The Sex Lives of College Girls refreshingly turns everything we've come to expect about "popularity" on TV on its head

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"School settings in television and movies are usually defined by one thing: cliques. Just watch any comedy or drama centered in a school," says Kamun Nesa. "From Lizzie McGuire to Pretty Little Liars, nearly every teen movie or show has a dichotomous portrayal of popularity. Mean Girls separates its student body into jocks, goths, and more cliques, with popular girl Regina George ruling at the top. In Gossip Girl, the nickname 'Lonely Boy' obviously lacks cachet next to 'Queen B.' And in Netflix's He's All That (a reboot of She's All That), the entire plot hinges on a nerdy high school teenager getting a makeover as part of a social media popularity contest. By the end of most of these stories, the cliquey drama dissolves, and the characters come to the realization that there's more to life than popularity, but only after they've spent a majority of the movie's 90-minute runtime glorifying it. However, Mindy Kaling's HBO Max dramedy series The Sex Lives of College Girls refreshingly turns everything we've come to expect about 'popularity' on television on its head. It takes us inside the elite halls of the fictional Vermont university Essex College and follows the lives of four freshmen roommates who couldn't be more different. There's Leighton Murray, the preppy 'mean girl'; Whitney, a star soccer player and senator's daughter; Bela Malhotra, a sexually liberated aspiring comedy writer; and Kimberly Finkle, the adorably innocent book nerd who's at Essex on scholarship. The group dynamic represents four archetypes: the mean girl, the jock, the funny one, and the nerd. Since these archetypes are typically pitted against each other on TV, it initially seems the girls will butt heads. Instead, TSLoCG demonstrates solidarity among its mismatched leads and prioritizes realistic depictions of college life from the start. As elite as Essex is, the privilege of wealthy students does not go unchecked. Even the sororities and fraternities, as exclusive as they are, live in their own bubble and don't have a ton of influence over the student body. Because, in the real world, being rich doesn't always make someone popular."