Slate's ultimately sexist "Guys on Girls" column fails to validate its existence

     Lena Dunham and Patrick Wilson on "Girls".
     Photo Credit: HBO

This essay was originally submitted as a web feature assignment for my "Journalism and Social Change" class on February 28. That piece was capped at 1,000 words, but the version I've included here is slightly longer (I excised some unnecessary critical blather that made it extremely obvious how badly I was getting away with writing about a TV show for a school assignment). I also got some excellent quotes from Mo Ryan at The Huffington Post that unfortunately came too late to be included in the piece (my fault for leaving it so late, as well as making the piece so long that I wouldn't have been able to fit her quotes in anyway). Probably fair to point out that Emily Nussbaum did have something nice to say about the guys' discussion of Adam and Natalia's bad thing in the "On All Fours" episode on March 10. As for the others, who knows if they have had a change of heart re: the "Guys on Girls" feature, or whether they've kept up with at all. I know Jaime Weinman said he wasn't reading it regularly when I asked about it.

General disgust after the jump...

"Girls" - "Together": See you next fall

     Adam (Adam Driver) saves the day (I guess?) on "Girls".
     Photo Credit: HBO

I recently started watching "My So-Called Life" for the first time and I've been following along with Amelie Gillette's old-ish reviews on The A.V. Club. I haven't been as impressed with them as I have with some other things written for that site, but I do enjoy her reviews especially because she watched "My So-Called Life" when it originally aired on ABC back in 1994, and it provides her with an interesting perspective. Her review of the sixth episode, "The Substitute," notes that her opinion of it had largely changed over the years because upon first watching it as a student of creative writing, she felt it was an inaccurate depiction of the process - "I had an aversion to anything that made writing seem like something anyone could do if given an inspirational teacher and a few candles, as well as anything that reduced good creative writing to something that 'does better than make sense. It makes you feel,'" Gillette wrote.

I mention this because I'd like to highlight what I felt was the sole positive of the season two finale of "Girls" that aired this past Sunday (March 17) before I tear apart what was otherwise a disappointing conclusion to the season.

"Girls" has had its fun with Hannah's writing career this season (can I make one last mention of Murjashiway?) and as something of a writer myself, I can appreciate that the show doesn't attempt to portray it with any kind of glamour - I'm not sure how they would do that, but you get what I mean. I didn't necessarily love the story, but I did find her troubles amusing and thought that Lena Dunham got some Lena Dunham-y lines to read in her Lena Dunham-y delivery that were quite funny, such as telling her father that she was able to self-diagnose her scarlet fever by reading Louisa May Alcott. I would have probably really enjoyed an episode that was just a day in the life of Hannah the writer. Obviously "Girls" isn't the kind of show where she could have buckled down and cranked out her book in that one day, but I think I still would have enjoyed watching her fail at that rather than give up immediately and try to get her parents to bail her out as always (I know it's Hannah, but she should really learn how futile it is to ask them for money at this point).

We couldn't get that episode, however, because it was season finale time. Only this wasn't "She Did". It wasn't "Casino Night". It wasn't "Shut the Door. Have a Seat." Little to none of "Together" felt like it was happening organically, for any reason other than the show was going to be away for awhile and some things needed to be brought to a close. The Shoshanna and Ray breakup we all knew was coming happened, but wasn't brought about by any new developments in this episode. They might as well have broken up in any of the last two or three episodes, because in the interim we saw the same beats of Shoshanna realizing what a crummy relationship that was that we only needed to see once (probably in the Radhika episode where she makes out with the doorman).

I was also extremely disheartened by the end of the Marnie arc this year. Marnie has been making an ass of herself in front of Charlie all year and it's been at times quite painful, and at times quite funny (often both). But that arc doesn't end with her and Charlie together in a happy relationship where she's ready to have his brown babies. It ends with Marnie realizing that Charlie is making her do stupid things that she shouldn't be doing because he's just Charlie and she's not a good or prosperous person when she's around him. I had enjoyed this arc through the preceding nine episodes and was happy that character was given more to do than the first season made Allison Williams seem capable of. I trusted the writers to give her the wake up call she needed by the season's end, and they didn't give it to her. Marnie is just as much a screwup as Hannah in her own right, but she doesn't deserve that kind of shaft. If anything, I'd like to selfishly find some weird way for Christopher Abbott to return to "Enlightened" as a regular for season 3 (which, psh, is totally happening, duh) so that the temptation of Charlie can be eliminated for her altogether.

And while I was slightly amused by Hannah's earlier misadventures in writing, her final scene with Adam left me very confused about that relationship as well and what the show was telling me about them. I get that Adam is the person in Hannah's life who tells her to keep away from the broken glass, but I neither understood nor felt the apparent triumph or heroism that was him running shirtless all the way to her apartment through Facetime. I think the takeaway was supposed to be that in the end, Adam's a good guy and he's the one person she can really count on no matter what she might otherwise feel about him. But to me that's such a bleak statement about their relationship ("At least Hannah has one person she can always count on...oh, but it's...Adam") that I think sells short a lot of their history and the things that make them their most interesting when paired together.

To me, it felt like a strangely sad appropriate capper to a season that's seen higher highs and lower lows than the show saw in 2012. This season gave us some really tremendous episodes like the "Louie"-esque adventures "One Man's Trash" and "Video Games". But as good as those half hour standalones are, they're really detrimental to the overall arc of the season. There were 10 episodes in total, but only seven or eight of them lived within any kind of story continuity, a short amount of time to develop a plot on a television show ("Veep," the former neighbours of "Girls," produced only eight episodes for their first season and wisely opted out of any attempts at a running arc last year). That means when it's time to wrap everything up, it's hard to tie everything up in a nice bow the way a delicate show like "Girls" needs to.

I'm hoping the third season, which will consist of 12 episodes, will let them have their cake and eat it too by writing outstanding standalone episodes that don't cut into time that could be better spent on fleshing out and concluding the 2014 adventures of Hannah, Marnie, Jessa, and Shoshanna. In the meantime, I'm okay with "Girls" taking a bit of a breather to refocus - if need be, possibly get a whiff of a few candles.

"Girls" - "On All Fours": Can't get much wronger

     Marnie (Allison Williams) in the midst of the worst
     decision she's ever made.
     Photo Credit: HBO

Something happened on "Girls" this past Sunday (March 10) that I don't think has ever happened before: part way through the title card, the logo changed colour. When it first appeared, it was pink on a purple background, then transitioned to green on a yellow background. According to colour theory, pink evokes feelings of immaturity and silliness, but also of nurturing and unconditional love. Green suggests self-reliance, but also an unhealthy possessiveness.

I didn't look into previous title card colours as they aired, and I don't have the time to do it now. Who knows whether Dunham and co. ever take the logo colour into consideration. But the actual changing of those specific colours in this episode doesn't seem accidental. "On All Fours" was a fairly natural extension from last week, where we revisited Hannah's onset OCD in a much more horrifying form (personally, I'm pretty squeamish about things being done to my ears so that whole story was hard to watch). We knew from last week that Adam having a girlfriend would make its way back to Hannah at some point, and she took it about as embarrassingly as she could have, trying to think up reasons to like her only knowing her first name and nearly crying when Adam calls her "kid". Shoshanna continued to have no clue what she wanted out of her relationship with Ray other than knowing that she wanted it, which made it all the more disheartening for her to hear Ray described as an asshole by nature. I know the whole point of that relationship is that nothing about it makes sense and there's really nothing to it, but I'm starting to find it uninteresting and I hope there's some more serious development on that front in next week's finale.

I recently mainlined all 18 episodes of "Enlightened," which has its own cringeworthy moments. But show me the most hard-to-watch moment of "Enlightened" and I will show you Marnie singing "Stronger" at Charlie's party, which is maybe the most excruciating but simultaneously hilarious sequence ever televised. In fact, this was a really funny episode despite how dark things got at times. Hannah telling her parents about the 12-15 very close friends she had was a classic Lena Dunham delivery, and pretty much everything happening at Charlie's party (especially the douchebag talking about how restaurants are just a part of him and Shoshanna's reaction) was hysterical. Even as bad as things got between Adam and Natalia, Adam Driver got to work in some good physical comedy in their dance scenes.

So let's talk about Adam and Natalia and the thing she really didn't like, possibly the most excruciating and not at all hilarious sequence ever televised. Credit where credit is due, the show went for it. Nothing about this show is whitewashed, so why start with rape? The "too far" moment for me was the actual shot of Adam's semen. When you're paying a monthly fee to subscribe to HBO, you expect sex, nudity, and violence as a compensation. But I think I still would have understood just how horrifying that was without the borderline pornographic "evidence". If we're choosing to read into the logo colour, it seems like any break Natalia will be making from Adam will be as clean as the one Hannah made from him. I might have a better idea of where this would be headed in a 12 episode season, but with only 30 more minutes to go, my guess is as good as yours.

Season two of "Girls" ends this coming Sunday. Here's hoping I handle the breakup better than Marnie.

"Girls" - "It's Back": No one can hear you scream

     Peter Scolari, Lena Dunham, and Becky Ann Baker on "Girls".
     Photo Credit: HBO

We've all had a person in our life who is either a horrible influence or brings out the worst in us. In some cases, we don't tend to realize this about that person until they're gone from our lives. They weren't necessarily trying to push the dime bag closer to us and asking us whether or not we want to be cool, but they do behave and think in a way that is, below the surface, ultimately toxic. The behaviour seems so normal that outside perspective is the only way to finally realize what a mess that person is.

Countless TV shows have dealt with the trope of a protagonist reuniting with an old friend. "How I Met Your Mother" depicted a phenomenon known as "revertigo" in an episode where the presence of Lily's high school friend reactivates her urban slang. In fact, most shows that tackle this subject are comedies depicting a humorous personality clash in the former friends. I always enjoyed the way that "Freaks and Geeks" handled the pseudo-fallout between Lindsay and Millie because of its complexities. Lindsay knew creatively and spiritually that Millie and the geeks were not going to bring out her full potential, but she also realized academically and sensibly that Millie was a positive influence, and that made it difficult to constantly reject her. And because Millie is too nice and believes she can bring Lindsay back from the dark side, she always welcomes Lindsay back to her with open arms, trying to do whatever she can to help her. Sunday (March 3) night's "Girls" gave us the opposite, in that almost every main character is confronted with the person or people who are their biggest impediment to success. And in a way, even the title "It's Back" could suggest that these people are akin to horror movie villains, back to finish the job they don't realize they were drafted for.

Shoshanna is just beginning to find some kind of stable adult life with Ray when her old friend and party girl Radhika (like "30 Rock," "Girls" appreciates the funniness of funny names) reappears. Radhika isn't pushing that lifestyle on her, but in reflecting on her recent progress, Shoshanna realizes that regardless of whether or not this was a life she at one time wanted or wanted to feel comfortable with, it certainly isn't any longer. Yes, Shoshanna ends the night confused as ever about her feelings for Ray, but it was hard to do worse than Marnie, who once again makes a complete ass of herself in front of Charlie. Marnie knows exactly what's wrong with her. She just thinks those things are either Charlie's fault or flaws of Charlie himself. But...progress! Right? (Yeah...we'll see.)

By all means, Hannah isn't capable of taking care of herself, but her parents (the always great Becky Ann Baker and Peter Scolari) aren't doing her any favours by dragging her to a pediatrician to cure her onset obsessive compulsive disorder (which...weird right? It's never been my understanding that OCD comes and goes, but who knows). It wasn't a terribly gripping storyline, at least not with the track record "Girls" has had with the Hannah character, but it featured some good work by Lena Dunham and the previously mentioned Baker and Scolari (and hey look, HBO favourite Bob Balaban!) and was an interesting counterbalance to what seemed to be the episode's major story.

I was not impressed with the direction Adam was taken early in the season, as it seemed a lot of the work done to humanize him in the end of the first season was being undone because of the mistaken belief that a creepier Adam is a funnier Adam. I enjoyed the Adam and Ray scenes in "Boys," but Adam's dinner date with Natalia was the first time all season the character really intrigued me. Natalia's stories about working as a decoy for a private investigator made me wish that that had been the outcome of the date instead simply because it would be hilariously tragic, but I'm much more interested in seeing a happy Adam, and no one has any reason to sick a PI on him.

Not their best episode, but one that exhibits promise for the season's remaining two weeks.

"Girls" - "Video Games": Continue?

     Hannah (Lena Dunham) and Jessa (Jemima Kirke) enjoy a
     home-cooked meal on "Girls".
     Photo Credit: HBO

Okay, let's run through some of the contradictory things I've written about "Girls" over the past few weeks:

I claimed "One Man's Trash" to be my favourite episode of the series, citing a preference for "Hannah Show" episodes like "The Return" from season 1. The week after, I praised "Boys" for putting new characters together like Adam and Ray, and I finally considered the cast to be an ensemble the show would be best served to use. Not only did I write that I preferred a sort of "all or Hannah" approach to the cast, but this week's episode featured Hannah and one other main cast member, like most of the episodes this season have, and I thought it was terrific.

And a few weeks back, I wrote about the ultimately toxic relationship between Hannah and Jessa, even if they have their moments of clarity and understanding. And now after Sunday (February 24) night's episode "Video Games," I'm going to revise that statement if not rescind it completely.

Hannah and Jessa are in very few ways similar people. As Hannah points out when first arriving, Jessa and her father speaking in their heavy accents made her feel like they were speaking different languages. When Jessa offers Hannah supposed words of wisdom about how her life will never get any better than it is right now, it's clear how little Jessa understands Hannah and an episode like tonight proves how bad Jessa is at showing Hannah she cares about her. Jessa has never had a good relationship with a parental figure, as we saw in her breakdown with her dad (Jemima Kirke. Emmy nomination. Now please.), so it's not surprising that Hannah yelling "slow down!" from the backseat of their speeding car is off-putting to her. The last thing Jessa wants in a friend is another parent. But the things that bring the two of them together are not just straws they grasp at to keep their friendship alive - Jessa is not the kind of person who would pretend to be friends with anyone -  they're reminders why they are friends and why they enjoy each other's company when they can spend a lot of time not having the time of day for each other. As Aimee Mann's "How Am I Different?" plays over the end credits, I'm left wondering why I ever thought this relationship was on life support.

We had spent the early part of the season seeing only glimpses of Jessa, and I convinced myself we were ramping up to crazy Jessa/Thomas John antics late in the season. Thomas John is gone, but Jessa and Johansson family insanity were in full swing tonight. With a character like Jessa, a good origin story (not exactly the correct use of that term, but you get what I mean) is essential but almost guaranteed to be a letdown. Because Jessa leads such a ridiculously misguided life, a plot synopsis describing a visit to her parents makes me think, "Oh wow, Jessa's parents! She's so screwed up, this is gonna be good!" And surprisingly, it really, really was. Ben Mendelsohn and Rosanna Arquette (playing "Petula," which is a pretty funny name but not as good as Murjashiway) brought some hilarious quirks to their roles and I had no reservations believing those three as a family. On a side note, actor Nick Lashaway played Frank, and I spent most of my viewing being very frustrated that I couldn't place where I knew him from. (The IMDB tells me I recognize him as one of the teenage boys at the health clinic that Steve Carell takes Kat Dennings to in "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and as one of Michael's co-workers at his telemarketing job in the "Money" episode of "The Office".) Note to self: attempting to mentally cut a character's bad haircut isn't very helpful in trying to place the actor in a previous role.

Like "One Man's Trash," "Video Games" was a "Louie"-esque short story that ignores any sense of continuity from episodes that precede it. But what "Girls" does so well is it does use episodes like that to establish continuity for later episodes. I have no idea where we're headed next with Jessa, and I won't be surprised if we don't see her again this season.

I'd like to say this is my new favourite episode of the series, but I feel like I will say that three to five times a season with a show like this. So just know that I actually preferred this to "One Man's Trash," and I won't replace my favourite episode week after week. If "Louie" won't be back for another year, then I am perfectly happy to accept short film episodes of "Girls" as a worthy placeholder.

"Girls" - "Boys": Giving up the gun

     Here's an image that aired for 1/24th of a second on HBO
     tonight. Ezra Koenig (Ezra Koenig) and Booth Jonathan
     (Jorma Taccone) admire great art on "Girls".
     Photo Credit: HBO

It seems I will never settle on what kind of "Girls" episode I prefer. I loved last week's "One Man's Trash" just as I loved season 1's "The Return," Hannah-only stories that forwent the other main characters for the duration of the episodes. Sunday (February 17) night's episode "Boys" featured the entire main cast, most of them (save for Jessa) with significant roles, and I loved it just as much.

Like a lot of premium cable half hours, "Girls" walks a fine line between comedy and drama, but I found tonight's episode to be the funniest of the season. Shoshanna is always funny, and I loved her great throwaway line about being the friend from "Twilight". I'm not sure how long it will take for me to not laugh at Hannah typing out the phrase, "Her name was Murjashiway," which is maybe the greatest sequence of jibberish I have ever seen in my life and perfectly encapsulates just how Hannah will fare trying to write her e-book in a month. Adam had some great lines during his even greater scenes with Ray, like his analysis of the ideal ages of women to date. Along with the full use of the ensemble (and I've never really though about the "Girls" cast as an ensemble) came interesting new pairings like Adam and Ray. I had naturally assumed from the title "Boys" that this episode would be more focused on the male characters, and Adam Driver and Alex Karpovsky really nailed the unlikely bonding thing that can so easily be a poorly executed storytelling crutch.

Booth Jonathan still being a thing caught me off guard a little bit. There was no closure to his previous horrifying encounter with Marnie, but the character feels like such an aimless drifter that I'm surprised their theoretical relationship, whatever that really entails, survived over those three or four episodes. As batshit crazy a character he is, even his opening scene where he berates his assistant for eating his ice cream (props to Jorma Taccone for having apparently just as few reservations about nudity as everyone else on this show) was enough to make me chuckle, especially the assistant's line about her boyfriend working lights for Carly Rae Jepsen - those kind of ridiculous, lack of self-awareness, Jenna Maroney-esque lines are what makes "Girls" what it is. And don't blink or you'll miss Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig tell Booth exactly how many times he's seen him cry! (Those fifteen seconds would have been enough to put this into the positive column, really).

Overall, it was not a night in which any of the characters really knew what they wanted, or felt like they should be wanting something even if it's going to make them miserable. Adam and Ray are both uncertain about their relationships - Adam goes from zero to a hundred in about two seconds when Ray criticizes Hannah, despite complaining about how bad their relationship was and how much he disliked her, and Ray isn't doing so well facing the reality that there's basically nothing to his relationship with Shoshanna. Hannah's dream is to write and publish a book, but now that it's an actual possibility, the grind of the job is proving to be overwhelming (if not funny - I mean, come on - Murjashiway - funny names are funny). And despite terrifyingly realizing how Booth views their relationship, Marnie is still tricking herself into thinking that he's brilliant and that he's some sort of opportunity of escape for her that she'll regret if she doesn't pursue.

It was a pretty spectacular episode for on screen talent. I wouldn't be surprised to see this one brought up a lot around Emmy time, even if it seems unlikely that anyone but Lena Dunham will get a nomination. While I've been enjoying the second season, there does seem to be something missing and I think the show would benefit by using more of the ensemble more of the time and in newer combinations as they did tonight. "The Hannah Show" has proven its greatness, but otherwise, I'm hoping it's go big or go home in the next four weeks.

"Girls" - "One Man's Trash": Hannah, Hannah, you're gonna die

     Hannah examines Joshua on "Girls".
     Photo Credit: HBO

Every summer for 13 weeks, FX lends out a half hour of its schedule to a stand-up comedian so he can basically televise his insanity. It's a half hour of whatever the hell Louis C.K. feels like telling a story about, and sometimes that's a homeless man being decapitated. But whatever it is, week in and week out, the subtext of "Louie" is its creator taking a sledgehammer to the current television landscape.

And man, if Sunday (February 10) night's episode of "Girls" wasn't the "Louie"-est episode the show's ever done.

The writing for "One Man's Trash" is credited solely to Lena Dunham, and I'm not surprised at all to see that. For as much as the specificity and emotion is what makes "Girls" what it is, this felt extremely personal on a level even this show hasn't fully explored yet. Its second cousin from the first season, "The Return," was also an episode that pulled Hannah out of whatever comfort zone she can claim as her own and shone a light on a really unhealthy relationship of hers. That time, it was the fact that she cheated on Adam and he didn't even care. Here, it's that she completely fabricates a relationship with Joshua basically because he has a nice house and some nice stuff, so she ignores the fact that she means basically nothing to him and views him as security she's never felt before. And yet, she's still Hannah Horvath. As much as you might think her having to return to reality would be devastating, she doesn't much show it. She's too used to it by now - it's not a match, and the board goes back.

"The Return" was my favourite episode from the first season, and though I have trouble thoroughly explaining why, this is my favourite episode of the series so far. Because "Girls" is as deeply personal as it is, the more that it's essentially the singular expression of Lena Dunham, the better it is. Which makes me conflicted, because while I like Jessa and Shoshanna and am finally warming up to Marnie, an episode like this just makes me want to watch "The Hannah Show". If we get to watch that show once a year, I'm okay with that, but only because the rest of the show around Hannah is so good as well. So now that we've spent a little time in Crazy Town, it's time to join Hannah in her walk back to reality.

"Girls" - "It's a Shame About Ray": Oasis

     Jessa (Jemima Kirke) and Thomas-John (Chris O'Dowd)
     share a (final?) meal on "Girls".
     Photo Credit: HBO

In last week's review, I commended "Girls" for telling a kind of story they don't usually tell. But I was also sure to point out that I wasn't implying that I was tired of those stories or that I thought they were doing a bad job with them. And Saturday's (February 2) episode, thanks to some non-Bears Super Bowl Shuffling, shone a pretty great spotlight on two previously unexplored (at least at this depth) couples in Shoshanna and Ray, and Marnie and Thomas-John.

For the better part of a week, I was trying to hypothesize why this episode was called "It's a Shame About Ray" (the series of tubes tells me it's also the name of a 1992 song and album by The Lemonheads) - the best I had settled on before watching the episode was that we would learn Ray would have some embarrassing accident or disease or etc. But it turns out instead that in a move both simultaneously sadder and funnier, Ray is technically homeless when he's not living with Shoshanna, with Zosia Mamet giving a great reading of the line "Are we living together?"

That probably would have been the line of the night had it not been for Jessa saying "Wish there was a lord, but I know there isn't!" at the brilliantly uncomfortable (it feels redundant to continue to refer to events on this show as "awkward" or "comfortable" - it's basically a given) dinner with Thomas-John's parents, which also included some delightful conversation about the difference between the snorting and injection of heroin, among other horrors.

It was a rough night for fancy dinners on this show, but it was a particularly rough night for the men of "Girls". Between Thomas-John's meltdown (a good, twisted performance from Chris O'Dowd), Charlie calling Marnie the dreaded C-word, and Ray's big revelation, it was a rare occasion when the pain and trainwreckery (a word I'm inventing) of the guys managed to exceed the girls. What's more, they managed to do it without one glimpse of the gentleman known as Adam Sackler. It also has me very intrigued that an upcoming episode is titled "Boys," which would seem to indicate we're going to see an episode presented from their point of view.

I thought during the episode that even though I'd been looking forward to seeing the full-fledged return of Jessa after three weeks of glimpses, I had kind of forgotten who she was as a person. I of course knew that she was the most full-of-it of the four girls, claiming a worldliness that in no way aligned with her maturity, but I kind of forgot about her fragility and that she's still a human being. So I really loved the ending scene where Jessa climbs into the bathtub with Hannah, and she just breaks down crying. No one has to say a word - Hannah just knows. Despite the fact that Jessa completely misunderstands Hannah and her life, as we saw two weeks ago in the absolutely horrible advice she gave her, there is a weird connection between those two where sometimes, their screwups can still serve as a bonding touchstone.

Hannah and Jessa are each other's wonderwalls - I don't believe that anybody feels the way they both do about the other at that very moment, where they're able to sit in the bath and splash snot back and forth at each and other. It's a nice, weird moment, even though it seems very doubtful that they will be the ones to save each other.

"Girls" - "Bad Friend": Catch the wave

     Hannah (Lena Dunham) and Elijah (Andrew Rannells) find
     the magic on "Girls".
     Photo Credit: HBO

At the beginning of Sunday (January 27) night's "Girls," Hannah's potential employer tells her to step outside her comfort zone in terms of her writing, specifically with a diagram on the wall suggesting that the magic happens in a little circle outside said comfort zone. Like the meta criticisms from last week's big Hannah/Sandy fight, it seemed to suggest that, despite being a show that focuses on the whole lives of twentysomethings in the big city, the critics of "Girls" were looking for something more each week than mostly or solely sexual exploits. We spend a good deal of time with...(we need a good "Cul de Sac Crew"-esque name for these people; to just call them "the girls" doesn't seem right since Adam, Elijah, and Ray are significant parts of the show)...these characters in their professional lives, but I'm blanking on an episode before this one that was primarily a personal story, but wasn't about a romantic relationship.

"Girls" has proven through a dozen or so previous episodes that it's perfectly capable of telling such stories about Hannah and Adam (last week's episode in particular), or Marnie and Charlie, or even Ray and Shoshanna (whose name I think I have finally learnt how to spell correctly). This week, the show stepped outside of its comfort zone and documented a coke-fueled night in the lives of Hannah and Elijah, with sequences that were at times quite funny, very well produced, and great showcases for Lena Dunham and Andrew Rannells. Rannells isn't playing the exact same character on both "Girls" and "The New Normal" so it's probably not a totally fair statement about the performances, but Elijah and Bryan share enough DNA that it's very refreshing to see this version of Bryan who is similarly obnoxious but that "Girls" can have a lot of fun with by understanding how obnoxious he can be ("The New Normal" will never be able to do that because Bryan is Ryan Murphy, and Ryan Murphy's favourite person in the world is Ryan Murphy).

And in an episode where Hannah is not on a romantic misadventure/screwup, what better way to continue the theme of "Hannah and Marnie couldn't be in more different places in their lives right now" than through Marnie's horrifying night with Booth Jonathan, fucking great artist/runner up to Adam Sackler in the 2012 "New York's Biggest Creep" contest? I didn't dislike Marnie in the first season, but at the same time I have no specific memories of really pulling for her as a character. It's hard for me not to, though, after watching the walls literally close in on her, forcing her into the fetal position. And much like when real life does it to her, she brushes it off and tells Booth how awesome she thought it was. Poor, poor Marnie - bravo, bravo Allison Williams.

The season is young, but this was my favourite of the three so far. As with all things "Girls", I imagine the reaction to this one in particular will be quite split.

"Girls" - "I Get Ideas": On notice

     Hannah (Lena Dunham) gets life advice from Jessa (Jemima
     Kirke) on "Girls". Also, puppies.
     Photo Credit: HBO

For a show that is about so much pain and failure, "Girls" has thus far not been a particularly dark series. Hannah and friends makes mistakes and things usually don't go their way, but it's been handled somewhat lightheartedly because at the end of the day, we can brush off their heartbreaks and their career falters as often self-inflicted "white people problems" as necessary. And even when Adam is a jerk or a creep or all of the above to Hannah, he has his moments of redemption - where the continuity can be reset easily enough so that the revelation of his alcoholism can close an episode as Hannah and Adam happily jogging can open the next (do I have that order right?)

Sunday (January 20) night's episode "I Get Ideas" immediately felt different from episodes that have come before it. Our very first glimpse in the episode isn't of a girl - it's Elijah, breaking up with his boyfriend in the wake of his disastrous encounter with Marnie, the two men trading nasty accusations back and forth. From the outset, the music didn't feel particularly "Girls"-y - it wasn't the kind of music that said "prepare to feel even more uncomfortable than usual," but it just wasn't the norm. In general, it felt like one of the first, but certainly not the last, particularly dark instalments of the show - and for the most part, I thought it was just excellent.

That being said, my favourite scene of the episode didn't seem particularly dark or out of the ordinary at all, which was Sandy's constructive criticism for Hannah and their ensuing breakup. It was a classic "Girls" moment of the dial slowly being turned up on total and sudden insanity until characters might as well be foaming at the mouth because that would probably be less embarrassing than the words that were coming out of them. Particular highlights of dialogue included Hannah telling Sandy she knows all the things she does well, she needs to hear about the bad stuff, her asking Sandy if he still wanted to have sex (great reading by Lena Dunham), and picturing Hannah and Sandy watching multiple episodes of "Say Yes to the Dress".

Meanwhile, the amount of bleak seems to vary for the rest of Williamsburg. Despite being the hottest girl in the world, Marnie apparently doesn't have the right look to sit in the front of a building and be the face of a business. She and Hannah are still awkwardly tiptoeing around their problems. But for Shoshannah, life is blissful ignorance at the moment with Ray, and Jessa and Thomas John are still a bizarre force of nature that I can't explain (I love that they're sitting on that goldmine and just doling a little bit out at a time - for some reason, I hope there's some crazy revelation in the season finale about them that we can go back through the season and find hints about or something).

But if you want total bleak? Look no further than Adam Sackler. I enjoyed learning more about him as the first season progressed, and I actually kind of liked him in the first season finale. Unfortunately, the reset button seems to have been pressed in a major way where any more redemption we'd see out of him this season couldn't have more weight (or be any different, really) than what we've already seen. He's treating Hannah's heart like monkey meat and being a creep as usual, but now he's breaking into her house at night and scaring her, and then refusing to leave while laughing like a psychopath. I personally don't blame Hannah for calling the po-po - Adam has become even more toxic for her than we ever thought he could.

About half way through the episode, Oracle Jessa tells Hannah that her life will never get any better than it is right now. Not that we need to be all that worried about her predicting skills, but for Hannah's sake, let's all hope Jessa couldn't be more wrong.

"Girls" - "It's About Time": Fuck me? Fuck you!

     Hannah (Lena Dunham), Shoshannah (Zosia Mamet), and
     Marnie (Allison Williams) pull out their brave faces on "Girls"
     Photo Credit: HBO

Maybe I'm way off base, but it always seemed to me that most of the detractors of the first season of HBO's "Girls" hated it because they largely didn't understand it. They found it annoying, they found it pretentious, and they didn't think Lena Dunham and co deserved to be saying any of the things they were saying about life and the world as twentysomethings. But they didn't understand that the unlikeable characters and the repellant tone were both intentional and essential to telling a purposeful story and engaging with the audience in such an effective and interesting way.

So it seems only fitting that Sunday (January 13) night's second season premiere, "It's About Time", set out to raise the stakes on every character's colossal screw-ups to really drive home to the h8rs that everything they didn't like about the show was primarily a result of their misreading the message.

That isn't to say that Dunham set out to write an episode solely to try to prove people wrong. "Girls" has alienated a lot of people and at this point, barring a few new eyeballs from awards attention or people who didn't spend last spring reading countless thousands of words about the show online, they're basically preaching to the choir. But the premiere functioned very well as a simultaneous return for these characters, any regular episode for the show, and maybe even as a chance to take advantage of anybody who stopped by hoping to change their mind on Hannah Horvath and friends.

From beginning to end, our heroines (if we can call them that) found themselves somewhere below rock bottom, yet tricking themselves into believing they're doing just fine. Hannah is enjoying life with new roommate Elijah and a new boyfriend played by Donald Glover (again, the show addressing first season criticism of the show's lack of diversity), yet she's still a slave to her ex-boyfriend Adam, so much so that literally the only pot she has to piss in is reserved for him. Marnie tries to convince herself she's moved on and doesn't need a man in her life, only to try to have uncomfortable and awkward sex with gay Elijah before begging to be let back into Charlie's bed for the night. Hannah and Marnie both try to reassure the other that their friendship has not crumbled to dust. Shoshannah is a woman and hear her roar, but damn if she can't get a logical sentence out of her mouth in front of Ray. And in the episode's closing minutes, we see Jessa and her new husband, absent from the episode up to that point, running through the busy Brooklyn streets and hopping into a cab. No more than that, because we got our fill of rock bottom for one episode entirely before that, and it will take many more minutes to sort out the madness of Jessa's life than were available tonight. It was the perfect button to the episode, as if to leave detractors with one final, "You're kidding, right?"

An excellent return for the show. I laughed, I felt uncomfortable, and I watched some scenes through the spaces of the fingers covering my eyes. If it was anything less, I would be disappointed, and if it was anything else, it wouldn't be "Girls".

2012 Emmy nominations post-mortem: The surprises, the snubs, and the shameful

     Kerry Washington of ABC's "Scandal" and late night host
     Jimmy Kimmel present the nominations for the 64th Primetime
     Emmy Awards.

The Primetime Emmys sting of disappointment every year, and this year they stung even earlier. Not long before the nomination announcements, Nick Offerman from Parks and Recreation Reads Tweets From Young Female Celebrities had to bail on announcing because of a travel delay. In the end, though, I was glad that the actor giving the funniest performance on television did not have to get up so early in the morning to announce to the world that his own show, the best comedy on TV, was being ignored in favour of shows that move at a glacial level in terms of character development and humour, like The Big Bang Theory and Modern Family.

I could write long, generic paragraphs about what I liked and didn't like, but I'd better go through the major awards category by category, so as to keep my thoughts under control and in their proper places. I'll also make note of who I think should win (as in who I feel is most deserving and who I want to win) and who I think will win. I have nothing to say about the miniseries and movie categories, so why waste time trying to write about them? A combination of joy and disgust after the break.

My hypothetical 2012 Emmy ballot

The nominations for the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards will be announced in a little more than 32 hours, so before that, I reveal my hypothetical Emmy ballot for I guess record's sake, as well as which nominee I'd vote for to win. I stuck to acting and series categories because I feel like there's too much to sort through with writing and directing categories and the variety and reality categories bored me. Onward...

Reviews: HBO's freshman comedies "Veep" and "Girls"

"Veep": Take political satire at its finest and combine it with expertly crafted cringe-worthy comedy, and you get this fantastic series that is not only a great vehicle for star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but a fantastic showcase for its ensemble, consisting of Anna Chlumsky and Tony Hale among others. The show's complete apathy for politics and anything associated with it is well earned in the misfit characters' low ranking jobs, and combined with Armando Iannucci's love of vulgarity, makes for great bits of absurd dialogue like "I'll redact your fuckin' face!" The show didn't always hit home runs in the laughter department, but its literal home runs, like the "Baseball" episode, proved the show was firing on all cylinders the more its ensemble cast worked together to make it out of a high-profile but low-status event without a scandal on their heels. Concluding this write-up is a paragraph from the notes I took while watching the pilot, which nicely sums up the series and its view of politics: "Vice President has her Chief of Staff sign card of condolence to Senator’s widow for her by making a writing motion in the air – all in front of the Chair of the American Foundation for Developmental Disabilities, who she is meeting with after using the word “retard” in a public address" Great show, can't wait to see it come back - and hopefully with at least a couple more episodes next season.


"Girls": As Lena Dunham pointed out, "Girls" in an appropriately ironic title for her show - its characters, despite having such a specific worldview, are so self-important that one of them may even feel as if they are, to borrow a phrase from Hannah Horvath, "the voice of [their] generation." Said specific worldview is not easy in the slightest do sort through and decipher. Meeting these characters and observing their world for the first time is very jarring, and upon first viewing the pilot of this show was certainly polarizing; as many people hated this show as the ones who loved it, and initially I counted myself among the former. Through the next couple of episodes, we were able to more clearly see what the series was saying about life, the universe, and its characters. In fact, there probably isn't another show, at least one this good, that had a better sense of self - what it was, where it was going, what it meant, and even why it meant. Through the ten episodes we saw the appropriate amount of growth in its characters - we learned that Adam is more than just a shirtless creep and that Shoshanna is more than just a ditzy cartoon that might actually fit in better with George and Tessa Altman in Chatswin. Hannah's growth throughout the season was also pretty much spot on, for her specifically but also for any person in that stage of their life. Hannah wants so badly to grow up, but the kind of life that comes with being an adult, and thus is able to provide material for her book, is the same one that so often comes crashing down on her and leaving her in desperate need of help. Real life is all she wants, but real life is so much harder than stealing money her parents left for the hotel's housekeeping or continually having Marnie bail her out on rent. The last few minutes of the finale, as Hannah heads home on the subway, has her purse stolen, and sits on the beach at Coney Island to eat cake, is just a brilliantly interesting bit of television, and man, did I end up liking this show more than I ever thought I would.