VVIBE WITH ME: a very emotional review of Derry Girls

I have watched Derry Girls more than 3 times, I watched it with my brother, I forced my parents to watch it with me and long story short, I just vvibe with this show.

I love Derry Girls for a number of reasons, most of them related to the fact it’s beautifully written. It’s the most delicate and realistic show about teenagers that I’ve ever seen even though it’s a comedy. I have yet to see Euphoria, but honestly, I don’t think there’s a show airing that understands so gracefully how messy being a teenager really is. It reminds me a lot of Inbetweeners but it’s so much better, it’s not only written by a woman, it shows women, young and old, in a realistic and funny, yet not disrespectful, way.

I love the way Erin’s parents are written, Mary and Gerry are a wonderful couple and Mary clearly runs everything but Gerry is not just a dad, he is the dad, he picks up food, he wants his kid to be happy, he loves his wife and her family and even though Grandpa Joe is always being rude. I love how stuff doesn’t affect Mary and Gerry’s relationship, they are just good parents, they are well-written parents.

There are two moments that make me think of this, one is when Gerry sees Erin and the crew at the concert in Belfast, never fails to make me cry happy tears, the other is when Mary doesn't give Erin money to buy a dress for the dance, but genuinely cares about Erin going, even when her date doesn’t show up.

Erin is ambitious, Michelle is unapologetic, Clare is smart, Orla is crazy, the kind of person who could be a star in the creative world. But they are far from perfect, I mean, an American rewrite would make Erin a journalism prodigy, Clare the perfect A student obsessed with Harvard, also Michelle would be the most beautiful girl at school and Orla an art genius, but they are not that, they are weird because they are not who they are supposed to be yet.

An American rewrite would also make Jenny a mean girl but that's the beauty of Derry Girls, Jenny is not a mean girl, she's just annoying like most people you'll meet in real life who are not bad or mean or cruel, they are just annoying and boring, and that's fine.

Let's be real, we all know a Jenny in real life

Now talking about being a teenager, as much as I like to pretend that my teenage years were wild, they were actually pretty boring, besides almost hooking up with a teacher and pining after a guy 8 years older than me that has always been ridiculously respectful, it was also throwing up in front of said guy and sitting alone at a party wishing said teacher would pick me up. I did kiss a boy who was in a band, that was cool, maybe the coolest night of my high school, my friends were doing body shots between their boobs and I was kissing the most handsome boy at the party, it was the adolescence Skins had promised us I guess, I mean I never watched Skins, because, when I was 15, I was watching Doctor Who and Sherlock, I was, even if I didn't want to admit back in the day, still a kid.

Anyway, being a teenager is usually an awkward act of pretending you know what to do until you figure out what to do and by the time you figure it out, you’re probably around 20 or 21 and being a teenager is disappointing too, you spend your entire childhood imagining and watching things about being older and going out and living incredible things and when you get to it you are just pimply, awkward, restless and you have no money or permission to do things like go to the places cool older people go like bars and parties. So it’s an age of frustration and learning to deal with it and also the pressures of the real world.

And no one tells you that being a teenager is ridiculous and frustrating because kids just don’t know it yet and adults like to pretend their adolescence was perfect and wild and fun and even when they talk about the bad moments, they tell you about it in such a nostalgic way like even the bad moments were good you know? I wonder if that could be one reason for such high rates of teenagers suffering from depresh.

In conclusion, Derry Girls just gets it, the lack of power in being a teenager but also thinking you are unstoppable and immortal, and not in a Euphoria or Skins way, but immortal as in giving yourself too much importance when honestly you are just 17 and no one really cares about what you do and the stuff you are up to or will care in a couple of years. I think what most shows don’t get about adolescence is the fact that teenagers want power, they want freedom or at least their image of freedom. Maybe it’s traveling with their friends, maybe it’s being heard, maybe it’s being able to do things without getting permission from your parents. But the fact is that Derry Girls gets it, it’s about the longing for freedom and power and not actually having it, because all the girls have parents that show up constantly throughout the show, and more than that those parents are people too. They are not just filler characters, in the Take That concert episode, when all the moms are having tea discussing what they are gonna do when the girls get back, it’s so real, it feels like a conversation my mom would have had 7 years ago with my best friends’ moms and it feels nice.

All stills were taken from the Derry Girls IMDB page.