Arguably hitting the sweet spot between relevant and ironically belated, Freaks and Geeks star and conceptual artist James Franco has finally weighed in on the HBO series Girls, via a lengthy op-ed on The Huffington Post. I think the 206th Amendment to the Internet Constitution states that once James Franco has weighed in on a controversy we can officially bury it, right? No? Well, Franco doesn’t seem too interested in reaching a definitive answer on whether Lena Dunham’s show sucks or rules: In one paragraph, he chastises her self-modeled character, Hannah Horvath, to “get a fucking job,” in another he admits that Dunham did, in fact, get a fucking job — if writing, directing, and acting on a premium cable television show qualifies. (I think it at least ranks somewhere above “Selling Non-Visible Art to Canadian Models” on the “fucking-ness of job” scale.)
On a more personal note, Franco says that while he finds most of the male characters on Girls to be pretty loathsome, “For all I know, but for the grace of Judd Apatow I would be just like those struggling male idiots I see on the show.” Let the endless hall of mirrors of that particular statement sink in for a second. Maybe we are all being too hard on Girls. It’s possible we just don’t have the critical distance gained by the transformative experience of having a career launched by its co-producer.
Go ahead, make whatever edits you need to that Girls screed you posted on Tumblr back in April, we’ll wait.