It's not that the first three episodes have been bad. It's more that they haven't been very good. And it doesn't take long at all to realise when you've had enough average.
Don't get me wrong, it still has moments of brilliance. A character waxing lyrical about his artistic awakening after getting bored with selfies and discovering the possibilities when you turn the camera around being one such recent moment. But these are fleeting and buried deep beneath the meh so far.
The show may be about the narcissism of four self-indulgent 20-somethings and I get that it's a fictionalised mirror to creator/writer/star Lena Dunham's pre-fame life, but sheesh, there's been a lot of dross.
An elongated party scene where the comedy comes from some bad dancing is a tired old gag that sees the episode end on a whole heap of filler and sums up the big complaint so far. There's too much time wasted waiting for something to happen. Sure, life is like that but must entertainment be too?
It probably doesn't help that the characters get more annoying each week. Hannah, pretentiously whiney, Shoshanna, the hyper goody-good, self-absorbed Marnie and her awful songs and the relentlessly irritating Jessa ... if I knew any of them in real life, relations would have ceased aeons ago.
So why am I still watching? It's a question I ask myself each week as I reach back into the packet for another helping despite my queasy stomach.
I guess it's because the first two seasons were truly great television and, despite its lacklustre start, season three ended up okay too.
But "okay" is an alarming quality drop-off for a show that once came perilously close to defining a generation.
Sure, it was yet another generation of privileged young 20-something whiteys, but what made it resonate and what made it real was that this time it was a woman doing the defining. With Girls, Dunham showed us the other side of the well-worn male coin. And it was anxious, funny, frequently shocking, and, at times, deeply moving. Girls still swings for those moments, but it hits them with far less regularity.
Maybe I'm not target market. But I don't think HBO would commission a series just to appeal to a small, singular audience. I'm not a council worker or TV show-runner either and both Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock hold much appeal. Like those female-driven shows, Girls should appeal to boys as well.
Season three didn't start firing until just past halfway and season four looks to be following that same trajectory. Perhaps the comfort of Dunham's deserved success has bled into her characters, blunting the urgency which once drove their ambition.
With season five on the way I'm left wondering what stories these increasingly one-note characters have left to tell.
Girls was very good but I think I've now had enough.
I guess the problem with representing the zeitgeist is that it moves and changes so quickly. No matter how many "shocking" bum-centric sex scenes, self-involved Skype monologues and bloody awful balladeering get crammed into each episode it's hard not to feel that Girls' time has passed.
Sure, it was quick and it was fleeting and over too quickly but in the end doesn't that perfectly sum up your 20s?
