“Girls5eva” boss breaks down season 3's funniest episode
Meredith Scardino details the inspiration behind "Orlando."
When Girls5eva agreed to play Taffy England's birthday party, they had no idea what they were walking into. The fourth episode of Girls5eva's third season saw the girl group travel to Orlando to fulfill the teenage dreams of a very rich, very grown woman.
"Even since season 1, I always liked the idea of them playing for a super rich person just because I feel like that's part of what a lot of musicians end up doing," series creator Meredith Scardino explains to Entertainment Weekly of her Peacock-turned-Netflix comedy series. "They would take a money gig in the middle of trying to do new music and get this tour going."
But Taffy's (Catherine Cohen) party was nothing short of a nostalgia explosion. "We had this idea of some very rich person throwing a party called My Teenage Poster Come to Life. So it was a fun exercise to think of all the things that might've been on someone's wall," Scardino says. (It was also fun to shoot the episode in the mansion from Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" video.)
Related: Why Paula Pell isn't afraid to take her boobs out — and loves Gloria's 'trampage' on Girls5eva
One of Taffy's teenage posters, of course, was of Girls5eva. Although her love for their old catalogue leaves Dawn (Sara Bareilles) wondering about what kind of messages they were spreading with their music. "We've seen them in earlier episodes kind of have a little bit of this reckoning of like, maybe our old stuff wasn't so great. We were spewing toxic messages. Maybe we don't want to sing that kind of music," Scardino says. "But we never really talked about the impact it might've had on fans."
See the video above to hear Girl5eva's hit (and not at all problematic) song, " Sweet'N Low Daddy."
Check out more from EW's The Awardist, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis, and our podcast diving into all the highlights from the year's best in TV.
The episode also features a hilarious arc for Summer (Busy Philipps), who once ruined a performance of fellow singer Pixie James' song by getting a bit too aggressive with her scatting. (She then makes the same mistake again at Taffy's party.)
"Everyone's seen the clips of Kim Cattrall scatting or Jewel and Jessica Simpson. It's like fun pop culture gravy," Scardino says of the story's inspiration. "And Summer's on this journey — she realizes earlier in the season that when she tries to be on her own, she immediately finds a guy and starts dressing exactly like him. Then she has this existential crisis. And so in a comedic way, it felt like it would be fun to watch her do something that the crowd might not enjoy — and then for her to realize that she liked it."
Related: We drank three rounds with the cast of Girls5eva ... cause forever's too short
Another poster come to life? Torque (Loic Mabanza), one of Wickie's (Renée Elise Goldsberry) exes who somehow ... looks exactly the same as he did all those years ago. "You have the pattern of seeing a poster and then the person in real life, but then you see the poster of Torque, who's sort of like a Tyrese kind of actor/dancer, and then he moves and you realize he's just standing in front of his own poster," Scardino says of the gag.
But that's only the beginning of the Torque story. When Wickie, who's in a healthy relationship with the Lunch Lord, is tempted to reconnect with Torque, she makes her feelings known in the most Wickie way possible — with a strangely funny reference that turns into a song. That song? "Home Alone Doorknob," in reference to having the hots for someone.
"I call it mouth brain, where my mouth did the talking, and it never really ran past my brain," Scardino says. "I think I was just talking about the story about Wickie saying just how hot she was for this guy. And I don't know, I just was like, 'She's got a Home Alone doorknob.' A lot of times you're like, 'Maybe we'll change that later.' And then we didn't change it.
Related: Girls5eva moves from Peacock to Netflix for season 3
"And then there was this scene where they get alone and she feels like she has permission to to hook up with this guy on the road," Scardino continues. "And we were kind of like, 'Maybe we should hear a little bit of this song.'"
The one bit that didn't make the episode? "At one point we had some weird Muppet that aged in real time," Scardino says with a laugh.
Girls5eva is streaming on Netflix now.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.