The Peacock musical comedy Girls 5 Eva starring Sara Bareilles, Busy Phillips, Renee Elise Goldsberry, and Paula Pell is in the middle of its second season on the NBC streamer. For those who are new to the world of the grown-up girl band or who have it on their list but just haven’t gotten around to it, just like the titular girls of the show, it’s never too late to start doing the things that will make you happy.
And make you happy, it will. It’s filled with enough early 2000’s era nostalgia to power a whole TRL reboot (though “nostalgia” may be the wrong word here considering that not many of us feel warm and fuzzy inside about a return to low-waisted jeans and baby doll tees). And fans of 30 Rock and other Tina Fey/Robert Carlock projects will appreciate the sly, subtle one-liners and the clarinet-heavy soundtracking.
And there are a million other reasons to watch Girls 5 Eva, but here’s six, because five just isn’t enough.
1. Follow Your Dreams At Any Age
The first season of the show finds the remaining members of a pre-fab girl group from the early 2000’s, now all around 40 and none involved in the entertainment industry, living their ordinary non-popstar lives. That is until a Soundcloud rapper uses a sample of their old hit. Suddenly, Girls 5 Eva are the talk of the town again, notoriety that lands them a performance on Fallon.
This new 15 minutes reawakens the girls’s ambitions as well as their friendships. They put the band back together, but experience some kicks and starts. All the while battling an inept misogynistic manager, the group strives for a comeback, or at least some amount of success that can help them make sense of the weirdness of the brief success of their younger years.
Though goofy in a characteristic Tina Fey way, the show is actually an empowering story about women taking control of their own narrative and journey (including firing that sexist manager) and realizing that they have the capabilities to go after the things they’ve always wanted in life, even if they spent years on some detours.
2. TRL-era Nostalgia
The late 90’s and early 2000’s was a time when pop culture was dominated by just three little letters–TRL. Or to those of a certain age, Total Request Live. Hosted by poor-man’s-Ken-Doll Carson Daly, the show counted down the “Top 5” (people really love lists of five for some reason) most requested MTV videos of the day. It was a countdown that was heavy on former Mousketeers and dreamy boybands and girl groups like Destiny’s Child.
The fictional Girls 5 Eva fall into that genre of TRL faves, complete with a flashback to their appearance on the show. In fact, Girls 5 Eva is filled with early 2000’s flashbacks to the girls at the peak of their fame, flashbacks that have all the early 2000’s trimmings: butterfly clips, super-straight flat-ironed hair, and over the top stage attire that could double as a space suit.
Again, the early 2000’s is not a place many of us want to live ever again, but it is a fun place to visit from time to time, and Girls 5 Eva seems to understand the feelings of ambivalence many of us feel about our formative years. The show adeptly both pays homage to the era while also skewering it somewhat mercilessly. Which is just fine with most millennials who lived through the era. The show’s tone is just the right balance of snark and reverence.
3. Girls 5 Eva: When Millennials Met Gen Z
Much of the humor in Girls 5 Eva stems from the girls trying to navigate the music industry and stoke their own fame and success, usually using methods that Gen Z are adept at, but millennials maybe not so much. The girls struggle with social media posting, understanding Tik Tok, and in general struggle to keep their finger on the pulse of what’s “cool.”
And for many millennials in real life who are not pop stars, this struggle is relatable. With Gen Z and Millennials now often occupying the same office space, there’s definitely a divide between the Tik Tokkers and the just plain old Instagrammers. And Girls 5 Eva sheds some light on this divide in the most hilarious ways possible.
4. Calling all Cameos
Being an NBC property and having Tina Fey at the helm is sure to entice some big names to pop in and say “Hello.” And that they do. Andrew Rannells of Girls and Broadway fame has a recurring role as Summer’s (Busy Phillips) former boyband singer husband. And Stephen Colbert and Tina Fey herself stop in for some hilarious one-off appearances. Tina’s impression of Dolly Parton was so spot-on, for a brief moment it’s easy to believe it is the country legend behind “Jolene” herself onscreen.
Perhaps G5E‘s most hilarious and welcome cameo was from SNL breakout star Bowen Yang. He pops in as a fan who has managed to successfully monetize his fandom, frustrating some of the girls who themselves are struggling to monetize their own work and fame.
It’s a plot point that drives home that divide between the two generations: creating a brand out of themselves and successfully monetizing it seems to come as second nature for people born after 1995. For 80’s babies, the struggle is real
5. Girls 5 Eva Spin Out Some Catchy Tunes
The thing about pop music is that a song doesn’t have to be “real” for it to become a catchy earworm that you can’t get out of your head. And even though the songs of the fictional Girls 5 Eva are in the style of the over-produced extravagant hits with breathy vocals of the early 2000’s, they’re still wayyyyy more enjoyable than they have any right to be. And a closer listen reveals lyrics that provide insightful social commentary that also just happen to be hilarious.
If the band was real and available on Spotify, their songs would definitely make it onto a guilty pleasures playlist of girl pop jams.
6. Just Kidding
There is no Number 6 on this list! But just like the girls of Girls 5 Eva who couldn’t be Girls 4 Eva because 4 just wasn’t big enough, this list needed to be a little unnecessarily extra too. And that’s why Girls 5 Eva has just the winning formula: The show is just the right amount of extra. It’s a formula that manages to delight viewers and critics alike all while being on a smaller streaming service (though owned by NBC, Peacock has nowhere near the numbers as a streamer like Netflix), and it does so without big-budget chase scenes or being based off of a true crime podcast.
Girls 5 Eva is the little comedy that could, so go ahead and grab your Abercrombie tees and enjoy a blast from the past. Season 1 of Girls 5 Eva is streaming in its entirety now on Peacock with new episodes from Season 2 hitting every Thursday.
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