Back when Girlfriends aired on the UPN network in 2000, the show looked as if it wouldn’t get past its first season. Spike Lee already blasted the show and the television critics didn't completely warm up to it at first. What the critics discovered that Spike didn't was that the show was more than a show about sex and relationships.
While the show, starring Tracee Ellis Ross, Persia White, Golden Brooks, and Jill Marie Jones, covered the issues of love and relationships, the show was bold enough to discuss the issues of AIDS, adoption, and even what it means to be black in the workplace. In addition, something as seemingly minor to most as taking a day off for Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday as a black woman or man in the workplace managed to get covered. Girlfriends, if Spike Lee gave it a chance, would have probably secretly been one of his favorite shows.
On the other hand, I don’t think I would have liked to hear Spike complain every week about lawyer Joan Clayton (played by Ross) not getting a man or Joan’s secretary and friend Maya Wilkes (played by Brooks) raising her son by herself after divorcing her husband due to an affair or Joan’s other friend Lynn Searcy (played by White) not having a steady career after many years in college. Oh yeah, and he’d probably have a problem with the uppity “male girlfriend” William Dent (Reggie Hayes) who is conservative and a Bush voter. Did I forget to mention he’d have tons to say about the self-centered materialistic Toni Childs (Jill Marie Jones) who is a friend to all of them?
The fourth season was something of the middle ground within the lexicon of the show's history. Some things remained the same, some things changed, and some things were clearly a case of “what the hell?” Even some of the girls began to sense some déjà vu in their tribulations of love and life.
In the third season finale, Toni Childs became Toni Childs-Garrett, the wife of Todd Garrett (Jason Pace). In the mind of Toni Childs (and despite his height), Todd’s “secure” profession as a plastic surgeon meant that she would be rolling in dough and living the high life with someone else paying the way for that lifestyle. Unfortunately as it turns out, Todd isn’t as rich she thought. Due to this revelation Toni now seeks a divorce, which temporarily ends when she decides to work on being in a marriage.
Also last season we left with Ellis (Adrian Lester) still having his back and forth with Joan over his career as an actor and whether their “love” is really “love”. Since I never liked this pair, I have no problem saying that eventually they will split this season in the wake of another relationship with Ellis’s agent, Brock (Mailk Yoba). Of course that relationship won’t last long because Joan wants kids while Brock doesn’t. While all alone, Joan suddenly finds love in the most left field of places — with William!
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