Brake alert: This interview contains spoilers from the season 2 finale of “The Sex Lives of College Girls.”
The authors of The Sex Lives of College Girls aren’t shy about calling themselves “agents of chaos.” To be fair, that’s part of the job description: “I mean, we tell the stories of 18- and 19-year-old girls who live together,” laughs showrunner Justin Noble, who co-created the series with Mindy Kaling. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise when Season 2 ended rather badly for its heroes (besides Layton, more on that later).
Bella (Amrit Kaur) cheats on Eric (Makki Leiber) with a famous comedian (John Paul Reynolds), betrays her fellow writers at Foxy by agreeing to publish a school newspaper highlighting her instead of the entire team, and tells the writer who is asking for her notes to stop comedy. Miserable and exhausted, and without telling her roommates, she decides to transfer from Essex College.
And after trying to quell her crush on Whitney’s (Aaliyah Chanel Scott) ex-boyfriend Kanan (Christopher Meyer), Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet) spontaneously follows him out of the party and kisses him. She didn’t realize that Whitney had the same idea and had seen it all – until the next day, when Whitney pointedly asked if anything interesting had happened. Kimberly nervously declines, and Whitney later goes to the kappa club house to ask if she can live there instead.
“The thing I’m proud of about the show is we don’t do a lot of girl fights,” Noble says. There was no escaping it. It wasn’t actually intended to cause discord among our girls. But oh boy, oh boy, Kimberly has created a situation that she has to dig herself out of.”
With the Season 2 finale now airing on HBO Max, and the series officially renewed for a third season, Noble unpacks Bela’s ego, Whitney and Kimberly’s feud, and Layton’s newfound freedom with diverse.
Let’s break the conclusion down letter by letter. This is the second time Kimberly has walked behind a roommate’s back with a boy. Last season, she secretly dated Leighton’s brother Nico (Gavin Leatherwood). Where does this style come from? it is sudden; She seems to be the roommate most eager to create a happy home.
It feels real to me because – in ways I relate to – she’s afraid of giving bad news. She values these friendships very much, particularly Whitney’s, and does not want to ruin them. She’s not quite sure how she’s going to handle Kanan’s situation, so she doesn’t want to proactively say, “Hey, this is happening,” because she doesn’t know where she is.
We dangle the idea of, Who’s going to get together in sophomore year? For me, this has always been the most amazing part of college. He is literally announcing a test. It’s like, “Hey, you lived together. Do you love each other enough to live together again?” It was a stressful environment. So we see this very nice moment that plays well between Pauline and him, where they languidly turn to each other saying, “I don’t know another, but the only thing I know for sure is that I want to live with you next year, and we’ll find out who else is included.” . Then in one quick move, Kimberly pursues another hot boy – the hottest she’s sought to date! – She puts everything at risk. But unlike Nico pulling up, and Jackson getting out of the shower, we’ve seen Kanan and Kimberly get deep, and that admiration comes from a different place than just her shimmering abs.
This brings up something for Whitney’s character as well, as she had a shocking breakup with her soccer coach in Season 1, but Kanan quietly and maturely breaks up with her, then enters into a relationship with Andrew (Charlie Hall).). What prompted this movement from inappropriate relationship to serious relationship to casual sex – and then back to her feelings for Kanan?
In the second season, I start with Kanan, and things are good. But when the soccer ball was removed and she didn’t know what to do next, a big part of that disconnect was her insecurities. She feels challenged by how technically witch Zoe is, and Whitney feels at the same time, “I don’t know what my academic drive is and what other people do.” This explodes when she can’t help but get jealous of Zoe and checks Canaan’s phone and this causes a breakup. Kanan defines their breakup by saying, “You’re not ready for this.” So in Season 2, we saw her fix that. She begins to challenge herself and then ends up killing it in this academic field. She finds herself. Then I started seeing this guy, and we don’t charge him, but we don’t charge him Not They shipped, and I think that’s because Canaan deserted her. It really holds a candle to him. What we hope we don’t realize until the end of Season 2 – or the beginning of Season 3 – is that something that led to Whitney and Kenan’s downfall is that Whitney didn’t know where she was: that fixed. So all of a sudden, she says, “Andrew isn’t it. Kanan is the end game. Look at Kanan at this party! I’ll follow him.” And the timing, as we agents of mayhem build the writers’ room, is just as imperfect.
Leighton ends this season happiest, yet Leaving the first season still in the closet about her sexuality. This internal conflict appears to be resolved after she leaves Kappa, and her mother, Kappa, supports her. What inspired the Greek side of life?
Leighton is a wonderful creature. She grew up in a world where she, like many LGBT people, wears a mask, and the show slowly watches the layers of that mask come off. Kappa was the last vestige of it. When she decided on Kappa as a 16-year-old in high school, it wasn’t a purebred Leighton Murray. That was off Leighton Murray. Her identity as a person overlaps with Kappa a lot: she rules in a funny way, she has impeccable style, and she just fits in there. But it reminds me of that line from her dad in the exit scene in episode 8, where she says, “Maybe I’m really good at being close,” and the dad, in a way that feels especially wise for a heterosexual says, “Is that a good thing?” It’s something that gay people are subconsciously good at, and it’s probably not in our best interest. So when she gets the chance to stand there with her mother, and she starts to hear herself, almost like an out-of-body way, talking about gender issues that aren’t so cool in the Greek scene, she hears herself quoting things that [her friends at the campus women’s center] He would say, telling us that maybe this is not where Leighton Murray lives authentically.
Bella, as she tells a school official in the final moments of the finale, is hurting people again and again this season by putting her ego and career goals first. She didn’t seem to learn from him. What are you exploring there? And why not tell her roommates before she decides to transfer school? This looks painful too.
Bella is the embodiment of ambition. We know this from the very first moment, when we meet her and she talks about not being sure whether she wants to be Seth Meyers or have sex with Seth Meyers. She’s racing to the “Saturday Night Live” writers’ room in the mind that, like she’s lost a plane at the airport, she’ll bump into some people along the way. I don’t think it was intentional. I think Bella is a kind-hearted character – self-serving for sure, but she wouldn’t go out of her way to be malicious at all. She is just what she wants.
We see that she’s falling for Eric, kind of brutally cheating on him and breaking his heart, and she feels really bad about it. And what we’ve never seen before from Bella is this moment of self-reflection, leaving that scene thinking, “Okay, Bella, my look. Look who you are.” Then in Episode 10, the show gives her a chance, the first audition for that, and the stakes couldn’t be lower. Writer Cute Beta asking for advice. And Bella failing the test. It couldn’t have been easier, and she couldn’t have done it. She’s still the same. I think it’s baked into her DNA that she just has to talk about how brutal this path is. It’s not for the faint of heart, and she’s going to win it And Georgia doesn’t have that, and Bella wants to do the best thing for Georgia and tell her.
And in terms of what she’s doing at the end of the season, and why she hasn’t spoken to our girls, and why she hasn’t admitted to the Foxy girls that she has spoken to the editor, it just seems really true to me that for someone who follows this career, there’s something of a perfectionist. To get into this “SNL” writers’ room, you don’t get there like an eight out of 10. You get in there as a 13 out of 10. She can’t mess with her mind. When she hears herself, a laundry list of all the things she’s done, she thinks about how she’s not on this path. You failed the perfection test. I think this does not lead to its goals. So instead of staying where she made those mistakes and having to dig herself up, the thing that sets herself up for success is to start over somewhere else with a sound track record.
Bella does her best to cheat on Eric with this popular comedian, but it’s still interesting compared to last season When everyone helped Whitney understand that her older coach shouldn’t have followed her. Why doesn’t Bella get rid of this unhealthy habit of using sex in her career? She also gave Catulan editors manual jobs last season.
This is exactly the intent behind that moment. The handjob moment has begun. I also think the fact of the matter is an 18 year old girl with a crush like that, she might be interested in him sexually apart from self serving career goals. But I think Bella has a lot more to discover. It’s a knee reactor. She is motivated, and is very confident that her motivations will lead her to success. This is part of what makes her so interesting, but it probably doesn’t set her up for her happiest future. The show tells us it’s time to start exploring. To be clear, like on the show, we say to Bella, “Explore it! Explore it!” And we’re watching her on purpose. Not explore it. This is what feels authentic to me. Life is constantly telling us, “This is a lesson you have to learn,” and we as humans are like, “I’m not learning this lesson yet!”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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