Lena Dunham Has Created the Worst Character on Television

Jun 29, 2012 by andrea lewis    5 Comments    Posted under: Andrea Lewis

Thank you Lena Dunham for creating the worst character on television. For those of you who don’t know who Lena Dunham is, she is the star/writer/creator and sometimes director of the HBO show “Girls”. I have a love/hate relationship with “Girls” but I have a tremendous amount of love for Lena Dunham and her talent, vision, and hustle for being a young 20 something woman to get a show on HBO and have so much control of it (Go Lena!)

But as I said I have a love/hate relationship with this show and a lot of my “hate” or dislike rather (hate is a strong word which shouldn’t really be used) is towards the character that she plays, “Hannah”. Hannah is everything I never want to be, she’s a mess, insecure, outrageously sarcastic, spoiled, uberly selfish and extremely immature. She has a random job but most of the time has no job, she has no money, she couldn’t see a good thing coming if it hit her in the face and is literally standing in her own way when it comes to her career as a writer. I can’t stand her. I can’t remember the last time I watched a television show and left every episode feeling so annoyed by the lead character. In Hannah’s world everything revolves around Hannah and everyone needs to carter to her no filter having ginormously confident insecure SELF esteem. Basically she’s a lot to deal with and even though every character on the show has their own level of strangeness that would raise a few eyebrows, Hannah’s is by far the most problematic.

But don’t get me wrong, Hannah isn’t all bad, sometimes she says lines that speak volumes to a generation of 22-26 year old girls and our up and down moods and problems. Lena Dunham hits the nail on the head when it comes to the dialogue in this show. Every character gets a chance to have quirky one liners that will either make you laugh or hit home with your current situation. My battle with this show though is I can’t decide that despite how annoyed I am with the character “Hannah” is she a REAL reflection of how “Girls” are today? Are 20 something year old girls, actually extremely selfish, spoiled and at a complete loss as to how to start their careers? I’d like to hope not but there’s a lot of people around me and ones that I meet on a daily basis that I  see displays of Hannah, myself included sometimes. I’d like to think that “Hannah” is just extreme but you tell me?

At the end of the day, congrats Lena Dunham on all of your success. I watch your show because it’s exciting to see a young woman make something different and running her own ship! I hope to see more women in these positions in the future. If you’ve seen “Girls” let me know what you think about it? The good and the bad.