Tap Into the B.P.E. of These Essential Girls5Eva Episodes

In a move that will give hope to fans of canceled shows everywhere, Netflix picked up the discarded Peacock series Girls5Eva for a third season (albeit a shortened one, only six episodes). The series, which premiered in 2021, stars Sara Bareilles, Paula Pell, Busy Philipps, and Renée Elise Goldsberry as former teen pop stars who now want to get the band back together. Created by Meredith Scardino (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt; Great News), the series was one of the flat-out funniest shows on TV through its first two seasons, harnessing the musical-comedic gifts of Goldsberry, finally giving Pell a platform upon which to shine, and discovering that Bareilles is a skillful comedian in addition to being a devastatingly good singer-songwriter.

Peacock somehow couldn't figure out what to do with such a show, so it pulled the plug in late 2022, only for Netflix to step in. With Season 3 premiering on March 14, now is a great time to either catch up on what you've missed or revisit the show in time for its return. The first two seasons are still playing on Peacock, though those episodes will debut on Netflix when Season 3 does.

For a quick binge that will get you caught up on the series and familiar with its best episodes, we've created this compact five-episode playlist.

"Pilot" (Season 1, Episode 1)

What if a Y2K-era girl-pop group reunited in the 2020s for one more shot at fame and fortune? That's writer Scardino and director Kat Coiro’s incredibly straightforward premise in this episode. When rapper Lil' Stinker uses a sample from an old hit by Girls5Eva (think Danity Kane meets Eden's Crush meets Dream), they experience a brief bubble-up of popularity. That's enough for Dawn (Bareilles), Summer (Philipps), Gloria (Pell), and Wickie (Goldsberry) to decide to get back together and capitalize on the moment. Each performer gets a lot of character detail in this first episode, and the jokes come at you so fast that you'll end up catching new ones each time you watch (keep an ear out for a phenomenal joke about the Pacific Ocean garbage patch).

Scardino layers in so much to this first episode, including a commentary on early aughts pop culture, present-day pop culture, predatory music industry types, and midlife doldrums. In Wickie, we get something of a less surreally insane Jenna Maroney, and her relationship with Dawn in particular feels like a more functional version of Liz and Jenna’s from 30 Rock.

"Catskills" (Season 1, Episode 5)

The group takes a retreat to the Catskills to write their next song, determined to produce something that will get them into the Jingle Ball. Except almost immediately, Gloria ghosts the group to stage a "chance" meeting with her ex-wife, and Wickie exiles Summer to the kitchen for the very important songwriting task of making the salad. Writers Chelsea Devantez and Berkley Johnson add the perfect chaos agent in Daphne (Jennifer Simard), the AirBnB owner who's found staying in the owner's closet. Suddenly she's shooting holes in Wickie and Dawn's songwriting and demanding more and more of their emotional energy.

The Dawn/Wickie creative partnership is the heart of the show, but the great episodes are able to maintain that while giving Summer and Gloria funny, character-focused things to do, which this episode delivers. Summer's quest to make a salad becomes an operatic ordeal, while Gloria's momentary reunion with her ex lets Paula Pell get her Laura Lyro on with the pastoral aria "Rekindling." All that, plus this is the episode that births their big Season 1 song "Four Stars."

"Cease and Desist" (Season 1, Episode 6)

Few shows on TV have been as densely packed with smart, quickly paced pop-culture jokes as Girls5Eva. In this episode, the group plays a gig at an aughts-themed Pride event, which allows writer Matt Whitaker to lovingly skewer the way queer audiences — and gay men in particular — both select and appreciate their gay icons. Gloria is psyched to attend her first Pride event as an out lesbian, but the gays only have time for fabulous Wickie. Of course, they mostly know Wickie for her years-old viral-video meltdown on stage in Maskical: The Musical. Every single tidbit we see about this stage musical version of The Mask is perfect, no matter how brief.

Bowen Yang guest stars as a Wickie fan who's been profiting off of lip-syncing to her meltdown, leading to a perfect battle of wills between Entitled Fan Culture and the Wickie Roy Ego Machine. The whole storyline wraps up in a perfectly executed scheme, while the subplots — including Dawn adopting a confident stage persona (Fledge Mulholland!) and a runner about Summer being unexpectedly literate in queer theory — hum right along.

"B.P.E." (Season 2, Episode 6)

The second season sees the group in "album mode," recording new music for their debut on the Property Brothers' record label. The Dawn/Wickie professional relationship is at it again here, as Wickie's inability to take a back seat butts up against Dawn's passive aggressive side after Dawn writes a song inspired by her grandmother but can't seem to just tell Wickie she wants to sing it herself. Wickie ends up revisiting a formative past trauma (she lost Star Search to Mario Cantone), while Gloria and Summer inform Dawn of her tendency to be "kind of a turd" when she can't just admit she wants something.

Two things set this episode apart: Daniel Breaker finally getting the chance to show off his own Broadway pipes in a karaoke bar, and Gloria and Summer's subplot about making amends with a guy they tormented while filming a pilot for an all-girls prank show. Director Linda Mendoza nails the proto-Punk'd aesthetic of the prank show and the Star Search flashbacks. For a show that gets as many laughs out of flashbacks as it does present-day scenes, that's a crucial achievement.

"Tour Mode" (Season 2, Episode 8)

The Season 2 finale knocks the Girls down before it sets them on the right track. Their world-tour spot gets yanked out from under them by the Property Brothers at the last minute, leading to Gloria storming the set of their show and engaging in a knock-down, drag-out fight with The One With the Beard. The unexpected realization that they're huge in Fort Worth is all the inspiration to embark on a tour themselves, and if Netflix hadn't picked the show up for a third season, we'd never find out what happens on that tour, so thank god they did.

This episode gets a lot of mileage out of Dawn's brand new geriatric pregnancy, including a "New York City Moms" song that's not as good as "New York Lonely Boy" but scratches a similar sonic itch. Wickie spinning out over realizing she's in love with Sheawn the Lunch Lord (Chad Coleman) gives Goldsberry some real Shirley Feeney energy, which is high praise indeed. Come for the Paula Pell action scene of your dreams; stay for Busy Philipps' bringing Summer's two-season growth arc full circle. Onto the tour!

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.