I'm just saying ENTOURAGE or SOPRANOS or any other HBO show we like also centers around assholes/flawed people. It is only when they are all women that people get kind of "Hey, I don't know about these people!"
I totally love 'Girls' but I do see where the surface-level backlash in coming from. While yes, all these prestige HBO shows are about horrible beyond (beyond 'flawed' I think), there's an initial attempt to make them all likable. The people who've made SEX IN THE CITY, SOPRANOS, ENTOURAGE, etc bend over backwards to get you to see where their main characters are coming from, and give you an "in" to understanding/empathizing with them, and GIRLS does none of that. In the first episode alone, Hannah is horrified by the thought of God forbid, having to work at McDonald's, and then steals a maid's tip (even after getting money from her parents). Lena Dunham seems to go out of her way to put that character at an arm's length from the audience.
I do think they've ALL softened a bit since that first episode (I actually really liked the Allison Williams plotline that you didn't buy), but what's funny is, the characters in the show remind me of the people I know who are like that; they kinda grate at first, but once you get to know them, you see they're not all that bad.
