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“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.

Why can’t I hate “The Americans”’ Elizabeth Jennings?

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 22:50:00 +0000

Likability, well on its way to becoming a dirty word, is on everyone’s lips these days: Why aren’t Anne Hathaway and Taylor Swift likable? Why are Jennifer Lawrence and Mila Kunis? What does it matter if Hannah Horvath or Amy Jellicoe is unlikable, so long as they are interesting? Why are women, both real and fictional, constantly being assessed for likability while men doing similar things get a pass? And what is with our current, not gender-specific cultural obsession with the unlikable anyway? And with making the unlikable lovable?

“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?

Michael Penn: “Part of me thinks Hannah’s really more the voice of MY generation”

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 19:00:00 +0000

Musician Michael Penn has the enviable, if not incredibly difficult task of scoring "Girls." OK, that didn't sound quite right. Allow me to rephrase: Penn composes the music for Lena Dunham's HBO series, which he's done from the very beginning. Of course, he's scored films before — for Paul Thomas Anderson: "Hard Eight" and "Boogie Nights," among many other films. I tried to imagine what it must be like to evoke through music the millennial female Brooklyn experience, as a 54-year-old man living in Los Angeles — and frankly, I couldn't (and I'm a huge fan of "Girls" and I live in Brooklyn!). But he gets Lena Dunham, and he fully appreciates the state of mind she's tapping into, because he says, what she's writing resonates as much with his generation as hers — he admits, in our conversation, it involves at least some degree of entitlement. Penn, who is funny and warm and smart as hell, is perhaps best known for his first single "No Myth (Mr. Romeo in Black Jeans)" and his collaborations with singer-songwriter wife Aimee Mann. He talked with me about what it's like to work with Dunham, and set the mood of Hannah's world.

Ann Patchett on her moment of “Girls” fame: “I am so far out of it!”

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 17:25:00 +0000

Ann Patchett, call your agent.

The author of books including "Bel Canto" and "State of Wonder," who also runs a Nashville bookstore, couldn't seem farther removed from the world of HBO's "Girls" -- a show whose characters seem likely to read Sheila Heti or Vice magazine. Besides, as Patchett told Salon, she doesn't watch TV.

And yet, last night's episode name-checked the author, when the mother of Lena Dunham's character announces that she's having a wonderful time at an academic conference in New York.

"It has been such an awesome conference," says Becky Ann Baker's character, a prim middle-aged, upper-middle-class woman. "I never thought I'd meet so many other women who feel the same way I do about Ann Patchett." The joke here, perhaps, is that Patchett is the sort of tasteful, excellent, high-mid-brow author for whom women like Hannah's mother would, near-universally, feel a strong affinity.

Patchett is flattered. "I heard about the reference this morning from an old boyfriend who called me a 'meme,' and then I had to ask him what a 'meme' was," Patchett told Salon via email. "It's very nice to think that someone at the show would take the trouble to put me in the cultural loop when clearly I am so far out of it."

Thank you for being a friend, Hannah Horvath

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 17:00:00 +0000

The volumes' worth of cultural criticism penned about “Girls” agree only that the show is polarizing, provocative and, above all, unconventional. But now midway through its sophomore season, “Girls” has settled into a dynamic with its four central characters that’s surprisingly traditional: There’s the sweet/ditzy girl, the free-spirited/sexual girl, the uptight/sarcastic girl, and the protagonist who acts as the linchpin, holding all these opposing personalities together.

Any show that’s set in New York City and follows the lives of four women will inevitably come up against “Sex and the City” — a comparison “Girls” blunted in its pilot episode by making its least savvy character (Shoshanna, totally a Charlotte) a gushing fan of "SATC." But “Sex and the City” didn’t set the archetypes so much as it cemented them. Before women selected their fictional counterpart in Carrie/Samantha/Charlotte or Miranda, they had already assigned themselves to a Golden Girl. I’d argue that all television foursomes are actually walking in the sensible shoes of Rose/Sophia/Blanche and Dorothy, although variations on the rule-of-four dynamic has played out in other shows and films like “Mean Girls,” “Pretty Little Liars,” “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” “Heathers,” “Bachelorette” and, on the other end of the gender spectrum, “Entourage” and the mixed-gender roommates on “New Girl.”

“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.