Week-to-Week: Girls5Eva's weak Netflix launch reminds us some good TV is Too Weird For Normals
Plus an early announcement ahead of our full Spring schedule
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When Girls5Eva debuted on Netflix earlier this month, Friend of the Newsletter Alan Sepinwall wrote about the “Netflix Effect” at Rolling Stone, arguing that it’s the latest example of a show being picked up by Netflix and repatriated by the streaming giant as if it had always been theirs all along.
Alan’s argument is sound, but he was making it ahead of Girls5Eva’s debut on the service, when it was unclear what trajectory the show was on. The clearest precedent before the show debuted was Cobra Kai, which launched its first two seasons on YouTube Red before Google shut down their scripted programming push and Sony made the deal to move the third season to Netflix. That show went on to become one of Netflix’s marquee series, earning an (inexplicable) Emmy nomination and a huge fanbase heading into its final season later this year.
The parallels with Girls5Eva are pretty clear. Although a bit more mainstream than YouTube Red was, Peacock was still in search of a hit when it launched Girls5Eva back in 2021, and the second season had the misfortune of launching just as the service was reassessing its initial programming strategies in Summer 2022, having just parted ways with its high-profile Saved by the Bell legacyquel. But Netflix—who has an existing relationship with producer Tina Fey from having salvaged Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt from NBC—decided to swoop in, seeing an opportunity to give the show a proper platform it never found in the early years of Peacock.
Here’s the thing, though: you probably heard versions of this story ahead of Girls5Eva’s launch on Netflix, but what you haven’t seen is any momentum at its new home. In the week of its launch, the series failed to make it into Netflix’s self-reported Top 10s in any territory. While we don’t yet have specific numbers—perhaps it was No. 11 in most countries—it’s pretty clear that we don’t have a Cobra Kai on our hands. Girls5Eva isn’t going to become Netflix’s next breakout hit, and the chances of it continuing beyond its current third season seem pretty slim in an era of relative austerity for the world’s largest streaming service.
I had watched the first season of Girls5Eva when it debuted in 2021, but I skipped season two—I don’t really know why to be honest, but I think it was an “out of sight, out of mind” thing with Peacock at the time. I might have caught up before now, and news of the transition to Netflix created a built-in reason to wait for when the third season was closer. My boyfriend caught some of season one when I was busy at a conference last weekend, but I made him wait to start season two until over the weekend, when we worked through seasons two and three. And for the most part, I really enjoyed myself—there’s at least a joke or two every episode that feels targeted to me personally, and the world creator Meredith Scardino has brought to life feels perfectly cradled in the cultural zeitgeist I also live in. There’s an attention to detail I just really appreciate, like a joke about “Susan from Guess Who” that sent us to Google and absolutely paid off as they intended.
But here’s the thing: this is far and away the most niche show that Netflix has rescued like this, and we shouldn’t be surprised that it didn’t suddenly find an audience. It’s probable that more people will watch it on Netflix than watched it on Peacock, but that doesn’t actually make it a success by the platform’s current standards. Shows like Cobra Kai hit big on Netflix because despite being on smaller services, they were calibrated for the “basic” mass audience that Netflix has cultivated at the center of the streaming ecosystem. Similarly, broadcast shows like Manifest and Lucifer may have struggled to justify their budgets amid a contracting linear marketplace, but the shows found cord-cutters on Netflix and the service could leverage their broad appeal into more episodes.
By comparison, though, Girls5Eva was never a show reaching for a mass audience. It’s true that Netflix rescued the very similar-in-tone Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, but this was a decade ago when Netflix was far more interested in cultivating niche appeal and industry legitimacy than it is currently. At this point, there is no more “Netflix Brand,” and there’s a reason why the majority of shows they’ve rescued like this have been—for lack of a better word—normie. While I suppose someone who hasn’t seen it might argue that Girls5Eva is about an inherently mainstream thing—pop music—the show is simply too weird to make that a bigger part of its identity no matter how catchy some of the songs might be.
I also feel like there’s something inherently limiting about the show’s narrative when it comes to generating plot momentum. The first season is about the band coming back together, and there’s both a lot of past and present exposition to keep things fresh. But when you get to season two, they spend the entire season very slowly making an album, and while there’s still lots of great jokes, the show doesn’t really explore new territory or expand the world in significant ways. And while going on tour in season three seems like it should extend that world further, a shortened six-episode season feels similarly stuck in neutral, albeit in ways that make sense for the characters in question (like the revolving set of Divorced Dad hotels). While fellow 2024 Netflix orphan The Tourist broke through as a thriller, I just don’t know that there’s a way for a niche sitcom about a reunited girl group generating the kind of momentum that creates a viral Netflix moment at this point in the service’s history.
I suppose we should be happy that beyond shortening the episode order, Netflix didn’t muck with Girls5Eva and ruin what made it effective in the first place—they simply made more of a niche show that failed on a nascent streaming service and tested the waters on whether Netflix’s much larger audience would be interested and found out the answer was “not really.” And while I’m grateful this means more people are going to be able to enjoy the show, I’d argue that it’s a clear reminder that Netflix has changed too much in the last decade for this weird show—or any weird show—to penetrate its basic core audience.
Episodic Observations
After having access to the recording studio to bring songs to life in season 2, Girls5Eva leaned on non-diegetic musical moments more in season 3, and…I dunno, I didn’t think they were as effective as I wanted them to be.
While the third season ends on a cliffhanger of sorts—complete with a payoff to the season’s ongoing meta-ness around Netflix—I will say that it wouldn’t be criminal to leave the show here from a character perspective. I’d love to follow them into the next stage of their journey, but there’s a lot of character progress that comes in the season’s final moments that would make it more or less satisfying.
The Prince Andrew/The Crown runner is a great example of a joke that’s honestly not really a joke, but feels like a joke until you Google it and realize it is based on Actual Reporting.
My biggest question for Netflix about their attempt to relaunch this is the choice to not debut the first two seasons ahead of the premiere of the third season—that’s the pattern they used for Cobra Kai and most recently with The Tourist, which moved its first season from Max at the start of February before season two launched at the end of the same month. While it isn’t an incredibly plot-heavy show where I think people would have been desperate to see how the second season cliffhanger resolved, it would have at least created two news cycles, along with an additional “recently added” “new episodes” boost. Feels like maybe the show needed it.
I watched the first two episodes of 3 Body Problem in between Girls5Eva binges, and while I thought they were interesting, I fell behind my boyfriend and then spent some of his ongoing watch 95% paying attention to Netflix’s newly launched version of Game Dev Tycoon on its mobile app. It really rekindled my past obsession with Game Dev Story for iOS, and the new “Licensed Games” mechanics they added for the Netflix version offer a really great investigation of the history of licensed games that I’ll be bringing into my Game Industry class I’m teaching. I might get back to 3 Body now that I reached the endgame with Calyton Studios, but we’ll have to see.
As I told paid subscribers last week, I’ve quit writing about The Regime weekly after finding the show’s tonal imbalances and wonky pacing offered a mostly repetitive critical reflection, but this week’s episode did elevate things by bringing in Hugh Grant to very briefly spar with our core duo before being ushered off so we can focus on their psychosexual drama amid an increasingly abstract civil war. As promised, I’ll drop back in for the finale, but nothing about this week’s episode made me regret firing myself.
Still finalizing one final show for the rest of our spring schedule (I want to make sure it’s worth someone’s time, having only watched one screener), but I can confirm that Zack Handlen has agreed to revive his coverage of Star Trek: Discovery for its final season after his A.V. Club reviews of season 4 were cut short. He’ll be covering the first two episodes next Thursday.
The news that Zack will cover Discovery's last season got a "holy shit" from me! I thought the show had broken him. Much respect to him for engaging for the final season. I am very much looking forward to that, along with the conversation here.
It had been a while since I'd seen Girls5eva - I thought the first season in particular was terrific - but I enjoyed season 3, particularly the second half of the season - both in the sense of the characters having to confront themselves and make real strides in growth, and in how much more packed it was with absurd sight gags and pop-culture one-liners. ("The star of the CW's sexy adaptation of Andy Capp")
I also liked the plotting, or in particular the way it all came together in the end and paid off (particularly with Summer saving the day). I won't be surprised if it's the end, and they left it in a place that works as one, while giving themselves an out if they do get picked up. This was a fun show; I wish more shows from the 30 Rock family tree got more recognition and viewers.