Sex Lives of College Girls is the best thing on TV rn
Yes, there are definitely spoilers involved
I love Mindy Kaling. I actually wrote one third of my much-mentioned senior thesis all about her memoirs. I argued that Mindy’s gabby, lighthearted writing style almost makes her seems like Tina and Amy’s younger sister. Tina’s hilarious but biting. She’s my favorite of the three, but absolutely someone who I wouldn’t want to double-cross. Amy’s shockingly tender and mushy, in addition to being hilarious. Her memoir swings from stories about improv to musings about life and spirituality.
Mindy’s style leans more Tina than Amy. She’s a writer first and got her start working as an intern on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. While she’s starred in shows like The Office, her self-created The Mindy Project, and movies like Late Night and Ocean’s 8, she prefers to be behind the camera, pulling the strings as a showrunner.
Her first book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), is my favorite of her three. She very much has this sense that you could curl up on the couch with her and gab over some wine. She’s warm and quick, but not quite as biting as Tina can be in her writing style.
She’s also released some truly banger shows in the past five years. I’m looking at you, Never Have I Ever. And her latest project, The Sex Lives of College Girls, is one of my favorite shows, probably of all time. Currently airing on Max, it’s in the middle of its third season and truly just keeps getting better with every episode.
If you haven’t seen the show, it’s set a small private college in Vermont, modeled off of Dartmouth (where Kaling went to school). It follows four extremely different roommates as they navigate their freshman year and everything that comes with college, particularly — as the title implies — their sex lives.
The sex positive vibe of the show is smart and attention-grabbing (almost like Sex and the City’s little sister) but that’s not the main reason I think it’s so good. There are sooo many reasons !!
For starters, the writing is fucking fantastic. I’ve mentioned this before in a Park It post, but one of my favorite things is finding shows and movies about Gen-Z that actually sound like Gen-Z. SLOCG is one of the best examples of this (along with Booksmart, my go-to example). The girls all scroll through Bumble and Hinge in their down time, TikTok fit videos are a crucial part of Leighton’s rush process, texts appear on the screen as the characters send them in real time. In one of my favorite scenes from season 2, Whitney’s Instagram stalking a new girl that works at the coffee shop with her then-boyfriend, Canaan. She commits a cardinal sin: she accidentally likes a years-old photo of the girl and her grandma. Shudders.
Bella immediately grabs the phone and changes Whitney’s profile picture to a burrito, before changing her name to chipotlealbuquerque so that the girl won’t know it was Whitney who liked the picture. I love this scene because every person alive under the age of 30 right now has felt the intense panic that comes when your finger slips and you like something you shouldn’t. It nails it.
Side note - recently when showing my best friend’s mom something on Instagram and trying to prevent her from doing the Mom Two Finger Zoom (you know the one), she hit me with a “why is it so bad to like someone’s old photos? Isn’t that just a sign that you really like them and are thinking about them? Who cares if it’s late?”
Lori. BFFR. Me liking my old crush’s new girlfriend’s best friend’s picture from 2015 with a Kelvin filter on it IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. AT ANY POINT.
It’s also the first show I’ve seen that’s incredibly accurate about the college experience. Everything from the girls “mixing three alcohols together into one bottle” for a pregame in their dorm, to all of the weird vibes Leighton and Whitney encounter during rush, to the long lines the girls wait in at frat parties in the freezing cold. It’s so different from movies like The House Bunny or Greek or even that one great episode of New Girl where Cece and Jess show up at a sorority to campaign for Hillary. Those are all great pieces of media, but they’re not at all accurate to what it’s like to actually be in college. But SLOCG nailed it, down to the weird but iconic party themes:
Lastly — the cast!!! God, the cast. They’re incredible. I was super nervous when it was announced Reneé Rapp was leaving to go be, you know, Reneé Rapp. I bawled my little eyes out in the scene where she says her goodbyes to the three others because that’s not Leighton talking! That’s Reneé! And I figured that they couldn’t possibly replace her with someone as good. BUT now we’re two episodes into the Gracie Lawrence-as-the-new-roommate era and I have to admit — she’s seriously good. She’s funny and she’s a totally unique character, not just a Leighton replacement. Which is a relief, because no one can replace Reneé Rapp. The OG three absolutely crush it episode after episode. I go through highs and lows with Bella — she’s so chaotic and self-destructive — but I love her and the other two like I would my own friends. They feel so real.
SLOCG shows us real, genuine storylines about what it’s like to be an 18-year-old girl, away from home for the first time. Every single episode is a banger. I love sitcoms probably more than the next person, but the show doesn’t necessarily feel like other sitcoms to me. Instead, SLOCG’s predecessors more accurately feel like Mean Girls or Pitch Perfect or Broad City. Other girl-focused, raunchy movies and shows where it feels like the writers went over the script with a red pen a hundred times, tightening and tightening it like twisting the lid on a jar.
But we do get a bit of the Mike Schur flavor in SLOCG with the way the girls rub off on each other — which makes sense, considering he and Mindy worked together as writers on The Office. Take Leighton, for instance. She comes into her freshman year a spoiled, closeted, mean girl. She walks into her shared dorm room, takes one look at her roommates, and walks right back out to file for a room transfer (spoiler: it’s not granted). Part of the reason her goodbye, two seasons later, is so emotional is because of what she tells the other girls:
“I came to Essex thinking that I was going to date men, and I would be in Kappa, and I would’ve done those things, and I would've been miserable. But then I met you three, and you gave me the strength to be myself … I don’t want to go. I can’t imagine not having you guys with me! It is terrifying. But I think this is what I have to do if I care about my future.”
They’re sobbing, I’m sobbing. I dare you not to sob.
This is why SLOCG is the best thing on TV right now — it’s something entirely new. Sure, it plays on ideas and narratives and storylines that are generally familiar. But it does them all better! Mindy portrays college better than anyone ever has. It has the flavors of a Pitch Perfect or a Mean Girls with its whip-smart dialogue and cultural references, but the sweetness of a Mike Schur show. It has a star studded lineup of characters who, even if they themselves aren’t 18 — looking at you, Pauline Chalamet — FEEL like authentic Gen-Z college students. It’s a gem and no shock it come from the brain of Mindy Kaling, who I looove. I feel pretty lucky to be catching it each week as it airs. I won’t hear a word against it.
Thank you for the reminder to watch the new season! So much stuff came out at once!