From Broad City to Too Much: The Return of The Twenties on TV

Where were you back when being an adult became “adulting”? How many times have you proclaimed that “you’re just a girl” in the face of inconvenient responsibility? And are you often called back to the incoherent sitcom advice of Carrie and Miranda or Abbi and Ilana?

In the mid-2010s, television peaked for twenty-something comedies that gave levity and brilliance to the messiness of this era in life. Broad City, Girls, and the oh-so-rewatched SATC taught us that friendship could survive (and even thrive) in chaos.

The interpersonal connections of these series  insisted on their right to be unlikable, broke, and painfully self-serious. Insecure and its successors satirized the blissfully painful reality of the humiliation ritual that becoming a woman can be. Shortly after the craze in popularity for these series and their unmentioned counterparts, a drought fell upon the dramedy about twenty-somethings series worlds, yet none have gone unquoted, unreferenced, or unedited on TikTok (set to a Charli XCX remix). But in 2025, a miracle arrived in the form of a buddy comedy resurgence. Shows like Overcompensating, Adults, Too Much, and The Sex Lives of College Girls are ushering in a new version of the “lost twenties” narrative, with new series ordered that offer bespoke stories like “I Love LA”: Rachel Sennott’s trauma-bonded episodic comedy about primed Los Angeles transplants and natives. 

Where earlier characters stumbled through adulthood with naive earnestness, today’s leads are hyper-aware of their messiness.

When they fail, it feels like a vlog prompt or an inspiration for their untouched Substack article series, maybe even a story for their Hinge profile prompts. Although satirizing the dirty reality of failures in early adulthood isn’t new, it has been ushered in as the punchline rather than a supporting role in the greater comedic beats of these series.  

A decade after Broad City and Girls making fun of New York City’s ridiculous subcultures and the definitive millennial state of girlhood, and Insecure’s delivery of a woman’s navigation of love and success through a personal lens of life’s funniest of flops, new series are rewriting the foundation of poking fun and the new girl-to-girl who has it all pipeline.

Overcompensating leans into cringe-comedy, spotlighting characters who are too self-aware for their own good and the unshy awkwardness of being closeted and queer in college. Adults plays with the absurdities of post-grad survival — financial precarity, petty drama as hobbies, group chats as lifelines. Too Much thrives (and sometimes relies) on meta-humor and situational comedy, poking fun at the fact that every attempt at seriousness collapses into ironic chaos. 

The connective tissue is friendship, but not in the ride-or-die sense of Broad City (which I’m personally impartial to as a clingy Cancer rising). Instead, these relationships are more dead-on,  transient, reflective of the real world during this chapter of life where friends cycle in and out based on city moves, job shifts, and the occasional (and necessary)  mental health spirals or romantic crash outs.

There was a clear demand for Gen Z to see these dynamics in a more relatable and refined way, and every generation deserves to see its growing pains being made fun of and made into an arguably Oscar-winning edit that they can send to their roommate with the note “this is us”. Clear distinctions between the Jessica Salmon and the Hannah Horvaths of our screens can be easily identified, mimicking the differences of how life has become publicized for even the average struggling woman.

Today’s characters aren’t just fumbling in private; their mistakes are immediately broadcast, archived, and memed, even when set in the early 2010s era of MySpace status posts. New series like these are likely to lean into that reality, making self-awareness itself a joke, which we all love to identify with as we laugh.

 Earlier shows often revolved around career arcs — becoming a writer, an artist, a professional. In these stories, work is treated as an impermanent force: just another gig until rent’s due again, with love (both romantic and platonic) and self-discovery making it’s way to the front of the plotlines. The drama isn’t whether you’ll achieve your dream job, but whether you’ll survive another month on a corporate paycheck and/or side hustle while juggling the life stuff. 

Friendship has also rebranded in a reflective way! Abbi and Ilana were love at first sight-type of soulmates,  Issa and Molly had a bond that could bend but never break. Today’s friendships are less mythic and more transactional, reflecting a reality where people cycle through roommates, co-workers, and cities. It’s not worse — just different. Intimacy looks more like shared Uber rides or trauma bonding over failed connections rather than lifelong promises. 

So why do we keep coming back to these shows? Because they remind us that being lost is universal, generational, and deeply laughable? Is it our God-given destiny to produce an era-defining lineup of productions that can redefine the retellings of these awkward stages of life for each generation? If the first wave of coming-of-age comedies captured the chaos of becoming an adult, this new wave captures the chaos of realizing you’ll never stop becoming one. And maybe that’s the most grueling, giggle-inspiring portrait of growing up television has ever given us.

Binge, Stan, Repeat: Television Fandom in the Times of Stan Culture and Streaming

(Slight Warning: Spoilers for The Walking Dead, Stranger Things, and The Bear) 

On May 6, 2004, millions of New Yorkers gathered in Times Square to experience the season finale of arguably the most famous sitcom of all time: Friends. After the episode aired, folks presumably chatted about their thoughts with their friends and family on the subway ride home, and furthermore with their coworkers in the break room the next day. Then we all moved on. 

Television has a way of integrating itself into ever-changing pop culture. From the introduction of late-night television into the average middle-income home, to watchers across America voting for their favorite couple on Love Island USA every single week. Early instances of fans creating their own spaces for fellow viewers and showrunners alike can be attributed to the early days of Twitter. Immediately after the airing of the episode, it was no longer required to wait to communicate with your friends in real life. The second the credits began to scroll across the silver screen, fans could take their grievances or happiness to the world wide web for all to see. Fandom long existed before the time of social media or even the Internet. Showrunner and filmmaker J.J. Abrams describes the new world of television viewing as "akin to watching theater". The episodic release becomes something of a performance, and reactions would trickle in real-time. He goes on to add, “What was kind of great was that you could use it as one of your tools.” But where does this notion leave us in the current climate of all things streaming, whole-season releases, fandom existing on various platforms, media literacy declining, and so much more? 

Friends Series Finale In Times Square (2004)

What came of the fans’ criticism visibility is a change within the writer’s rooms. Suddenly, showrunners had become their own character. They were expected to represent their work in the same fashion that actors had been doing in the past. This is due to the new level of parasocial intimacy on Twitter. Writers, actors, and showrunners alike now had access to initial reactions and had the opportunity to not only engage in online discourse but take from it. Writers now had to dissect the difference between what fans think they wanted for their faves, to what was necessary to produce a decent series with a strong narrative.

Shipping is one of the more popular forms of engagement seen online, dating back to one of television history’s first “cult classics.” ‘The X-Files’ first graced screens in 1993, and Internet fans were quick to harbor a passion for the potential relationship between lead protagonists, Fox Mulder (Dave Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). While the show carried sentiments of critiques towards the American government and large institutions and embraced supernatural conspiracy theories, at the center of this show lies an intense coworker-to-lovers (kind of, it’s a little complicated) relationship between Mulder and Scully. 

Manifestations of shipping culture begin to trickle into reality, in which the actors face the repercussions of what exactly the fans want to see. Performers now exist as an extension of the series they are dedicating their professional life to. Rumors have long swirled about Anderson and Duchovny, from a famous clip of Anderson winning an award and celebrating by first kissing Duchovny then her boyfriend to the two continuously appearing on red carpets together. Every other summer, an influx of Conrad vs Jeremiah appears on the timeline and creates further discourse, despite the series ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ being an adaptation of a completed novel series, with an ending pre-written. While not always harmful, the extent to which shipping culture bleeds into the personal lives of actors emphasizes the issue of potentially too much involvement from fans. 

Fans of Netflix’s star show ‘Stranger Things’ have long noticed that Finn Wolfhard and Millie Bobby Brown rarely “interact” anymore, and many users online attribute this public awkwardness to the harassment from Mileven shippers. Fans of the on-screen couple furthermore shipped the actors, looking for public moments between the two to interrogate them about the status of a non-existent romantic relationship. Wolfhard and Brown rarely interact publicly, and users online speculate that the incessant shipping from fans early in the show’s run is a major part of that choice.  

Shipping has gone far beyond the streaming culture and fiction television series, where it can now be voted on every day from ‘Love Island USA’. American watchers choose their favorite couple in a similar fashion to how those early viewers of ‘The X-Files’ championed for the couple they desperately wanted to see online. This notion of “America decides” in conjunction with the way that fans can now guide television writers to make choices for their work in real time creates an entirely new question of whether fans of a show should have a say or not. Fans of the hit FX series ‘The Bear’ have long-campaigned for a romantic relationship between Syd (Ayo Edebiri) and Carmy (Jeremy Allen White). As the show continues to air episodes, the fans grow frustrated at the creators’ choice to refrain the two from ever getting together. Instead, the show created a unanimously despised girlfriend from Carmy’s past to deflect from the potential of “sydcarmy.” If a majority of viewership is rooting for one very specific thing, what would be the reason for the writers not to please their viewers? 

Shows that remained true to their planned plot point, such as ‘The Walking Dead’ killing fan-favorite character Glenn, lost a major chunk of their loyal fanbase from a decision that was unfavorable. Inversely, the ships and dramatics that surrounded ‘Outer Banks’ upon its newest season led many fans to believe that a crowd favorite character was killed off due to tensions on set. It was speculated that Madison Bailey and Rudy Pankow may have had a small and fleeting romantic relationship at some point throughout the filming of the early seasons, leading fans to ship not only the actors, but their characters as well. Initially, the character of Kie (Bailey) was meant to embark on a relationship with Pope (Jonathan Daviss). However, fans were not shy in their desire to see JJ (Pankow) and Kie end up together.

While the drama is largely speculation from fans and online users, there seems to be a slight correlation in the way that Bailey and Pankow chose to interact with one another publicly, as both were in separate relationships. It was alleged that the two could barely work together despite now having to perform as a romantic couple on-screen. 

The term “fan service” historically stems from manga books, in which artists and authors would lean into the riqué nature of the novels for the fans’ pleasure. The problem that fan service has found itself in is that it removes the original integrity of the writing and the natural progression of the narrative. Typical fan service instances revolve around heightened sexuality of characters or exploiting female bodies for the pleasure of a male-dominated audience, such as Princess Leia’s costume in Return of the Jedi, where she is clad in a tiny metal bikini, and enslaved with chains by Jabba the Hut. Other subsets of fan service come in the form of just doing what the audiences want and giving small jolts of excitement that will keep them slightly engaged. This can come in the form of letting two characters with a strong shipper fan base finally be together, or relying on references and nostalgia to keep fans happy, such as the case with Marvel’s latest endeavors. 

The change in the format in which television is consumed has also entirely shifted fandom culture and the way that content is discussed. In 2013, Netflix released their first-ever streaming exclusive series ‘House of Cards’ which changed the entertainment industry as we know it today. The days of weekly releases once a year on cable networks dwindled into a void of binging limited series or shows with eight episode seasons. The shift was gradual, of course, but it is impossible to look at the landscape of television without considering such a significant shift. HBO Max has stayed true to their model for the most part, opting to still release episodes on a weekly basis for their original streaming shows. The term “‘Euphoria’ Sundays” created a collective memory in the culture, and the service continues to find success within their weekly releases such as ‘The Last of Us,’ ‘Succession,’ ‘The Pitt,’ and more.  Netflix has now fully integrated a “parts” release system, in which they drop a few of the first half of one season at one point, then wait roughly a month or so to drop the other part. This model was highly impactful in the summer of 2022, where ‘Stranger Things’ felt inescapable. It was the show of the summer because it kept its momentum alive with the two different drops. 

Oftentimes, discourse around the steady decline of media literacy surrounds how audiences interact with the content and art they are actively consuming. Television writing consists of more telling than showing because the writers have lost faith in their readers’ intellect. The blurred line between actor, creator, and character that social media has created for stans has become a prominent issue for the developing nature of TV. 

Mid-20s Crisis: A Gen-Z Coming of Age

From a young age, we are asked what we want to be when we grow up, and our minds are filled with endless possibilities. As the years pass, those dreams slowly fade, until one day we are left with a pervasive sense of panic. Having no clue of who we are and what we want to do with the rest of our lives. Some people look back at their 20s, often through rose-tinted glasses, calling them "the best years of their lives", but in truth, they might just be the scariest, often filled with immense pressure and uncertainty.

Mid-20s Crisis offers a fresh take on the timeless challenges of being in your 20s. Following four roomates, Iris, Amy, Rex and Danielle, trying to navigate their careers, dating, and figuring out how to be a functioning adult. All while crammed into a 3-bedroom apartment in New York City. The series follows these girls through these treacherous years, and how you can get through all the chaos and joys of adulthood with friends struggling as well by your side. 

Amid her own mid-20s crisis, Rucci found inspiration to write from conversations she shared with friends. "I started writing because I was with my friends, and always would spiral because XYZ is moving, traveling around the world, and got engaged. Things were happening in my life that I don't know what to be doing right now, so let's write about it." Rucci went on to explain how she was watching Girls at the time, a timeless series about trying to make sense of life after college from the early 2010s. She wanted to create a show capturing this generation, post-pandemic young adults." 

Originally filmed as a proof of concept, it was screened at numerous film festivals earlier this year. Then this past May, Rucci hosted a live table reading at LA MAMA Theatre to showcase the the first 8 episodes of the series. She assembled a stellar cast that brought the script to life. The four lead actresses' chemistry made it feel as if I was watching a real friend group unpack their day with each other.  They weren't afraid to get messy, from breaking out into a complete dance party to letting out demonic screams, capturing the array of emotions that come with being a young adult. Displaying the vast freedom of lack of responsibility and living with friends, while on the other end, feeling the frustrations of adulthood.

Throughout the series, each of the girls faced a variety of struggles and hardships, from the challenges of dating to going celibate, trying not to lose their job due to their digital footprint, and the journey of being a free spirit (as well as free loading) with the IRS on their tail. No matter the scale of these problems, the show highlights that you can get through any challenge with the right friends by your side. For some it may be experiencing your first heartbreak like Rex, or like Amy getting her pap smear with Iris by her side. Rucci shares how her own friendships contributed to the series. "My initial inspiration was the conversations I was having with my friends at the time, but also the conversations we had that we wouldn't talk about with other people, like what birth control we're on, a weird ex-boyfriend. Things that I found interesting but could be fun." Among all the silliness, Rucci balances these comedic beats with darker moments. Not shying away from the unsaid dangers of dating, such as grooming and sexual assault. 

What is most unique about this generation’s experience compared to previous ones is taking place in the digital age. The series perfectly captures the current reality of being a young adult with the world wide web, taking a timeless problem, such as trying to establish a career or working odd jobs, and displays the creative ways to make money online. Of the four girls, three use the World Wide Web for various jobs, from selling feet pictures, hosting online holistic workout classes, to trying to become an influencer. 

With today's hyper consumption of content, it is a slippery slope to include internet trends or viral moments. They easily make a film or movie feel outdated as they attempt to be on trend. Rucci expressed her distaste for current Gen-Z shows that mark themselves as too timely and how cautious she was when writing this series. "My friend Anna, who helped me produce it, played Iris in the reading. She said I should watch [censored] because there are a lot of jokes in there that would've worked 3 months ago if it came out then. After all, it was relevant then. If you go through your script, make sure you don't include jokes that cover one viral TikTok everyone in the world watched and got over. Then your show comes out and it's not funny anymore…"

As I left the theater craving for more, in the lounge area, I found myself in the midst of an

immersive experience. Walls decorated with posters, Polaroids, or interactive boards to share your own mid-20s crisis. What left me speechless was the mural of memorabilia that perfectly captures the inner mind of a current 20-something woman. With pictures of heart-throbs such as Pedro Pascal and Josh O'Connor, to romance books such as Normal People and A Court of Thorns and Roses, to a hot pink vibrator and quotes from the script, such as "Fame is the American Dream".  

If you are craving to see this show on the big screen like I am, follow Mid-20s Crisis on

to stay up to date on the show’s development and see clips from the live table reading.

Written By Ashley Murphy

Photos By Cat Washington