....And then I watched GIRLS.

Have we all seen Girls? That show about four girls in New York City who are just trying to "find themselves" and figure out what this great mystery we call life is all about, and make mistakes, and do drugs and cry? You know, the show that is supposed to be the voice of my generation.  Well, I have a little message for Lena Dunham: you don't speak for me.


 Before I tear into this show like a steak dinner my parents paid for, I would like to say that Season 1 of this show, I defended it to its death. "It's so trite," I once heard someone say. I accused them of sexism, and said I didn't care if it was trite, because it was funny.  By the way, in case any of the men out there were wondering: yes, "responding to criticism by accusing men of being sexist" *was* a class I took at my Seven Sister School.

Well, somewhere between when she wrote season 1 and when she wrote season 2, Lena Dunham got it in her head that her show had to mean something. Newsflash: YOU WRITE A TELEVISION SHOW. Its primary purpose is to entertain me.  If after watching your show I want binge eat Cool Ranch Doritos Tacos Locos into a coma because I hated the last 30 minutes of my life THAT MUCH, then you have failed as a tv writer.  So MAYBE people are talking about every single one of your episodes after it airs, but I literally felt like I wasted 6 hours of my life this spring because of Girls. AND MY TIME IS VALUABLE, LENA. In the six hours I spent watching you tell me what YOU think life is like to be a young woman in the 21st century, I could have: eaten 6 blocks of cheese, consumed 3 bottles of wine, facebook stalked 25 people, done the 23 minute Jillian Michaels Shred once (it's hard, y'all), or (and this is the more likely scenario), watched the entire Season of Vanderpump Rules. Because at least that sh*t entertained me.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I probably know more girls than Lena Dunham does.  I went to a college full of them, I am friends (almost exclusively) with them, I work with them. I know girls from ages 2 to 70.  (I guess at some point they start calling us "Women" but I'm not ready to concede I'm that old.)  But, regardless. I. know. girls. And yet? I know ZERO GIRLS that ever acted like anyone on this show acts. All the Girls I know? They have jobs. Like, real jobs. Jobs with direct deposit. DOES ANYONE ON THIS SHOW HAVE DIRECT DEPOSIT?

More appropriate titles for this show:
Rich Girls
Privileged Girls
Delusional Girls
Gallery Girls.

It then got me thinking: what would the characters of GIRLS do if they had to walk a mile in my shoes? When I hear about their problems I can't help but laugh.  I think even Lena Dunham realized their problems were absurdly inconsequential b/c all of the sudden out of nowhere Hannah (the protagonist played by Dunham herself) suffers from OCD midway through the season.  It was like Lena Dunham heard me screaming "WAIT. Hannah got a book deal AND an advance within a year of trying it out as a writer, meanwhile I've been at it since 2005 and I only have 9 writing apps on my iPad to show for it, AND SHE IS COMPLAINING ABOUT HER LIFE?" in my apartment alone. And in response Lena Dunham was like, "oh yeah? You think her life is so charmed? Well NOW she has OCD and has to count to 8 all of the time." The ridiculousness of the 11th hour OCD affliction aside, the girls also make preposterously bad decisions. And this is coming from someone who ate queso for dinner more than once in calendar year 2013.  So, let's do a comparison of what I did when faced with certain situations, and what Hannah Horvath would have done. 

I locked my car keys in my car at a gas station one weekday morning: 
What I did: First, I started cursing quite a bit.  I ran into the gas station and asked them if they had the tools necessary to help me break into my car. They didn't. I then  called everyone in my family whose number I had memorized, and no one answered. At this point the gas station attendant offered to give me a ride to my parents house (where I knew I had a spare key). Upon arrival at my parents house, I remembered that the gate was locked, and that the doorbell OF COURSE didn't work. So I proceeded to scale the fence. In a skirt suit.  After getting into the yard, I tried to break in through the various entrances but couldn't. I then started banging on the doors, screaming. Finally the housekeeper let me in, at which point I was able to wake up my parents, retrieve the spare key, get a ride back to my car, and arrive at work, only 40 minutes later than I would have been.
What Hannah Would have done: First, she would have probably started cursing too. But then, she would have sat down on the side of the gas station sidewalk while Sigur Ros played in the background. This probably would have lasted for 40 minutes.  Then, she would have walked down the street (wearing only a t-shirt and no pants, mind you), until she got back to her apartment. She would have then probably broken a glass window to gain entry into her apartment. After sitting on the floor of her apartment, she would have tried to stop the bleeding on her hand with cotton balls, at which point the episode would have ended with Sara and Tegan playing. The car would likely have been towed because she would have left it there for at least a month.

I had to take my garbage out: 
What I did: Took out the garbage, put it in my garbage can, and went back inside.
What Hannah Did: Because she lost the key to the garbage can (probably from when she left her keys in a locked car in a gas station and never retrieved it in the above scenario), she started putting garbage in another person's garbage can. And when she found out he was mad about it, (which is, honestly, a totally illogical and crazy person response to begin with), she went over to his house to apologize, invited herself in, proceeded to have a 48hr sleepover (where she played ping pong naked, among other things), and a nervous breakdown about just how *hard* it is to take in all the experiences that she does so she can write about them.

I had to get a haircut:
What I did: Called and made an appointment. Waited the requisite amount of time it took to get said appointment, and got a haircut by a professional.
What Hannah Did: Called her downstairs neighbor (who is also a recovering drug addict and once got cocaine for her) and had him cut her hair, and the results were...as you would expect a haircut given by a recovering drug addict to look.

On the Saturday of the St. Patrick's Day Parade, I took a shot of what I thought was vodka redbull with jolly ranchers in it, but turned out to be Purple Syzurp. 
What I did: sent out a flurry of questionable texts, and facebook messages. Made my friends play a drinking game with DVR'd episodes of jeopardy. Went to something called "Mod Night" which was just a bunch of hipsters dancing to the soundtrack of Dirty Dancing. I was scared. Next I went to something called "Bounce Night" which was just a bunch of hipsters dancing to rap music. I was scared. And also confused because apparently Coolio's "Gangster's Paradise" was considered bounce music.  I also yelled out, "AT LEAST THE HIPSTERS OF MOD NIGHT WEAR DEODORANT" upon walking into "Bounce Night." I referred to someone as Tyler Winklevoss for the duration of the evening because he graduated from Harvard. Example, "Hey Tyler Winklevoss - you have enough money from that settlement -- go buy me another drink." "Hey Tyler Winklevoss - you have Rally's ketchup all over your face. I'm going to go post a picture on ConnectU" (He later asked one of my friends why I was so mean.) Bought late-night fast food, went home alone, and went to sleep while playing Parks and Rec on the Roku in my bedroom.
What Hannah Did: Wrote her wishes, fear, and hopes on her wall in sharpie. Went  to a party in an abandoned poultry slaughterhouse in BedStuy wearing only a neon tank top and no pants. Ended up crying.

I get that perhaps the purpose of the show is to demonstrate how f-ing ridiculous millennials are these days, but shouldn't we at least a little empathize with the characters? Because I have an active list of television characters I wish death upon, and every single one of the characters on Girls appears on the list (along with Carl from Walking Dead, and, of course, Bates).