Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Girls5eva’ On Peacock, About An Early ‘00s Girl Group Trying To Make A Middle-Aged Comeback

Whenever you see a sitcom with Tina Fey and Robert Carlock attached as executive producers, you have an expectation that, from the outset, the show will start out funny. Even if the characters need more definition, Fey and Carlock’s knack for finding and training funny writers and expert casting ensures that you’ll get some hearty laughs from the first minutes of a series. That’s definitely the case with Girls5eva. Read on for more.

GIRLS5EVA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A rapper named Lil Stinker (Jeremiah Craft) finishes the vocals on a track and is looking for a sample to provide the music.

The Gist: Lil Stinker isn’t liking any of the sample choices, until the producer and engineer hit on a track from a girl group called Girls5eva, who were a one-hit wonder around 2000. We switch to blurry lo-def video footage of them being introduced on TRL and giddily talking about how their name means that they’ll be girlfriends for longer than forever, they’ll be friends “5eva”.

The reality of it is much different, as we see when one of the group’s members, Dawn (Sara Bareilles), hears Lil Stinker’s song with their sample as she’s getting her very first mammogram. She’s an overextended mom who works at the family restaurant with her obnoxious brother Nick (Dean Winters). She gets word that their old agent, Larry Plumb (Jonathan Hadary) has royalty checks for them. She goes to his crowded office, where he’s giving likes to a new client’s videos. He makes sure, after sensitivity training, that he side-hugs her.

He wants her to get the rest of the checks to the group before they expire. The first person she finds is the dippy Summer (Busy Philipps), who was good at adding spoken lines to the end of songs. She’s living in a mansion with her influencer daughter, with her husband living in Florida most of the time. “He comes home the 31st of every month that has one of those.” They easily find Gloria (Paula Pell), who when she was in the group had to say she liked guys. Now she’s a dentist who’s bitter over being in one of New York State’s same sex divorces.

The one person that’s tough to find is Wickie (Renée Elise Goldsberry), whose Instagram talks about her jetsetting life and fashion line. And their fifth member, Ashley (Ashley Park) died in 2004; the bench they dedicated in her honor is in the middle of a playground under construction. When The Tonight Show wants them to back up Lil Stinker, though, they’re all elated but nervous. Gloria sweats so much that she douses herself to match the pit stains. And Wickie comes swanning in at the last possible moment, and they all fall in line behind her.

It seems that they’re poised for a comeback after the performance, but Lil Stinker says that they’re at the age where “you freeze grapes and eat it as dessert,” and Larry has no offers. Dawn finds out that Wickie works at the airport instead of uses it to fly a private jet. And Wickie decides to stay in New York so Girls5eva can mount a comeback.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? In tone and speed of joke delivery, Girls5eva matches other Tina Fey-Robert Carlock productions, from 30 Rock to Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt to Great News.

Our Take: Meredith Scardino, who was a writer on Kimmy Schmidt, created and runs Girls5eva, and you can see the Fey-Carlock experience has rubbed off on how the show looks and feels. Rapid-fire jokes, some said in such a throwaway manner that you have to rewind to catch them. Flashbacks galore. Jokes that reference pop culture in strange and funny ways — “I hear Bindi Irwin is hot now,” Larry tells Dawn as she leaves his office. And characters that try to persevere despite chaotic lives that have not come out the way they thought.

Fey and Carlock not only ensure they get great writers, train them in their “system” and encourage them to pitch their own ideas for shows, they tend to bring on fantastic casts to execute that writing. And the cast of Girls5eva all do a fantastic job of committing to the craziness. We all know that Philipps and Pell can be outlandish on screen — and we’re so, so happy that Pell has decided to come out from the writers’ room and act more, that’s how fantastic she is as Gloria. But Bareilles and Goldsberry, both more known for their Broadway musical roles (Waitress and Hamilton, respectively), match Pell and Philipps in comic timing.

The idea of a girl group trying to get back together in middle age isn’t new; people have been wanting The Spice Girls to reunite for decades. But the fact that they had their one hit 20-plus years ago, and now get that itch again as they all deal with lives away from music, is an inherently funny idea. The thought that Scardino will explore these four women playing dive clubs while still dealing with their various lives has a lot of potential.

In Pell, we see potential for a lot of stories, namely the push for youth in the music business and how much the idea that, back in the early ’00s, artists still had to stay in the closet publicly. Young Gloria (Erika Henningsen) can barely hold in how little she cares for men’s bodies — “I love them because they’re flat and then there’s a tube!” — and the fact that Gloria is going to come back into a business that wouldn’t let her be her true self shows how much of a draw it is for her.

But the pilot for Girls5eva does such a good job at setting up these women, their relationship and the situation that we’re looking forward to seeing where everyone’s stories go.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: After moving Ashley’s bench in front of Dawn’s restaurant, the four of them sit there and start harmonizing. A woman passes them and says “too early!”, then throws a cup of ice at them.

Sleeper Star: Daniel Breaker plays Dawn’s husband Scott, who seems like a perfectly reasonable guy. We’ll see if he stays supportive and reasonable. And we’ll be seeing Andrew Rannells as Summer’s sometimes-husband Kev, which should be fun.

Most Pilot-y Line: None, really.

Our Call: STREAM IT. With four fantastic leads and some sharp writing, Girls5eva should give Fey-Carlock fans the fix they’ve been looking for since Kimmy Schmidt ended.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Girls5eva On Peacock