and humanity and a deft artistry that makes it a defining work of the decade. Sure, it was a show about rich, white kids with delusions of grandeur who rarely had to confront their privilege. And yes, showed a portrait of New York City and of entitlement that many understandably found grating. But it also captured a keenly observed narcissism and self destructive impulse all young people must contend with, either in themselves or in those they might come across, and it harnessed them to tell compelling personal stories better than nearly anything else on TV this decade. And it also introduced the world to Adam Driver, which on its own warrants best of the decade contention.
–Alex Marcus
