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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.

“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: Meet Jessa’s dad

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 02:30:00 +0000

Lena Dunham: Fire your friends. I'm sure you love them; I'm sure they support you artistically; I'm sure they, like Hannah's companions in “Girls,” bring you equal parts joy and pain. However — these Twitter scandals are becoming the tech equivalent of Ku Klux Klan charge in 140 characters. Fellow writer Lesley Arfin's tone-deaf, ill-reasoned response to critics lamenting your lack of black characters was bad enough. But this week's silence on Lisa Lampinelli's tweet is the worst type of pernicious neglect. You're beginning to seem like the canary in the coalmine for ironic racism — which apparently yet flourishes in the young intellectual vanguard. As an artist, you have the right, even duty, to depict this small sliver of culture. As a human, you have officially made me terrified about this sliver. Fire your friends.

Back to the show — which, in this episode, somehow seemed more nakedly painful to me than all the actually nudity in the show heretofore.

“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.

“Girls” recap: You reap what you show

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 04:00:00 +0000

“It was really well-written!”

This is the damning charge leveled at Hannah's essay in this second installment of our second season — tragically, by Sandy, the perfect partner who we now learn is less-than-perfectly attentive and, perhaps consequently, a Republican. After a season of fighting for self-expression, Hannah and her girlfriends have learned that self-expression is wonderful, until someone actually notices what you're expressing.

Sandy saying that Hannah's essay “isn't for me,” that damn lacking even faint praise, is the least of it. Marnie, out on the job market, finds her Ann Taylor suits and Revlon-ready features are a complete liability in the art world. (“Where do you ... get a suit like that?” one job interviewer asks.) Jessa's artistry has been entirely stymied by her new, emotionally fulfilling life. (“I'm not used to painting someone I love,” she tells her shirtless, posing husband.) And, unfortunately, Hannah's “open dialogue” with Sandy about her writing quickly spreads into an open dialogue about how they actually see each other. When Hannah decides their political differences are too vast a crevasse for her to bridge, Sandy tells she's the typical white girl who moves to the city and decides to date a black guy. (Finger quotes.) Hannah flies back with the familiar-sounding,“It's ironic, because I never thought about the fact that you were black. I don't live in a world with divisions like that.”

“Girls” recap: Gloves — and clothes — are off!

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 04:30:00 +0000

Well, it was June; it is now January. We have re-elected Obama, and shaken off Sandy's dousing of the entire Northeast. Gay marriage advocates are increasingly winning; global-warming activists, not so much. India is rocked by an uproar about violence against women, a soccer team has followed their teammate off the pitch in protest after he's harassed by racist taunts, and 27 children and teachers have been massacred in a shooting in Newton, Connecticut. It's not an entirely differently world, but it's not exactly the same one either. And how does "Girls" choose to enter it?

Right away, there's a black person. A black man. On screen. Having sex with Hannah. “You wanted this,” he huffs to viewers. “You're finally getting this. It's about fucking time.” Yes, thank you, Lena. We did.

It's season two, and if Lena Dunham has taken her critics' comments on race, sex, and class somewhat to heart, the song remains the same. In the first few scenes, instead of Marnie flung around Hannah in her bedroom, it's new roommate Elijah, who has a boner. (“It's not for you.”) Trim Marnie has now been dumped not only by her boyfriend but, despite that great blue dress, her boss. Shoshanna faces her post-virgin life sporting a Katherine Hepburn–like frigidity belied by her frilled, Freudian fascinator; and Jessa, who is mostly absent from this episode, heads back from her honeymoon tanned, corn-rowed, and still not knowing her husband's address.

“Short Second Life of Bree Tanner”: Stephenie Meyer slays her own vampires

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:18:00 +0000

There are probably only two reasonable reactions to having your first two novels made into blockbusters. The first: to pop some bubbly and raise an eternal glass to your triumph. The second: to freak out at how far your characters have wandered since the good old days, when the only screen they appeared on was your own.

From the publication of chief "Twilight" operator Stephenie Meyer's slim sixth book -- timed, not coincidentally, with the June 30 premiere of Meyer's third novel-to-blockbuster, "Eclipse" -- we can safely assume the author felt something closer to the latter. Because, while taking a minor character from one novel to place her at center stage in another is a venerable literary tradition (where would copyright lawyers be without it?), "The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner" takes a veritable walk-on from "Eclipse" and fleshes her out in a competing counter-narrative. Some, in this book, will see craven movie tie-in. I see control freak.