The Girls5eva bubblegum pop theme song is a straight-up serotonin rush (no, Netflix, I will not be skipping the credits), and so is the sitcom’s third season. The performances, the writing, the humor—they all shine like Wickie’s glass piano Ghislaine when the sun hits it just right.
Season 3 kicks off with pop group Girls5eva—Dawn (Sara Bareilles), Summer (Busy Philipps), Gloria (Paula Pell), and Wickie (Renée Elise Goldsberry)—wowing crowds in Fort Worth as they attempt to make a comeback. Each of the six episodes follows the friends as they hit different stops on their tour, with the final show at the legendary Radio City Music Hall. On the way, Gloria is slutting it up with every woman she can to see if her kinda-sorta-ex Caroline is the one, and Summer is trying to discover who she is without a significant other to base her personality on. Meanwhile, Wickie and Dawn are preoccupied with how to sell out Radio City Music Hall (their show is on Thanksgiving and after all the different website fees, the tickets are $500 each). This set of episodes has some great cameos, including John Early as a conservative senator, character actor Richard Kind as himself, Catherine Cohen as a spoiled sugar baby, and Ingrid Michaelson as a downtrodden musician.
My main complaint about this season of Girls5eva is that there’s not enough of it. This isn’t the creators’ fault; the overall trend of shorter TV seasons in order to better fit binge-watching is well-documented. Girls5eva only has six episodes in this newest season, and when it comes to a show as silly and chaotic as this one, we don’t need brevity. This isn’t some tightly knit drama with a concrete narrative arc; this is a goofy sitcom with jokes about a fake dating show called Love Is Smells. The writers need more space to play around with Gloria’s increasingly specific hookup types (e.g. Female Popeye, Cigar Mommy), Wickie’s megalomania, Summer’s multi level marketing adventures, and Dawn’s pregnancy woes. And, in typical Girls5eva fashion, they poke fun at the powers-that-be jerking them around as Wickie tries to sell her tour documentary to a rotating cast of entertainment execs, with their streaming company’s name changing every other moment. It’s a hilarious skewering of an increasingly frustrating situation—primarily for writers, cast, and crew, but for lovers of pop culture, too.
The writing is as sharp, bonkers, and laugh-out-loud funny as ever. Girls5eva possesses a comic rhythm that definitely shares its DNA with 30 Rock and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (read: fast), but that still feels distinct. There are so many quotable one-liners (Wickie on Billie Eilish: “I can wear sweatshirts and have a brother.”) that I hope to see make their way into the popular consciousness. The top-tier writing is accentuated by excellent visual gags, like guest star Thomas Doherty sporting fox tooth veneers or Dawn’s brother (Dean Winters, a.k.a. Dennis Duffy in 30 Rock) pouring vodka on a raw turkey before drinking straight from the bottle.
A show as wonderfully wacky as Girls5eva doesn’t need character growth to be entertaining, but the writers still serve it up anyway, and we’re the better for it. Summer’s journey of finding herself is not a perfect trajectory about embracing her independence—as mentioned before, she falls for an MLM—but she ends up being the hero of the entire season. Philipps’ enthusiastic space cadet energy is also a joy to behold. Gloria’s dating escapades are entertaining (if a little reminiscent of Jenna Maroney’s sexual walkabout), and Pell is clearly one of the most underutilized comedic talents around right now. Wickie has some surprising moments of selflessness by season’s close, and it’s a testament to Goldsberry’s appeal that she manages to make such an unrepentantly narcissistic person so fun to watch.
Dawn’s personal journey is the most muddled of them all. Besides her pregnancy, her main inner conflict comes from trying to stick to her morals while navigating an industry that doesn’t much care for those. There’s no picture-perfect resolution here, but there is some recognition that despite her moral high ground about the group’s misogynistic early songs, Dawn can be hypocritical when it comes to acknowledging the appeal of nostalgia. Bareilles works well as a harried mother, with enough weirdness in her performance to keep things interesting.
The season is rounded out by a fitting observation about fame, delivered by Richard Kind: The big time isn’t worth it, but the medium time—continually working but not reaching obnoxious levels of celebrity—is. Dawn embraces his outlook, declaring during the finale, “I want to do what I love for a very long time.”
What I love is watching Girls5eva, and I’d feel lucky to keep enjoying it for a while. Let’s hope Netflix listens to viewers and gives us plenty more of this joyously zany sitcom, rather than a paltry renewal of half-a-dozen episodes.
Clare Martin is a cemetery enthusiast and Paste’s assistant comedy editor. Go harass her on Twitter @theclaremartin.