(Spoiler warning for “Girls” and “Adults” ahead)
My roommate and I recently finished watching FX’s show “Adults,” which I’d highly recommend, and are currently in the process of watching “Girl’s” on HBO. For me, now is the perfect time to be watching these shows as they are essentially attempting to portray my possible future: the 20-something post-grad life.
Season 2 of “Adults” was recently released to much critical acclaim, I among them, for its more accurate portrayal of the Gen Z experience as we age into adulthood. The jokes are not overly cynical, and the friendships are actually believable. Most importantly, the characters’ constant need to keep up appearances of being successful is in line with a generation that grew up with the age of social media and the online persona. And it’s one of the few shows I’ve actually laughed out loud to in recent memory.
On the other hand, I think “Girls” does an incredible job at delving into deeper topics such as mental health and past trauma, and I also appreciate how it doesn’t shy away from making its main characters be extremely unlikable at times. It’s very human in its portrayal of the core four women, showing how life can get really messy and that sometimes a persons’ vice isn’t just being extremely personable like Anton in “Adults,” but instead being narcissistic like Marnie and Hannah, or avoidant and destructive like Jessa.
Every year or so I’ve noticed a new show or movie pops up aiming to encapsulate the “20-something” experience. But why is it so alluring? Most of the portrayals I’ve seen makes a lot of the 20-something journey seem very bleak and stressful.
In both of these shows, most of the main characters experience long periods of unemployment and financial insecurity. In “Adults,” the five main characters are all living together in one of their parent’s house because they can’t afford rent. In “Girls,” the entire first season is molded by the fact that Hannah has been cut off from her parents and must find a job so she can start paying for her apartment and living expenses.
Relationships, both romantic and platonic, get put to the test. Hannah and Adam’s tumultuous relationship spans the entire length of “Girls”, as well as Marnie’s on-again off-again relationship with Charlie. Every season the girls experience friendship “breakups” with each other as they grow into different, sometimes worse, people than when they all met. In “Adults,” every character goes through a breakup and/or unsavory situationship as well (Billie was really struggling here iykyk).
To top it all off, every episode from both of these shows has extremely embarrassing moments that make it hard to watch at times. I could fill pages and pages with a list of all the crazy things Hannah does, or the infamous cover of “Stronger” than Marnie sings at Charlie’s party in season 2. And how could I forget the “Fake ID” episode of “Adults” where Billie makes a fool of herself to try and impress the girl using her college fake ID, or Samir’s failed job interview.
I could go on and on about all the ways the characters in these shows crash and burn, so why can’t we look away? Everyone says that your twenties are for self-discovery. You’re going into the real word fresh faced with no inhibitions. Every experience is new and exciting, even if it turns out to be emotionally or physically devastating. Our 20s is when society has deemed it acceptable (to a certain degree) to be messy, because you’re only 20, right? You can just be “figuring things out” because everyone else at your age is too…even if they try not to show it.
There’s always been some excitement in the chaotic parts of our 20s. How much longer will I be able to live with my friends? Or take spontaneous trips? Or spend too much money on arbitrary things? Even the many inevitably embarrassing things I’ll do I look forward to because I know, looking back on it, I’ll remember them fondly. I already do that with my freshman year of college (those were the days, huh).
The allure of these shows, and the 20-something experience, is that we’re watching these characters, and the parts of ourselves that we recognize in them, become who they really are. They mess up, and then mess up again, but they also learn, and grow and in a way we are watching ourselves in them. I mean, people are still debating if they are a “Hannah” or a “Marnie” 14 years after “Girls” was released. We may not screw up as royally as these characters do, but we still make our own huge mistakes that end up shaping how we see ourselves and how we’ll act in the future.
As a soon to be post-grad, watching these shows, in a way, makes my future a little less intimidating. The countdown until graduation sometimes feels like a doomsday clock, but I can’t put off “adulting” forever. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little scared. I’d also be lying if I wasn’t a little excited. For me, these shows serve as, not necessarily an inspiration, but a source of hope. While these characters are stumbling through life, they are also gaining invaluable experiences that lead them on pathways of self-discovery and achieving their dreams. Maybe these revelations are not always reached through a straightforward path, but for the small possibility of getting to achieve them, I think we’d all be down to wade through a bit of mess on the way.