Salon.com > Girls recap

“Girls” recap: Goodbye cruel “Girls”

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 15:00:00 +0000

I don't know how I feel about the new Hannah-in-crisis. One of the great joys of Hannah was that even — especially — in her blundering, raw ineptitude, she was a force that, nonetheless, moved forward. Unlike the rest of us, with our piddling one step forward, two steps back, her massive jumps of misplaced courage — “I am the voice — or at least, a voice — of a generation” — were decimated by steady, incremental self-sabotage. The best part was that, unlike us, she would have been hard-pressed to differentiate the two.

So how can we make peace with this Hannah, who, after finally getting what she wants — a good (enough) job and a nice(ish) boy — is overcome by OCD, a terribly crippling condition in real life, and possibly so in drama. A very smart commenter on Facebook recently noted that the ear-poking seems almost an act of desperation, as if Hannah were trying to dig out her neurosis with a Q-tip. It certainly does, but what about losing Adam has caused this syndrome? Is it stopping her from writing the book? Is the book stopping her from writing Adam? Was the plot stopping Dunham from writing an explanation for either of these? Hannah is poking around for answers, lost and alone. As are we.

“Girls” recap: Acting on impulse

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:11:00 +0000

Being over the edge can actually be embarrassingly useful. It, like losing one's job, forces confrontations mere happenstance cannot easily achieve. In reasonable doses, it's the means by which we erode meaningless bonds, break people down to their elements, and collapse all the strictures polite society was designed to achieve.

BUT NOT QUITE YET.

As we begin this season's penultimate episode, we slide up into what I have begun to think of as a Dunhamian shot: the bed and bedroom seen from the side, like Freud's ideal diorama. In this bedroom are the yet-more-encoupled Nat (Natalia) and Adam, about to make love. We know this because Natalia says, “I'm ready to have sex now,” telling Adam “You've been really nice all week,” then laying out information and prohibitions, including “no soft touching” (takes her out of the moment) and coming outside (“I'm on the pill”). Though his expression is briefly inscrutable, Adam reacts to these proscriptions with relief. “I will do all of those things ... I like how clear you are with me.” How, responds Natalia beatifically, could a person do anything any other way?

“Girls” recap: Picking up

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:20:00 +0000

Can anything bad happen when Bob Balaban and Carol Kane show up? Is it humanly possible? It's certainly not dramatically possible — which is why, even though it seems at first that these titans have been cast into the rather luckless and confining roles of wacky mother and distant therapist, this episode may be one of the wisest, and — in terms of Lena Dunham's goal to actually replicate this slice of generational functionality now — the most effective.

Adam! Adam Adam Adam! There's Adam! Thank God! I am always terrified we will lose Adam! There he is, lying on his customary bed. And even though it's the same apartment where he and Hannah first had their unbearable and bizarre couplings, it now look like an entirely different, even warm, apartment — what Freud (there is a therapist!) might term heimlich. It's a common but surprising shift: the one that occurs between when you first see a place and you know it.

Speaking of the changing spaces, Hannah, now one month out from Adam (we learn) and still not finished with the book, appears to be counting everything she does — literally. She eats a certain number of chips, counts a certain number of taps at her own door. Is she practicing being OCD for a piece? Is this actually the episode's first dream sequence? Or has Hannah crumpled before she’s even begun?

“Girls” recap: Ray wants his “Little Women” back

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 03:30:00 +0000

Poor Staten Island. After being battered and nearly eclipsed by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, it has now suffered an even greater indignity: being made into a metaphor by Ray.

If the “Girls” episodes up until now have been about the hazards of striving, this one is about the perils of having actually arrived. First up is Hannah, who, as the episode begins, is being courted by an actual, real-life, buying-the-drinks editor. He's got gray hair. He knows money men. And he'd like her to write a book — an e-book — the kind that must be delivered in a month. Hannah leaves the lunch and, like a newly expectant mother, pukes on the sidewalk.

Meanwhile, Shoshanna is trying to convince Ray that he should invest in more than the mop he is scornfully pumping up and down. She would like him to attend an entrepreneurship seminar given by Donald Trump. “Don't you want to run your own coffee shop one day?” she asks. Ray laughs at this dubious honor, then hands the mop to Hannah, whose e-book deal, however illustrious, has not yet provided her the means to not be mopping Grumpy's floor. “I can't believe I have a friend who signed a book deal!” breathes Shoshanna. “It's so adult and intriguing!” Intriguing enough that Hannah herself may need some guidance. “How fast do you think you can write a book?” she asks Shoshanna.

“Girls” recap: “I feel like I’m in a Nancy Meyers movie”

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 03:30:00 +0000

If there's a way to win this critic's heart, it's to begin an episode by having Hannah make up a neologism that Urban Dictionary reveals already exists ("sexit"), only to have beautiful Patrick Wilson barge in to the coffeeshop where she works,. (If Patrick Wilson — here, brownstone-owner and physician Joshua — had been complaining about someone leaving dogshit on his lawn instead of employees leaving their trash in his garbage, Dunham would have hit the trifecta.)

In this episode, Hannah winds up in said brownstone after Ray, irate that his neighbor is asking him to do anything outside the realm of the door of the shop, assumes a defensive rigidity. Joshua (who, we learn later, insists on the “ua”) is not irate back, but confused. “I was hoping we could talk neighbor to neighbor,” he says, perplexed. No luck. To this grownup, they're on the same street. To Ray, they're not even in the same world.

“Girls” recap: Musical chairs

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 03:30:00 +0000

The strangest about getting older is that you look back and realize you were always exactly where you needed to be. Not, as we'd like to think, because this nomadic progress constitutes some path toward growth, but because it is only in theory that people plan a future, then coexist in it peacefully. In practice, to move on by getting ourselves kicked out.

Taking leave of the premises of Hannah's apartment in this episode is Elijah. We've already watched Charlie's unbearable clinginess lead to his ejection, then Marnie's tetchiness towards Adam lead to hers. It's not surprising that the merging of Elijah and Marnie — on Hannah's own couch, yet — is the impetus for Elijah's.

This time, because he hasn't even paid for it, Hannah, at George's urging, gets to keep Elijah's furniture. "I'm going to sit on this chair all day," Hannah says, rubbing her bare bottom all over the seat as she informs Elijah that some people are meant to stay in the past, if not their green steel café chairs. "I'm keeping everything he paid for."

And note "paid," because, unlike some people who are old as even producer Judd Apatow, writer and director of "This Is 40," Dunham is not shy about depicting that, whatever their level of oft-discussed privilege, the cast of "Girls" is fairly clueless about how to use it.

“Girls” recap: The contact high

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 04:00:00 +0000

It's hard to get old. By the time you reach 30, not only do the joyful events of life — parties, medication, sex — become inexpressibly tedious, you've begun to realize that any major life change — divorce, skin elasticity, death — is likely to be very unpleasant.

In precisely the reverse position are Hannah and her crew, who desire the perceived privileges of adulthood without being able to handle its most mundane tasks. This episode, Hannah finally puts her finger on it. Manic on cocaine (we'll get to that in a second), she tells the equally high Elijah, "I want to learn to write a check properly! I'm saying I want to be independent, but all these little things block me from it — block me!"

When you can't write a check, sometimes the only way to feel old in your twenties is to be with an adult who, presumably, can. (You don't realize what's wrong with them wanting to be with someone who can't write a check.) Last episode, George was the brave elder who has made the plunge with Elijah and withdrew. This episode, the children — and they are children — are easy prey for adults who don't want to get old.