I’m 48, and I would like to know who decided women were supposed to have their shit together by now.
Because I have some questions about the deadline.
Girls is coming back, and the part that interests me most is what happens when women who were allowed to be a mess in their twenties turn forty. Do they still get to be confused? Can they want something completely different? Can they make a decision without the entire thing being diagnosed as a midlife crisis?
I would very much like to watch that show.
Yes, the Girls revival is happening
HBO announced five new episodes, with production set to begin in 2027. Lena Dunham, Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet and Andrew Rannells are returning. The announcement does not include a premiere date.
HBO says the new episodes will turn their attention toward forty. Dunham said the characters started coming back to her around her own fortieth birthday.
That leaves plenty we don’t know about the story. What follows is what I hope they do with it.
Being new at something at 48 should be allowed
At twenty-four, figuring out what you want is practically your job. You can try a relationship, hate a job, move somewhere and discover you hate that, too. People might think you’re a disaster, but at least you’re a disaster with time.
By forty, I feel like the expectation changes. You’re supposed to be able to explain yourself. There should be a reason for the divorce, a sensible plan for the new career, and preferably a reassuring ending ready to go before you tell anybody what happened.
But what if you’re still in the middle?
What if you know you want something different and haven’t figured out what that is yet? That seems like a perfectly reasonable place for an adult woman to be. It can also be uncomfortable as hell.
You can know how to run a household and have absolutely no idea how to ask somebody out. You can be excellent at your work and feel awkward walking into a room where you don’t know anyone. Being capable in one part of your life doesn’t automatically make you confident everywhere else.
I want that awkwardness on television. A woman old enough to know herself who still gets surprised by what she wants.
Please let the friendships get complicated, too
There’s a friendship story here that I hope gets some room.
Imagine one woman newly single and excited to go out while her friend is deep in the exhausting part of raising small children. Nobody has done anything wrong. They just want very different things from a Friday night.
Now imagine trying to admit that you miss the old version of your friendship without sounding like you resent the life your friend built.
That is a conversation I would watch.
So is the one where somebody realizes she’s been holding her friend to an opinion she had fifteen years ago. Or the awkward attempt to make a new friend when everyone already seems to have their people.
There’s so much room for affection and jealousy to exist in the same friendship. You can be happy for someone and wish you were getting a little of what she has. I want characters who occasionally say the embarrassing part out loud.
Getting older doesn’t make you the supporting character
At 48, I’m interested in what a woman wants after she has spent years being useful.
What does she do with an evening nobody else has claimed? What does she enjoy when there’s nobody to impress? What happens when she gets what she thought she wanted and discovers she wants something else?
And can she be excited about that?
I get tired of the assumption that a woman changing her life must be desperately trying to recover her youth. Maybe she wants to try the thing. Maybe she finally has the time. Maybe the old arrangement sucked.
She shouldn’t have to produce a tragic backstory to justify having a good time.
I do want them to have learned something
I’ve already written about Hannah and Adam, and how differently that relationship looks to me now. My enthusiasm for messy characters comes with considerably less patience for calling cruelty romantic.
Let them make mistakes and have to apologize. Let somebody recognize an old pattern halfway through doing the exact same stupid thing again. Knowing better and managing to act on it are separate accomplishments.
That could be funny. It could also be painfully familiar without turning every episode into a lesson.
I want to see what these women have learned, what they still get wrong, and whether they can stand to let their friends change.
Give me a forty-something woman who has handled a genuinely difficult day, gets one text from a crush, and immediately needs the group chat.
I have time for five episodes of that.
