"Girls5eva" is Tina Fey Funny
The breezy musical comedy series about an aughts girls’ band making a comeback is just what the Summer called for.
Note: No plot reveals spilled here.
Girls5eva is available on Peacock (Seasons 1-2) and Netflix (Season 3 forthcoming).
Aughts’ dumpster dive yields fetch finds
If you enjoyed 30 Rock - Tina Fey’s aughts meta comedy about a group of writers working on a late night variety show - think SNL - which starred Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin (as a thinly veiled Lorne Michaels), and Tracy Morgan, among others, then you will get a kick out of Girls5eva, which features Fey’s signature sassy girl sarcasm oozing with self-deprecating and intelligent pop culture references.
The show is a hindsight reminder to all of us who lived through the aughts (2000-2009) as to what a truly cringe-inducing and wish-we-could-set-it-and-forget-it decade it really was, and the evidence is potently illustrated by the rise of particularly tasteless reality TV from that era, from ethically questionable shows like Punk'd where cruel pranks were mistaken for har har har comedy to pre-MeToo fembot shows like E’s The Girls Next Door about Hugh Hefner’s Playboy bunny girlfriends who were roughly 60 years younger than him.
Also, who can forget the trend of cruel and vicious British game show contestant hosts like Simon Cowell on American Idol or Anne Robinson, dubbed “The Queen of Mean” from The Weakest Link? It wasn’t a high cultural watermark moment by any measure, but more so if self-reflection and compassion are the metrics.
Luckily, Girls5eva takes place in the here and now so the flashbacks to the aughts’ scenes are there to serve as comedic relief, which is rightfully where they belong. It’s also just fun to see how much of that culture was utterly vacuous and silly, but also oddly innocent in some ways, unprepared for the overexposed way in which tech enables 24/7 access to everyone’s lives, and before filters and fillers were a thing so everyone looked equally unpolished. In flashbacks, the show effectively brings these elements to life.
See this Buzzfeed for some particularly worrisome reality TV moments from the aughts.
Gonna be famous 5eva
Something magical happens when you cast two very talented entertainers with near perfect pitch in comedic delivery (Busy Philipps and Paula Pell) with two bonafide Broadway stars (Renée Elise Goldsberry and Sara Barielles) who boast impressive vocal chops and singular songwriting capabilities - a show that is well written and has heart, can take flight and soar. And soar, this show does. Admittedly, I was slow to catch on to the show. It’s been around since 2021 and was canceled “quietly” over at Peacock after its second season, but has since been picked up for a third season by Netflix.
Reality check moment
It’s unlikely that four former girl group entertainers, whose celebrity equated more with a level of fame like Danity Kane vs. The Spice Girls or Destiny’s Child, make a successful career comeback in their forties. There are many reasons for this, but the chief one is that everyone will have moved onto different careers in new directions away from one another. And therein lies the comedy.
The show plots us in the present day, with our grownup quartet of an overworked restaurant worker, wife and mom (Bareilles’ Dawn), a newly divorced dentist (Pell’s Gloria), a Real Housewife who is bored, living in a mansion with her daughter, Stevia, and neglected by her husband (Philipp’s Summer), and a diva airport worker (Goldsberry’s Wickie) who refuses to accept mediocrity and sees ordinary as a 4-letter world. Ashley Park’s character is presumed dead but the band keeps the “5eva” because it works. One storyline teases that Park’s character may in fact still be alive and similar to DJ and music producer Marshmello, masking her identity under a guise - this one being a dazzling and beguiling beekeeping get up.
Bend Not Break
Following the playbook for any proper Tina Fey sitcom episode, there are at any given point in the show, multiple storylines going on at once. This ensures that each of the characters gets their due as far as character development goes. While Dawn and Wickie are often in competition for solos and lead vocals, Gloria and Summer are the comedy pulling up the rear, and very much in sync with one another. Andrew Rannells, playing Summer’s husband, Kevin, a former boybander, whose sexual orientation is never defined but somewhat alluded to, plays off of Summer’s “hot girl” vibe legacy by being a JC Chasez (NSYNC) type minus the gravitas. They are over the top and a trip to witness.
Watching acclaimed singer Sara Bareilles (Waitress, Kaleidoscope Heart - Best Album ever) sing in this show is one of the core coups of it, even when she is poking fun at herself, as in the video below, because Bareilles’ voice is stellar and her musicality is unparalleled. The show takes full advantage of showcasing her impromptu songwriting and singing, as it should.
The addition of Pell, a lesbian, playing an openly gay character on the show challenged with whether or not to get back together with her ex (Pell’s real life wife, Janine Brito), makes for a more inclusive and dimensional story, especially with Pell’s character, Gloria’s backstory on how she used overworking as an excuse in her younger days to avoid being romantically paired with a boy, while the other girls in the band hooked up with the boys.
A multi-generational jam
I admitted earlier that I was a later convert to this show and have only recently come around to it. My motivation was driven, in large part, by watching Girls5eva with my son who recommended we watch it together. He’s a fully fledged teenager now and many of his entertainment choices are related to sports and gaming, so it’s been cool to watch something in this category that spans music, pop culture, and comedy. It wasn’t too long ago we watched entire seasons of Schitt’s Creek and The Office together, but it’s been a while. Anytime I can pass the time doing what I love (watching TV) and what he connects with is a win for me. A few times I’ve asked him who is his favorite character is and he’s totally annoyed by this question. I get it. With a show like this, it’s an unfair competition. Each of these women shine brightly. Shame on me for making him pick.
If the Spice Girls and Destiny’s Child made a comeback and you had to choose one concert to go to, whose would it be?
*NSYNC or Backstreet Boys?
Renée Elise Goldsberry’s range of notes she can hit and her flair on this show are to-die-for. I can hardly wrap my head around all the roles she’s had in her professional life. One I will always hold near and dear to my heart was her turn as Evangeline, a DA, on the now cancelled, soap opera, One Life to Live. So yeah, move over Hamilton’s “The Schuyler Sisters.” What’s your favorite Goldsberry role?
Busy Philipps is so funny that I sometimes forget she was in Dawson’s Creek. You?
I LOVE this show!