I recently made a Facebook post about the HBO series, Girls, which prompted a ton of people to chime in and say that they can’t stand the show. Now, that is an opinion which makes sense. The characters in Girls are uniformly pretty shallow and self-absorbed.

But I cannot share that opinion. I think the show is very funny and emotionally affecting, and that the characters are quite relatable.

Maybe the show doesn’t work if you can’t recognize yourself within it. But I am pretty sure that if someone were to film most of the conversations that occur around me and screen them for the benefit of an outside audience, then it would be obvious that there’s an element of grandiosity  and lack of self-awareness that is a natural result of human beings’ tendency to think they’re way more important than they are. To other people, your life means absolutely nothing. But to you (and, to a lesser degree, your friends), it is everything. That’s exactly what Girls both mocks and celebrates.

Anyway, I’ve very much enjoyed the third season. The second half of the second season was way too dark for me. The life of the main character, Hannah, was seriously off the rails. It’s not fun or funny to watch someone fall into the grip of OCD. This season has dialed that back, and some of the lightness has returned.

The one character who I really dislike is Adam. He just seems awful. He gives off a creepy vibe and seems mastered by his sexual obsessions. He lays around Hannah’s apartment, living there rent-free and doing nothing that’s off value. And he also snaps at everyone and is rude to everyone. He’s like an adult eleven-year-old. And he’s got a strange-looking face. There is literally nothing good about him. I think that my feelings about Adam are roughly equivalent to what most people feel about all of the characters in the show, which certainly makes me sympathize more with peoples’ antipathy to it.