When life gives you a second chance, you have to take it.
That’s the mantra guiding the women of Girls5eva in Season 2 of Meredith Scardino’s comedy about a middle-aged ’90s girl group’s comeback. Dawn (Sara Bareilles), Wickie (Renée Elise Goldsberry), Gloria (Paula Pell), and Summer (Busy Philipps) have a chance to relive their former glory and honor the late Ashley (Ashley Park). But being a pop star looks nothing like what they’re used to.
Girls5eva still fits cozily into the oeuvre of executive producers Tina Fey, Robert Carlock, David Miner, Eric Gurian, and Jeff Richmond, who also composed the music. The jokes fly at check-your-phone-and-you’ll-miss-it velocity, with characters now established in their rhythm, dynamics, and individual strengths.
Goldsberry remains a highlight, sustaining Wickie’s inexhaustible diva energy by being consistently extra and making it look easy. Bareilles plays the straight man with impeccable timing, and Pell gets some standout moments of physical comedy. Only Philipps feels underutilized, though perhaps not incapable. When Summer expresses her own feelings of inferiority amidst the group, her friends assure her that she’s growing, and she’s the moral compass holding them together.
The eight episodes initially feel like a collection of punchlines and musical parodies with a loose enough throughline to uphold narrative momentum. Yet even through nonstop hijinks and hilarity, the women of Girls5eva face deeper personal struggles and wind up in very different emotional places by the finale. Dawn must contend with her passive aggression, Wickie with her competitiveness, Gloria with her inability to let go, and Summer with the conservative values she always held near and dear. Despite the lure of resurgent stardom, an album and possible tour are major interruptions to normalcy, and the group has to agree on how to move forward.
Album Mode requires all kinds of sacrifices.
Credit: NBC
As the girls compile an album, Richmond once again knocks it out of the park. There’s ultra-pop anthem “Momentum,” the surprisingly soulful “Bend Don’t Break” (seemingly about friendship, actually about Gloria’s knee replacement), the criminally catchy “B.P.E.” (exactly what you think it is), and “At the Beep,” a stirring but still comical tribute to Ashley.
It can be a challenge to stay invested in those story threads amidst a barrage of punchlines and musical parodies, but that never feels like a negative. Girls5eva is nothing if not a bubbly, farcical joyride. It’s worth watching and rewatching to catch every aside, visual gag, or pop culture nod, or just to cackle anew at Pell’s Liam Gallagher impression or Bareilles nailing a simple but satisfying reference to her own discography.
It’s clear that everyone involved in Girls5eva understands Scardino’s comedy voice, and that’s why the performances, writing, and production elements appear to work together so seamlessly. With its nostalgia-laced premise and Richmond’s growing list of earworms, the quirky and quick-witted series is hopefully just getting started.
