Over five seasons of “Girls,” Jessa Johansson has gotten a bad rap.
She subjects her friends to a manic episode-turned-surprise wedding, dates their exes, and is perpetually unemployed. Her hair is too perfect. You hate her for being that obnoxious, free-spirited friend of yours who never commits to anything — until you realize she’s a walking parody of that friend. She’s awful, and that’s the point.
Played by the effervescent Jemima Kirke, Jessa is the cringe-inducing bohemian who perhaps best exemplifies the understated humor of the HBO coming-of-age series, created by and starring Lena Dunham. Critics are often too preoccupied hate-watching the show to realize its saving grace is not protagonist Hannah Horvath, but her estranged best friend.
Jessa is hard to watch, sure. But as “Girls” premieres its sixth and final season on Sunday, here’s six reasons why we’ll miss her.
The stereotype of the coddled, jobless millennial is so overdone and problematic that it was just begging for some good Jessa treatment. That she provides with lines like: “You wanna know what the weirdest part about being an adult is? You have to be there, every day, even on the days you don’t feel like it.”
When she shows up two hours late to a dinner party thrown for her, as Marnie (Allison Williams) haughtily points out, her response is golden: “I thought that was just a suggestion.” Isn’t it, though?
If there’s any show that has gotten more heat for how it portrays women and whether that portrayal is really “feminist,” it’s “Girls.” And while body-positive Dunham has taken the lion’s share of the criticism for Hannah’s nude scenes alone, Jessa deserves some credit, too. When a potential employer asks her what kind of work she’s looking for, Jessa takes an assertive stance, left thigh fully exposed by a slit in her dress, and deadpans, “Anything that doesn’t market my sexuality.” Her brazen delivery is self-aware and comical, challenging us to make that stupid argument that women can’t show skin and still be taken seriously.
Maybe it’s the accent, maybe it’s just because her insults are somehow not that insulting. You just kind of want Jessa to be mean to you, frankly. “I bet you were born on a dirt floor,” she tells a couple of crusty punks in Season 1. They ask what that’s supposed to mean, and she responds, “It means I don’t think you’re cool and I think your mother was poor.” She doesn’t go on dates because dates are “for lesbians.” Jessa’s refreshing forthrightness almost serves to break the fourth wall on the show: She calls out to her audience with a tone that’s both ridiculous and true, like when she describes the befuddlingly handsome Adam (Adam Driver) as looking like “the original man.” More mean Jessa, please.
In the highly underrated fifth season of “Girls,” Jessa strikes up a relationship with Hannah’s ex-boyfriend Adam, breaking the No. 1 rule in the best-friend book. She knows this, but it’s almost like she’s trying that rule on to see why it’s a rule to begin with. For her, it’s probably because she and Hannah have outgrown their friendship. For the rest of us, it’s a good reminder of why we have rules.
Jessa will begin the final season of “Girls” as a generally unliked character. Her friends have grown tired of her antics, and her own guilty conscious and anger is weighing on her. It’s good to know that a character like Jessa will probably not prevail in the show, as in life. Whimsy is too often rewarded in the fictional world. It’s annoying. And so is she, bless her heart.
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