‘Girls’ season 2 finale slides versus last year, premiere episode; what happened?
After we publish our review of “Girls” every night, we always like to take a minute or two in order to see what some of the other TV critics out there are saying about the show. It’s such a polarizing show that there are times in which other perspectives serve to only further enhance your own.
However, in doing this search we found that despite the season being rather brilliant from our vantage point, there were only a few other writers who had finale reviews up within a couple of hours of the show airing. Where was the buzz for TV buzziest show? Then, we saw the ratings today. The show drew only 632,000 viewers, which is a decline of 37% from last year’s finale (which was benefited largely by lead-ins). However, it was also down 17% from the first episode of the season, which is not exactly a good thing for cable.
So what in the world happened? We think that with experiment comes risk, and its possible that while we and many others enjoyed some of the more out-of-left-field episodes this year, it made the show even less mainstream than it already was. Compare it to what happened with “Community” during season 2: the viewers who watched the show loved it even more, but its actual audience shrunk.
It will be interesting to see what the DVR figures for this were, mostly because HBO is not nearly as reliant on live or demo viewers. They mostly need subscribers, and for their shows to sell well via other mediums like iTunes and on DVD and Blu-Ray.”Girls” has already been renewed for a 12-episode season 3, but it will be interesting to see if it reverts back to a very good show with a little more mass appeal (as it was at times during season 1), or a bold near-masterpiece that it was this time around.
What do you think about the ratings for “Girls” finale, and what do you blame: the season itself, the competition elsewhere, DVRs, or something else? If you want to check out our full take on the “Girls” finale, you can do so over at the link here.
Photo: HBO