HBO Revives Controversial Series Girls for a New Season

HBO has decided to bring back the much-debated series Girls for a five-episode seventh season, despite its previous struggles with ratings.

It’s become somewhat of a hobby of mine to highlight how the elite in corporate media, especially in the entertainment sector, often hype up certain projects as cultural milestones, even when they seem largely ignored by the public.

Take Jon Stewart’s original run on The Daily Show as a prime example. Less than one-third of one percent of Americans tuned in. Yet, the corporate media treated his every word as if it were some profound revelation. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. Most of the time, his jokes fell flat, and his insights were based on dubious premises. What he did have, though, was a knack for snarky humor that appealed to a media landscape eager to amplify his leftist viewpoints, effectively catapulting him into a spotlight he perhaps didn’t deserve.

After Stewart stepped down and subsequently struggled to find his footing elsewhere, Jimmy Kimmel took the reins, leaving Stewart to retreat back with little more than a whimper.

Now, I might come off as biased, but if there’s a silver lining, it’s that there’s Bill Maher. I don’t see eye to eye with him about 70% of the time, yet—I find him genuinely hilarious and insightful. Unlike many, he dives into complex subjects without resorting to gimmicky antics. He may not always be right, but you can understand why he holds his beliefs, which lends some weight to his humor.

Speaking of humor—or the lack thereof—the HBO series Girls, created by Lena Dunham, mirrored the tone of left-wing feminism during its six-season run that concluded in 2017, but viewership was dismal.

The sixth season, for instance, averaged a mere 0.28 rating in the coveted 18-49 demographic, attracting around 638,000 viewers. While that’s a slight uptick from the previous season, it didn’t even break into HBO’s top ten for that age group. In fact, its final season garnered fewer viewers than Vinyl, a show canceled after just one season.

Despite these lackluster ratings, Dunham, who’s also been mired in controversy, seems to have enough clout to warrant this revival. It’s a curious case, really.

Interestingly, it seems Dunham is now at a point where she could portray all four main characters herself. Yet, HBO appears keen to keep the original ensemble in play. This revival is also curiously timed; production is set to start next summer, with potential airing not expected until 2028, a presidential election year. It’s hard not to speculate that, regardless of viewership numbers, the show will inevitably stir up a wave of left-wing, anti-GOP narratives that the media will eagerly share, while pretending to simply cover the so-called Girls phenomenon.

A quick heads up: Dunham has a tendency to use Girls as an opportunity to strip down, so, um, if I were sightless, I might want to skip it altogether.