GIRLFRIENDS

By: Tameeka Mitchem & Regina Frazier

Girlfriends, the hot new show on UPN is one of the best things on television for African American women since Living Single. The show being dubbed as the black "Sex and the City" follows the life of four friends as they search for love and understanding in their relationships with men, themselves, and each other. Along with these four friends on their journey to find their selves and mates is a male counterpart, William, (Reggie Hayes) who imparts his wisdom on the fairer sex and helps to give them the inside track on guys from a male perspective.

Although the show covers the lives of all four characters, the storyline it self is based around the life of Attorney Joan Clayton (played by Tracee Ellis Ross) and her four friends. There's Toni (Jill Marie Jones), Joan's best friend from childhood and the group's resident gold digger, Maya (Golden Brooks), Joan's married legal assistant with the tell it like it is attitude, and finally Lynn (Persian White) Joan and Toni's friend from college and the committed freeloader and addicted grad student. The show itself is the perfect mixture of funny, serious, intriguing, and sexy.

All the women are independent and strong but still possess a level of vulnerability that allows them to come off as human instead of as superwomen. Joan, the lawyer looks for a man that complements her but keeps falling short due to her long list of requirements. Toni, the real estate broker, seeks a man that complements her financial dreams and her sexual desires but keeps getting stuck. Maya, the married one of the bunch provides her girls with advice on being in a passionate couple and grips occasional about being a young mother and Lynn brings her love of all things environmental and freeloads with no shame from her friends for room and board and pretty much everything else. She's looking for an ecological and politically astute soul mate that can accept her for all the things she is.

The actors in series are extremely talented and have great range. But it's the writers that really make it happen the episodes make you want to laugh and cry in the same moment. From the girls attempting to find love on the Internet, helping each other through pregnancy and life-threatening surgery, or just hanging out in Jamaica at Sinbad 70's Soul Fest. You can feel the what they are going through and relate it to the "girlfriends" in your life.

Girlfriends, is exactly the kind of show that African American audiences have been craving for a long time. For a large number of Black women in America this is their life and these characters reflect not only who they are racially but also what they feel emotionally. The complexity of the characters and the series plotlines alone make it a winner. Television needs a show like girlfriends and so do black females. Plain and simple sisters need to see siestas on TV. That represent them and can bring their perspective to the world and show that Black are a lot more than they're given credit for.

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