This is a long way of saying that “Girls,” fundamentally, is a comedy — of the body, of relationships, of working, of entitlement, of generational funk. At its best, it’s a satire of a lot of those things, too. But for any number of reasons — it’s also a chillingly good drama, it’s a show by and about women, and we’re still (still) weirded out by funny women — we might overlook the strength of its humor.

There’s an episode from the first season — “All Adventurous Women Do” — that opens with Marnie reacting to her boyfriend Charlie’s new haircut. (He’s almost bald.) She tells him she hates it. He says he did it to support a co-worker with cancer. And rather than say, “Babe, I’m sorry — that’s terrible,” she reroutes her anger: Thanks for making me look insensitive. Then Hannah emerges from the bathroom with black eyeliner, black jacket and fishnets. She resembles what happened to Olivia Newton-John at the end of “Grease,” but goth. Hannah and Charlie insult each other (“You look like you’re gonna go put a hex on some popular girls.”) while Marnie is left to whine from selfish island: “You look scary, too.”

The rhythms of that scene riff on the recipe for a traditional sitcom. It’s set at the kitchen table in the apartment Hannah and Marnie share. They’re Monica and Rachel but without the standard Etch A Sketch approach to half-hour relationships. The little put-downs and brush-offs really hurt. They mount and accrue. The gags are distinct from the insecurities they feed on.

But it’s the scope of the comedy that takes it beyond a show merely of the white and the spoiled: It’s about being white and spoiled and self-concerned. And in demanding a dignity for its competing narcissists, “Girls” practices a kind of humor that’s mostly gone from our movies and yet still feels fresh for episodic television. It recalls the prickly humanity of the director Paul Mazursky. His movies made comedy out of survival — surviving divorce (“An Unmarried Woman,” 1978), homelessness and rich people (“Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” 1986), even the Holocaust (“Enemies: A Love Story,” 1989). Every once in a while, his tart delicacy will show up in the work of Alexander Payne and especially Nicole Holofcener. And the version that “Girls” practices shows up everywhere from “Orange Is the New Black” to “Insecure.”

Lena Dunham, who developed “Girls” with Jenni Konner, hasn’t made a movie since her first, “Tiny Furniture,” in 2010. But “Girls” is a show after Mr. Mazursky’s heart: a comedy that trusts you to distinguish the people for the jokes.

WESLEY MORRIS

Chronicling Think-Piece Culture