#SOLOSTORIES: “Shrill”

#SoloStories is our feature in which we explore books, films and TV shows that show single women navigating their lives – but romance is not the main component.      

“Shrill” is about a woman trying to exist in the world, as a writer, as a fat person and as a single woman.

The show, which ran from 2019 to 2021 on Hulu, stars Aidy Bryant as Annie, a writer for an alternative newspaper in Portland – inspired by the writings from co-creator and journalist Lindy West. Through the three seasons, we watch as Annie examines other people’s lives through her reporting and explores her own choices. It’s about those mid-20s, that time when life is full of making mistakes and learning how to be human.

Annie reports on strippers and women’s conferences and a separatist family. She gains an online following for her essays on living in her body in a world that wants only people who fit a certain way. One of its most famous episodes shows Annie attending a pool party with women of various body types and the freedom and joy that it brings.

She deals with a lot. She screams at a troll who mocks her body and a doctor who suggests she gets surgery. She has to deal with her eccentric boss and odd coworkers and her sick parents.

Most of the time, you want to root for Annie for her ingenuity. In one hilarious sequence when she’s unemployed, she steals food and toilet paper from her parents’ house. (Come on, you know you’ve done that.)

Other times, you cringe at some of Annie’s choices. She sticks around with one boyfriend for two seasons, when he should have been dumped in the first episode after he made her walk out the backyard so his friends wouldn’t see her. And, this is nitpicky, but why does she wear mules when she was reporting out in the Oregon country? She ends up in the mud.

Her friend Fran (Lolly Adefope) has more of a lighter, IDGAF attitude, even though you know she does care. She goes through a series of relationships until she seems to find a good match in the third season.

In that same time, Annie seems to find a solid relationship, even though it has its missteps.

“I was in a very devaluing relationship where I really didn’t think I deserved shit,” she tells him. “And part of that was because how I look, and when I was sitting in front of someone who was actually good, like, I couldn’t actually see it.”

But, at the end of its last episode, Annie and Fran have found professional success and personal heartbreak. They sit on the bench, with each other, but alone. In many shows, it would end with characters dancing at a wedding or other cliché, but “Shrill” depicts reality. This is how life is. Being single gives you choices, and you get to experiment and experience everything.