Peggy Noonan thinks 'Girls' is the negative by-product of the 'adventures' and 'glamour' of 'Sex and the City

Interesting theory on HBO's popular "Girls" series, which follows the lives of four 20-something girls trying to thrive in New York City, brought to us by the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan (belatedly from Saturday):

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I am catching up on “Girls,” which is on HBO on Sunday nights and is often compared to “Sex and the City.” They’re identical in main subject matter, four girls in New York looking for life, but they’re different in interesting ways. In “Sex and the City” Samantha was looking for sex, Charlotte sought love with the right sort of man, Carrie wanted a particular man and to make sense of the world through her work, and Miranda was in search of the locus of the resentments that caused her chronic unhappiness.

All had adventures along the way. There was an emphasis on glamour. ...

But watching ("Girls"), I thought the show’s creators were saying, or simply reflecting in their work, that young and academically credentialed girls now are a little more lost, a lot less fully formed than young women in past eras. The great recession is a quiet presence. It’s hard to get a job; sometimes Hannah acts as if she’s scrounging for food. The parents of the characters are mostly affluent flakes who wouldn’t have taught their kids much beyond the idea of rising.

“Sex and the City” had an air of rebellion. “Girls” is living in the middle of what the rebellion wrought.

Deep.