‘Girls5eva’ Season 3 Is a ‘30 Rock’-Like Comedy Miracle

When hundreds of 30 Rock clips went viral on social media over last year’s holiday season, the people made their demands clear: They want more shrewd, foolish, joke-a-minute comedies.

Lucky for all of us, Girls5eva—the fourth series in the Tina Fey and Robert Carlock-produced universe, following 30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Great News—was resuscitated by Netflix after Peacock decided not to move forward with the show after two seasons. It was a wise decision on Netflix’s part, considering it’s already the streaming home to Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and because these sorts of clever comedies have historically done well on their platform. If audiences are clamoring for more shows that prioritize wit over logic, why not scoop one up to put on the front page of the most accessible streamer there is?

The move is a major win for Netflix: Girls5eva’s third season, which drops on the platform March 14, is the show’s best yet. This time around, the series, about an aughts-era girl group trying to restart their career 20 years after their popularity faded, goes completely off the wall. For anyone craving more 30 Rock, this is officially the true successor. Girls5eva Season 3 is the most consistently funny the show has ever been.

The third season picks up right where Season 2 left off, with Girls5eva shirking “album mode” for “tour mode” once their comeback record, Returnity, is released. Their tour, however, is really more of a residency, since the only place willing to book them is a bar in Fort Worth, Texas, after their song, “Tap Into Your Fort Worth” inadvertently becomes the city’s anthem. The group’s members, Wickie (Renée Elise Goldsberry), Dawn (Sarah Bareilles), Summer (Busy Philipps), and Gloria (Paula Pell), stand up on stage every night singing about Fort Worth’s lack of hipsters (“like Austin!”) or Wahlbergs (“like Boston!”). Since “Tap Into Your Fort Worth” is the only song the audience wants to hear, they eventually just vamp for 50 minutes and sing the city’s Wikipedia page to resounding, drunken cheers.

Wickie, always the one to push the group in new (not so thought-through) directions, suggests that Girls5eva act as their own promoters to create demand. To do that, she reserves an empty slot at Radio City Music Hall, only to realize after putting down the $500,000 booking fee that she scheduled their concert on Thanksgiving. Given that Dawn has a baby on the way and none of the band can afford to get into massive debt, Girls5eva embarks on a six-month-long money-making mission to drum up ticket sales, while playing private gigs to cover their asses in case none of the venue’s seats move.

For anyone already familiar with the series, it will be no surprise that this quest pulls Girls5eva into all sorts of unexpected trouble and absurd hijinks. But for newbies just coming to the series for the first time now that it’s streaming on Netflix, worry not: The platform is also hosting the first two seasons of the show to binge if you want to catch up. (It’s worth it for the impeccable button in the show’s theme song alone.) But it speaks to the genius of Girls5eva that one needn’t be familiar with the show’s first two seasons to enjoy this new batch of episodes. Like 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt before it, Girls5eva lures in viewers with wickedly smart background gags and rapid-fire punchlines, bombarding viewers with them over and over again.

Take, for instance, the band’s lodging at the beginning of Season 3. The group is holed up at Fort Worth’s Marriott Divorced Dad Suitelets, where lobby vending machines come with pre-wrapped birthday presents, and all of the mugs at the continental breakfast are emblazoned with “#1 Weekend Dad.” The latter is a joke for eagle-eyed viewers to spot, and it’s these sorts of modest yet hysterical gags that make Girls5eva such a thrill to watch.

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While the show’s savvy and talented writers and production designers are the ones keeping Girls5eva bounding along, it’s the series’ phenomenal core cast who supply its irresistible shine. While Dawn is still the band’s voice of reason, Bareilles is no longer the series’ straight man. Three seasons in, the singer and actress has settled into her loopy side, unafraid to take her further than ever before. The same goes for Philipps, Pell, and Goldsberry, who are all operating like slick, well-oiled comedy machines. Philipps in particular has found a happy medium between Summer’s daft, stereotypically blonde personality from Season 1 and the character’s more emotionally impactful side in Season 2. And though Goldsberry still steals almost every scene she’s in, her three castmates are just as quick to snatch it back from her as they banter breathlessly.

For another series, this breakneck pace might be daunting, especially since its extended bits pull from hyper-specific pop culture history. But Girls5eva doesn’t require its audience to catch every last reference for something to be funny. In Episode 4, the band plays a private birthday party for a rich sugar baby named Taffy (a hilarious Cat Cohen). Taffy has assembled all of the iconic figures from her teenage years to perform for her, including the folksy singer Pixie (guest star Ingrid Michaelson), whom Summer once collaborated with way back when. We soon learn that Pixie is still furious with Summer for turning their duet into a joke when Summer began scatting during their song.

Culture-obsessed viewers will immediately recognize this as a reference to the time Jessica Simpson sang a duet with Jewel during The Nick & Jessica Variety Hour in 2004 and attempted to mimic Jewel’s vocal style to terrible effect. The bit with Summer and Pixie is uproarious, regardless of whether or not a viewer catches the allusion, because of Philipps and Michaelson’s willingness to go all in. Where else can you see an actor revert to the nasally vocal stylings of the early 2000s to scat, “Scooby-dooby, not Scrappy, and ShrimpFest is back”? Nowhere else but Girls5eva.

With jokes for days and guest stars galore—including John Early as a conservative senator and Gossip Girl’s Thomas Doherty as a hunky pop star—Girls5eva returns from limbo better than ever. How ironic, given that the series’ titular band has been trying to pull off the same trick for three seasons. It just goes to show that you can’t keep a determined girl group comprised of four aging pop stars down, no matter how many pitfalls they endure.

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