"Girls" V. 2 Broke Girls

I recently was told I should check out the series "Girls" on HBO. Out of curiosity and faith in HBO I did check it out. However, I did so after viewing 2 Broke Girls: Season 1. I must say that while it is nearly an identical plot, the differences are vast.

You could say that a pessimist would watch HBO's "Girls," while an optimist would 'opt' (pun intended) for 2 Broke Girls.

Over at HBO, there are harrowing similarities to my life and the life of the character Hannah in "Girls." I, too, recently was dismissed from an internship- left with no place to go. Also an English major, also lacking what the world calls a "career path." Similar upbringings and similar parental styles, at that. I was haunted by the script; thinking who has been following my friends and I around all these months, writing down what we say? While it did have a freakishly accurate depiction of a recent graduate trying to make it in job land, there is no doubt it is intended for a voyeuristic audience. No girl, my age and in my position, would put herself through the agony of watching bad things happen to characters just like us. It's like waking up and immediately being forced to stare in the mirror. Everyone knows we'll spend hours in front of the mirror when we look good.

So, we wait until Sex and the City reruns come on after the show and live vicariously through them. Or, we flip the channel to CBS and take a second to laugh at ourselves with 2 Broke Girls.

While it sounds ridiculous, I know I am not the first girl I've heard say this of the show: "It gives me the courage to be poor." 2 Broke Girls is a caricature of our experience, something to laugh at, something to inspire us. At its core, it gently preaches the value of ambition, hard work, and that everything will be alright in the end. While over on HBO, we are watching girls complain about no longer receiving money from their parents, on CBS we are watching 2 girls attempting to make the most of it by working their day jobs, night jobs, and building a dream.

Sure, granted this is a cheese-tastic summary and my praise of a sitcom is a bit disproportionate and grandiose. I'm sure there is a professional TV critic out there who wrote this very review with the opinions reversed. Well, 50-year-old-man/woman, YOU are the voyeur. As for me, the "broke girl," the girl who just got let go from the internship, I'll stick to my optimistic sitcom and indulge escapism.