HBO has ordered five new episodes of Girls, and the commission immediately puts Lena Dunham's comedy back into an Emmy conversation it left in 2017 — with 19 nominations and two wins from its original six-season run. The question now is mechanical, not sentimental: can a returning series convert past voter goodwill into current nominations, when the recent record says it usually cannot?

The original run gives the revival a base to build on. Girls aired from 2012 to 2017, earned those 19 Emmy nominations and two wins, and took two Golden Globes in 2013 — Best Comedy Series and lead actress for Dunham. A decade after the finale, the new episodes must compete against a field that streaming shows currently dominate. At the 2026 Emmys, Widow's Bay set a comedy-series record with 14 wins, one more than The Studio managed the year before; on the drama side, The Pitt kept winning. Older IP has struggled to break through that field.

The precedent matters more than the brand. Every major comedy revival of the last decade has underperformed its original, and one succeeded only partially. The pattern is consistent enough to treat as a rule rather than a coincidence.

What does the revival record actually show?

• And Just Like That... The Sex and the City continuation, made with the original cast minus Kim Cattrall, received zero Emmy nominations. The original series earned 54 nominations and seven wins, including Comedy Series and Lead Actress for Sarah Jessica Parker in 2004.
• Murphy Brown CBS ran the Diane English sitcom for 10 seasons, from 1988 to 1998, and it collected 62 nominations and 18 wins, including Outstanding Comedy Series in 1992. The 13-episode 2018 revival, again with Candice Bergen, received no nominations at all.
• Arrested Development Mitchell Hurwitz's Fox series ran three seasons from 2003 and won six Emmys plus a Golden Globe. Netflix revived it for Season 4 in 2013 and a two-part Season 5 in 2018 and 2019; the revival drew three nominations and no wins.
• Frasier The NBC original ran 11 seasons from its September 16, 1993 premiere and won a record-setting 37 Emmys. The revival recovered none of that major-category traction with voters.
• Will & Grace The sole partial exception. The NBC original aired 1998 to 2006 and won 16 Emmys; the 2017–2020 return earned 13 nominations and two wins.

Four of those five cases produced either no nominations or no wins. One produced a reduced but real return.

Why does this matter for Girls?

The mechanism behind the slump is simple. Emmy voters reward the season in front of them, and returning casts age into different categories, while the comedy field has shifted toward streaming-first shows that arrive with fresh campaigns. Nostalgia, as the And Just Like That... and Murphy Brown numbers show, does not register on a nomination ballot — 54 nominations and seven wins for the original Sex and the City converted to zero; 62 and 18 converted to zero.

The five-episode order itself shapes the race. A short run limits episode submissions and sample size, which narrows the path for guest-acting and directing entries, and puts nearly all the weight on the writing and the lead performances. Will & Grace proved a decade off the air can still yield double-digit nominations; nothing else on the list proves it twice.

Girls will need voters to treat it as Will & Grace, not as Murphy Brown.