One time, I was watching the third season of “Girls5Eva,” the sadly short-lived comedy created by Meredith Scardino that began its life on Peacock before moving to Netflix, and suddenly, I had a problem. One specific cutaway gag involving Thomas Doherty’s Harry Styles-style pop star Grey Holland made me laugh so hard that I peed my pants. I’m not kidding. I literally laughed so hard that I peed my pants. (I’d like to thank my in-unit washer and dryer for its service.)
If this anecdote doesn’t convince you to watch “Girls5Eva” despite feeling a little grossed out by me admitting this on Al Gore’s Internet, then I’m all out of ideas and will resort to begging. Here’s some context: “Girls5Eva” aired its first season in May 2021 on Peacock, bringing together a central cast of four comedic geniuses: Sara Bareilles, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Paula Pell, and Busy Philipps. (The person who figured out that singer-songwriter Bareilles and Tony-winning Broadway star Goldsberry both have insane, killer comedic timing deserves a Nobel Prize.) When the show begins, Dawn (Bareilles), Wickie Roy (Goldsberry), Gloria (Pell), and Summer (Philipps) are all in their 40s with nothing but fond, distant memories of their time as the titular pop group Girls5Eva … but when a younger artist, Lil Stinker (Jeremiah Craft), samples their song “Famous 5Eva,” they decide to reunite.
This is a ridiculously good premise, and the show delivers. Peacock ultimately declined to keep it going after season 2 and Netflix picked it up. (I can’t prove this, but considering that Tina Fey and Robert Carlock are two of the show’s executive producers, I’d wager a guess that their combined star power encouraged Netflix to take a chance here.) So why did the show end after just three seasons … and why should you watch it anyway?
Girls5Eva is a smart, grounded comedy with incredible music and powerhouse performances
“Girls5Eva” opens with Dawn getting a mammogram and hearing Lil Stinker’s song that samples “Famous 5Eva,” and under the guise of giving meager royalty checks to her former bandmates, she seeks each of them out in turn. (Well, not all of them; Ashley Park’s Ashley, who put the “five” in “Girls5Eva,” died before our story begins in what’s described as an “infinity pool accident.”) Summer, who’s married to fellow teen pop idol Kev (a hilarious Andrew Rannells), is living happily in the suburbs, while Gloria is a successful dentist who proudly tells her old friends that she and her wife were the first gay couple in New York State to get divorced. As for Wickie, it seems like she’s living in the lap of luxury on social media, but it’s all a lie — she actually, as it turns out, gets paid “by the goose” to shoot loose geese at the airport.
Together, the girls of Girls5Eva decide to launch a comeback, using an abandoned mall as a backdrop for an impromptu performance of “Dream Girlfriends” (a song with lyrics like “We’ve got the kind of birth control that goes in your arm / And tell me again why Tarantino’s a genius?”) and enlisting the help of Max Martin-style pop genius Alf Musik (Stephen Colbert) to write another surefire hit before they realize they’ve aged out of their old style. With new, original songs like “BPE” (Google it, I can’t spell it out here), “4 Stars,” and “The Medium Time,” they forge ahead with their comeback … even if that means playing to an empty Madison Square Garden on Thanksgiving morning.
“Girls5Eva” is over, but please go watch it. It’s worth it.
