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![]() The show is affirming of the suitemates’ nascent sexuality without pretending that they, at age 18, know exactly how to wield it or always end up having a good time with their partners. Yet the characters are savvy enough not to repeat the mistakes of the unfortunate girls in after-school specials. They bump up against everything from their parents’ expectations to misogyny (even when they’re not at frat parties). Yes, the girls have crushes and first dates and tipsy one-night stands. But most of the time, Kaling manages to make old rites of passage feel new by updating the attitudes with which the show approaches them. Leighton is what happens when you grow up acting like a Gossip Girl character while suppressing everything about yourself that doesn’t fit the Blair Waldorf mold.Ĭollege Girls occasionally fails to resist squeezing low-hanging fruit the humorless feminists who wax poetic about their ovaries during an open-mic night at the women’s center aren’t exactly revolutionizing campus comedy. We’ve seen plenty of white guys in this genre who fit Bela’s general description before, but female equivalents of any identity can be hard to find. Kaling always seems to enjoy tinkering with stock characters and story lines, and this might be her most effective fusion of classic and contemporary to date. (Considering that a similar magazine plays a crucial role in Dear White People, it’s probably fair to ask whether comedy writers have an outsize view of those publications’ centrality to student life.) Mostly, though, Bela wants to get laid. “But with one Lasik procedure, an Accutane prescription and medical-grade Botox injected into my armpits, I’m normal.” She’s hoping to get a coveted staff position at white-male-dominated campus humor magazine The Catullan, whose alums tend to go on to distinguished comedy careers, despite her parents’ impression that they’re paying for a STEM degree. “Four months ago I was an Indian loser with cystic acne, sweaty armpits and glasses,” she reminds her parents on move-in day. While College Girls positions Kimberly as the regular-girl audience surrogate at first, its true hero-in my estimation, at least-is Bela (played by inevitable breakout Amrit Kaur), a recovering dweeb who’s determined to reinvent herself. Ron Huebel and Reneé Rapp in 'The Sex Lives of College Girls' David Giesbrecht/HBO Max Whitney (promising newcomer Alyah Chanelle Scott), a soccer phenom whose teammates don’t know she’s sleeping with the coach, is the daughter of a senator (Sherri Shepherd, in a fun recurring role). ![]() Her polar opposite is Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet, best known for The King of Staten Island and being Timothée’s sister), a naive, working-class aspiring girlboss who’s still dating her hometown boyfriend and feels uncomfortable surrounded by so much wealth. Fresh off a run as toxic alpha Regina George in Broadway’s Mean Girls, Reneé Rapp plays rich New Yorker Leighton, an Essex legacy with a frat-boy older brother, sorority ambitions and a pair of high-school friends who dumped her as a roommate. But, taken together with her Netflix teen hit Never Have I Ever, College Girls suggests that coming-of-age stories might be her forte.Īt the core of the show’s appeal are the mismatched main characters, each one lovable and frustrating in her own way. ![]() As a creator, Kaling has historically struggled to rework, rather than just recycle, the clichés of genres that she knows inside and out (see: her rom-com series The Mindy Project and Four Weddings and a Funeral). 18, this warm, observant and often gleefully raunchy show follows four very different freshman suitemates through their first months outside the nest at Vermont’s prestigious, fictional Essex College. Which is not to say that it isn’t also frank about, well, the sex lives of college girls. The romantic stuff just felt like a good hook.” In fact, as TV shows about young adults go, this one is pretty wholesome. The truth, Kaling recently explained to the Hollywood Reporter, is that she and co-creator Justin Noble “wanted to tell a story of four passionate, bright girls in college. It sounds like a phrase you’d see splashed across the cover of a 1950s pulp novel or a ’70s Times Square marquee-which is sure to get all kinds of subscribers clicking play. ![]() Mindy Kaling knew what she was doing when she titled her new HBO Max comedy The Sex Lives of College Girls.
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