A Thread About Girls (HBO)

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Have been avoiding this thread b/c I was 3 episodes behind, but I just watched them the other night, so now I'm caught up. Haven't caught up on this thread yet, but a few of my thoughts (without having read yours):

I am not liking this season.
--Each episode feels singular, making the season (so far) feel disjointed and incohesive.
--I feel like there are no new themes going on this season. All the storylines feel derivative of season 1 or else just slightly modified and re-done. The exception being the Sosh/Ray relationship. That storyline seems to be exploring uncharted-GIRLS territory.
--I feel like she's just writing one-off episodes and working in actors she wants to meet and work with. (That last episode with Patrick Wilson was just ridiculous. What a mastubatory exercise that was. I felt like she has a crush on Patrick Wilson in real life and she wanted to put herself in as many sex scenes with him as possible.)
--I also feel like all the progress of season 1 seems to just be abandoned.
--Lastly, for a comedy show, it's just not that funny this season! I'm barely laughing (except at how she puts herself in the most unflattering positions and shots). I don't know if they're trying to go "dark" to make the show more grown up, but it's just not funny like the first season was.

Hopefully, she can pull it out for the rest of the season. But so far I'm very unimpressed and really missing the show I fell in love with season 1.
 
So I've started watching this show after a lot of hesitancy about the pilot. But I like it now. There are quite a few odious people on it, though. :happy:
 
It was good to have all four girls again. It was sad to see that Marnie and Hannah can't be open with each other anymore.

Nice to see that shout out to my hometown, though! I've never seen a dog outside of a carrier on the ferry before, and I take it everyday to get to work. I wonder if people will try it now because of this episode. And yes, we're fucked up, wishing we lived in Manhattan. Sigh!
 
Good episode. The best part was Ray & Adam teaming up for a Staten Island adventure. The worst part was Marnie.

Given that the episode was titled 'Boys,' I assumed it would be all from the guys' perspective. An entire day in the life of Ray episode would be great.
 
I enjoyed the attention to detail, like the f-upped grill on the SI girl.

I thought the crying missed the mark, both times. I think Allison Williams is on her way to becoming a good actress, but not quite yet.

Hannah's meeting with Hedwig was pitch perfect.
 
Yeah, Marnie's crying scene was a low point. She played the scene so strangely. It didn't feel authentic at all and something was just...off.

Episode was good, though. I'm not a depressed person.
 
Very cry-heavy episode. I didn't think the emotional payoff with Hannah/Marnie on the phone felt earned. I'm normally an Alison Williams apologist, but I thought she was terrible during her breakdown scene with Booth. It didn't help that I thought that relationship was implausible and really poorly done.

I was sold on Ray crying at the end tho, given that his Shaolin adventure brought so many of his insecurities to the fore. The shot of Dog turning to him right before cutting to credits was oddly moving (second great dog reaction shot of the season).
 
Hannah's meeting with Hedwig was pitch perfect.

Aw shit, was he the guy who signed her for the book deal? I didn't even recognize him without his angry inch.

What was the deal with that dumb dress? I thought it was just awful gold lame or something, but then she's carrying it home and wearing a weird paper bra underneath? Or something?
 
I thought this week's episode was really well-written and pretty great. The Ray/Adam segment was terrific. The guy who plays Ray just might be the best actor on the show.

Agree with you all that the Marnie cry scene fell flat. She's also the least interesting character to me and her scenes often fall flat for me.

Still not as good as Enlightened, which keeps getting better and better (I nominate this week's brilliantly written and acted episode for every award a TV show can win and am frustrated that I have no one to talk about it with) but it's more fun at least.
 
Holy shit, the scene out by the car where Lena and Jemima are talking about "sexcapades" and totally breaking character and making each other laugh is one of the best things I've ever seen.

Reminded me of some old Bledel/Graham on-screen magic.
 
The Hannah/Jessa chemistry was great in this episode. I loved them analyzing the 1979 Penthouse, hilarious scene. At times I don't buy that Hannah and Jessa would be friends, but the natural rapport between the actresses really made that relationship feel lived in.

What worked less for me was Jessa and her dad. It's a recurring problem and I think the show sometimes falls short of the emotional heavy lifting it has to do. In part it's the acting but I don't feel the writing is quite up to it yet either. An exception would be the Hannah/Marnie blowup in the penultimate episode of S1. I felt that worked because a lot of humor was interjected with the emotion instead of just going for straight gravitas.
 
Finally watched this week's episode. It was really good, the way it explored young adults' relationship with their parents. Especially with Jessa and her dad, that was sad.

This doesn't mean Jessa is no longer on the show, right?
 
I really enjoyed this week's episode in spite of (because of?) it being scattered among several different plotlines. The therapy scene was great, Dunham played it wonderfully and Bob Balaban was clutch as always.
 
I had a dream last night that Jessa dies, and it really sucked and I was really glad when I woke up.
 
Finally caught up after being OOTC for a couple weeks.

Two very strong episodes. The tension between Hannah and her mother feels very, very accurate to me.

And the final image of the three of them on the train with the meds was subtly devastating. A perfect snapshot of modern disappointment.
 
i thought this was spot-on, especially given Lena Dunham's criticisms of pornography:

But Jeff, “topless” is putting it mildly, to say the least. We saw her lying prostrate at the end of exceedingly uncomfortable sex, the evidence of her boyfriend’s self-pleasuring draped sadly and unpleasantly upon her, as he loomed above, his face looking more than ever like that of an old-timey criminal. Were you as surprised as I was at the way Dunham’s camera—she directed this episode—lingered on Appleby like that? And what did you make of that scene?

Bloomer: I think the lingering camera had to do with Natalia feeling debased, even borderline assaulted. It was about her disgust and, what may be worse, her crushing disappointment. “I don’t think I like that,” she says. “I, like, really didn’t like that.” The scene was arguably mild in comparison to some of the other stuff we’ve seen Adam do, so it’s pretty amazing how horrifying this scene was—his most awkward sex with Hannah still sometimes managed to be erotic. This was just devastating. Their cute exchange in the episode’s opening scene was funny—at the time. “I like how clear you are with me,” he said. “What other way is there?” she replied. But like everything else in this episode, it seems dark and cruel in retrospect.

There were a lot of lingering body horrors in this episode: the OCD wedgie, the ass splinter, the Q-tips, the pathetic result of Adam’s breakdown. What gives?

Haglund: Body horror has been with the show from the beginning—it just never approached this David Cronenberg-like level before. Remember the stuff that gets up around the sides of condoms? Remember that stuff? The HPV gave way to the UTI and finally, this week, to a string of gruesome, graphic, bodily experiences.

I wonder if that shot of Natalia was on some level a rebuke to porn. Shiri Appleby is one of the most conventionally beautiful people who’s been cast on this show, and that was a money shot—a genuinely upsetting, not-at-all erotic money shot. And also a sad answer to that cruel editor’s careless question, “Where’s the pudgy-faced liquid semen and sadness?” Just you wait, John Cameron Mitchell.

Girls HBO: On All Fours, episode 9 of Season 2, is the darkest, scariest episode yet. - Slate Magazine
 
Whoa, disturbing. I hope Natalia has the guts to never see Adam ever again. But kudos for this show to explore date rape.

And Marnie is insane. No wonder she and Hannah can't be friends anymore - they're both nuts.
 
Good points in that article about body horror; things did get pretty Cronenbergian with that ass splinter.

In all likelihood Adam did that kind of shit with/to Hannah on the regular; interesting how the series kind darkly comments on similar scenes from S1 that were played mostly for laughs.

I really don't care for Marnie's arc, she's acting way dumber than she should be. Charlie has more or less gone from being the over sensitive wimp she dumped to being an uncaring asshole; the fact that he recognizes how low she's sunk and fucks her anyway shows how little he thinks of her.
 
The second-hand embarrassment I felt when Marnie was doing "Stronger". Wow. And the fear I felt when Adam and Natalia were back at Adam's apartment. I just knew something fucked up was going to happen.

Powerful episode, but I'd definitely take Jessa and Hannah making each other laugh over what we saw at the end of this one.
 
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