‘Girls’ season 3: HBO places premiere, episode 2 on YouTube

Clearly, HBO wants to secure as big of an audience for “Girls” as possible. After all, the network has even made the move to put the first two episodes of the new season online for free. Not only that, but they took it a step further even then their rival Showtime: Not only are these episodes on YouTube, but they are up in a completely unedited form.

So why would the network do this when it comes to one of its most-popular comedies? There may be a part of them that realizes that most of the “Girls” viewership is young, and they may need an extra incentive to spend what little money that they have on a network subscription. They may need a little bit of a nudge in the right direction, and the network seems more than happy to oblige in that regard.

Will they do this for any more of the season? Hardly. This is more of a move to just get people hooked on the show, and then keep it strictly on the network the rest of the way (it’s the equivalent of TV crack, the first hit is free). This is not the first time that they have put a “Girls” episode online, though, as the first episode of the entire series streamed on YouTube as a way to build up even more buzz for a show that at that time had no stars at all.

In the end “Girls” is one of the more polarizing shows on TV. Some people love it, and plenty of people hate it just because they don’t like the premise or star Lena Dunham. The majority of the haters, we’ve found, haven’t actually watched the show.