Girls hot take: Shoshanna was criminally underrated.
Lena Dunham's HBO TV series Girls first hit our screens over a decade ago, in 2012. At my first time of watching, I was younger than the lead characters…now I'm their age. Over the last year or so, I've been rewatching all six seasons, with this fresh perspective.
Lena is a controversial figure, but regardless of your personal opinion on her, it's hard to not see the genius behind Girls. It artful and painfully realistic in the way it shows the process of growing up in your twenties, as women, and the friendships you make (or become trapped) in.
Jessa Johansson, played by Jemima Kirke, was the cool character everyone secretly wanted to be; Marine Michaels, played by Allison Williams, was the pretty, privileged and often cringe character you loved to hate; Hannah Horvath (played by Lena) felt like an embodiment and magnification of a brand of selfishness we're only afforded in our twenties. Then there's Shoshanna [Shosh] Shapiro, played by Zosia Mamet. Shosh, for most of the seasons, felt like she was only there for comedic relief - dipping in and out of the show, with much less screen-time and character-development than the main three. She was innocent, silly, and supportive.
Shosh is quirky, insightful and her humour is dry, spouting off iconic lines like “It’s really amazing that all three of you have accomplished so little in the four years since college,” and “I may be deflowered – but I am not devalued.”
Like Sex And The City before it, Girls has had a revival of popularity thanks to the next generation of young women discovering it. And with this, has come fresh eyes.
In the final season, she very much came into her own, and was the only lead character to show any substantial growth and change. She recognised this, dumped Hannah, Marnie and Jessa from her life, and was all the better for it.
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Over on TikTok, these scenes have been going viral. With comments like “I’m so happy Shosh matured and realised that it was time to break off the toxic “friendships” in her life. I saw so much of myself in Shoshanna” and “like she was probably the most mature of the girls tbh she set goals and prioritized her growth. love that for her.” “Shosh was the best! Time to rewatch girls” said another, whilst one person echoed all our thoughts: “literally the best character!! where’s the shosh spin off.”
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“She learned from her mistakes,” Allison Williams told Vulture of Shoshanna’s journey. “She watched all of us flail against the world and was the only character that was capable of learning from the mistakes that people made around her. She’s the least narcissistic.”
In one memorable scene, Shosh has a show down with Hannah. Telling the group "You treat me like a fucking cab driver. Seriously, you have entire conversations in front of me like I’m invisible, and sometimes I wonder if my social anxiety is holding me back from meeting the people who would actually be right for me instead of a bunch of fucking whiny nothings as friends.” Hannah, in response, calls her “unstimulating.” To which Shosh fires back: “Unstimulating? What, are we in a fucking Jane Austen novel? What, do I want to be like you, like mentally ill and miserable?”
Shosh was always treated as a side character by her friends, and we saw her wake up to this truth. Rather than continuing to be belittled, she stood up for herself and found a new path. There's a power in Shosh we can all learn from.
