Girls. Season 2, Episodes 5-10

Girls has ended its second season, and it's left us a little confused about the future of the show.

Where's the funny?
Plenty of people are asking whether this show has taken an unintentional turn for the unfunny. After the hilarious episode three where Hannah tried hard drugs, the show has gone to the dark place and never really came out. The show was always darkly funny, but this season has dropped a lot of the absurdities and one- liners in exchange for mental illness and ethically questionable sex. We think the show is allowed to do this, as long as it picks the humor up in season three. A dip into darkness can be genius, as long as the show hasn't lost the voice that sold us on it in the first place.

What about that "on all fours" scene?
The season finale had Adam picking up Hannah, saving her from her own OCD mind with a kiss. It was romantic and fit perfectly with the fun. song the show put at the end. But, in the back of our minds, is the question of whether Adam's bad sex with Natalia bordered on rape. There are questions floating around: Is it really up to the woman to say "no," or should it be the guy's duty to get clear consent? Is it a sad reflection of our culture that the onus is on the girl to stop it? And yet, at the same time, our culture pushes girls to be sweet, submissive, and avoid "awkwardness?" Did we just use the word "onus"?

Girls- Season 2, Episode 4

Due to the superbowl, The Good Wife, Once Upon a Time, AND Shameless weren't on last night, so Girls is the only show we had to watch. Game of Thrones, come save our Sundays, pleeeease.

It's A Shame About Ray- This episode has the same title as the season premiere of Being Human, and it's kind of an obscure title, so is it a reference? There's nothing really in the Girls episode that references that show, vampires, or werewolves, or anything. Maybe Lena just likes the show and wants to give it a shout-out? It's probably just a Lemonheads reference.

Girls- Season 2, Episode 3

Bad Friend- The episode starts with Hannah trying to get a freelance writing gig with a website. Her new boss wants her to do a threesome with people she meets on Craigslist. Or coke. And write about it. Heck, we'd read that article. Especially the threesome thing. Jessa is having a yard sale on her front stoop.

Marnie suggests that Hannah visit her downstairs, drug addict neighbor to get some coke for her article. Marnie is the worst friend on TV, ever. She doesn't even try to talk Hannah out of this. She probably thinks that if Hannah dies, she'll never find out about Marnie's two thrusts with Hanna's gay roommate.  Hannah knocks on her neighbor's door. He seems nice, but he's wearing some Rastafarian-looking beanie, something you probably shouldn't do after college, if you're a guy and not a hipster. He mentions that he liked when Hannah named her wireless network "Madame Ovaries." Heh.

Girls renewed. Don't Trust the B, Ben and Kate yanked

Rejoice and grieve.

Girls- Season 2, episode 2

I Get Ideas- We love Girls and one of us is pretty liberal, but we thought Hannah's comments about Republicans were so rude. Poor Sandy! In the first place, one of us was a hard core Republican in high school with a literal cardboard cut out of George W. Bush riding in the passenger seat of our cars. Even then, that blogger didn't support the death penalty. Hannah just assumed that because Sandy was a Republican, he agreed with them about everything.

Sandy felt awkward, judged, and didn't want to get into it. We liked that Dunham wrote him as a nice, normal guy instead of the spawn of Satan though. Also, Lena said, "Hannah acts like she has a political issue with him, but what she actually has is an issue with him not liking what she does...she feels like she should receive universal praise." Fair enough.

Girls- Season 2, episode 1

It's About Time- Before we get into this, we just want to say that the episode title is fitting because we feel like we've been waiting forever for this show. Whenever we feel stressed, we just want to go watch it. We love it so much. It makes us laugh, as well as feel good and represented. The magic of this show isn't that it's controversial or that Lena Dunham gets named and has horrible sex. The magic of this show is its realness. See, in their obsession with good looks, older people "paint pictures of Egypt" when it comes to the early 20s. Meaning, they make them out to be a lot better than they are.

Execs and most celebrities paint that time as one where we party like we're going to die young, where our whole futures are ahead of us, where we are desired, and where we have all this freedom. But the world has changed since they were young. When they were young, people were getting married earlier, so they have this memory of falling in love with an important person. We have texting, clubs, and the "hook-up" culture.

Girls Season Two Trailer. We Can't Wait!!!

Girls: Season One

Girls is the most polarizing new show of the year. People who hate it hate it with a passion, calling it the worst show ever made. We think that’s a bit much, even if you don’t hate Girls. Two and a Half Men is still on the air, after all. To support their hate, critics say that the main characters are too selfish, all the men are portrayed as dogs and users, and the show isn’t funny enough. We wonder if most of these people only watched the first two episodes which, admittedly, were difficult to love, since they were cold and had all that bad (fascinating) sex.

In the subsequent episodes, Girls became even more relatable and less stressful. It didn’t focus so much on Hannah Horvath being broke, jobless, and futureless. It focused a little more on her friendships and insecurities. Shoshanna emerged as the best character on the show. Part of that is that the show only gives her to us in moderation. The time she did crack and lost her pants was one of the show’s best moments. Leeard is mad at what Marnie did to Charlie, breaking up with him during sex after working so hard to get him back. Ern thinks it’s funny and fabulous. Ern was never a Charlie fan.

We are going to miss Kathryn Hahn as Jessa’s boss. We won’t much miss her husband. Kathryn Hahn is so gorgeous and we don’t think she gets enough credit for that. We both hated Adam in the first two episodes, calling him an uggo and a waste of space. But after that, he became the second best person on the show. He’s a complex, honest guy. Yeah, he’s still kind of a jerk, but we can’t wait to see more of him next year. Also, his jerkiness is related to his honesty, which we can appreciate. He's be a much better friend than a boyfriend though. Why did this season only have ten episodes instead of a billion? Didn’t HBO anticipate that we would need more?

The finale had quite a few surprises. We didn’t love the beach ending, but we did love Shoshanna hooking up with Ray, which is much better than hooking up with that one guy who wouldn’t sleep with her because she was a virgin. We loved Ray’s lines in the finale. We also loved Jessa trying to speed up maturity by marrying that dick head Wall Street guy (Chris O'Dowd!). The wedding was cute, very Jessa, and it made perfect sense after her ex-boss’ pep talk. We wonder if, next year, she will be divorced and have half of his money. The relationship could be interesting to watch, if only because the actor playing her new husband (Chris O'Dowd!!!!!) does his part really well, but we think a divorce meltdown would be even more entertaining.

Season one is only five hours long, total, so we think you should check it out and give it a chance, if you don't mind raunch and language. Overall, it makes us smile. Everyone’s talking it about it. For being so short and new, it’s really got us hooked. We looked forward to a new episode every week. We think this show is going to come into its own and outgrow its critics as it matures and develops its four main characters more. We could use a little more Shoshanna, but not much. Sometimes you want to hit the characters, but at least the show makes you care, right? But warning: Some people hate this show so much. You might be one of them.

Season grade: A-

Ok, "Girls" has fully won us over

It's so real and awkward, and every episode is better than the last. Plus, we found out that the 25-year-old star of the show also writes it. Um, you have enough talent there, Ms. Dunham? The fourth episode was adorable.

We are fans and we are so glad it is getting a second season, because it's a show that definitely has to grow on you. We don't recommend it to people who dislike sex scenes, raunch, and imperfect characters though.

Girls: First Impressions

What it’s about: Hannah Horvath is trying to live in New York City after her parents cut her off. She has three female friends, and they don’t have life figured out yet either. It sounds like Sex and the City, only these are girls, not women. These characters are 22-25. This is a comedy and Judd Apatow is tied to it, which is surprising because it’s not at all like his movies. The titular girls are Hannah Horvath, Jessa (the British girl), Shoshanna (her cousin), and Marnie (the level-headed one with the boyfriend she doesn’t love). The show is 30 minutes per episode and is billed as a comedy, but it’s not our idea of a usual comedy. Maybe it’s a really dry comedy without jokes. An ironic comedy.

What we think of it so far: We had heard hideous things about this show. It's been getting heat for only featuring white girls and for depicting selfish twenty-somethings who don't have a lot in the way of wisdom. One of our friends posted a facebook status that said it was one of the worst shows ever. But we found it to be relatable. Maybe too relatable. It’s sort of nauseating as a 20-something girl to see these girls struggling through exactly what we are trying not to think about on a daily basis. Someone even mentions student loans and getting a job at McDonalds (which Ern would absolutely do). This is a realistic show. That can be a strength and a weakness. We go to TV for distraction, not to have it hold up a mirror.

Our stage in life isn’t covered that much on TV. There are lots of shows about career women and high school girls. There have been a few about college women and there was Friends, but those were older 20-somethings. The girls are not beautiful. They aren’t ugly by any means, but they are pretty average. Two of them are attractive. Ern likes this. We have enough good looking people on TV and enough good looking people having sex on HBO. Also, it makes them even more relatable. We aren’t uggos, but Vogue sure isn’t begging to photograph us.

Less relatable (for us) is all the sex, which is mostly devoid of any respect or even any fun. We hope this isn’t the sex our peers allow themselves to have. If you’re going to have sex, at least make sure you enjoy it, ladies. The show is peppered with references to our current culture (like vision boards, Twitter, and Kelly Clarkson). This show isn’t for everyone, and we’re concerned that if you aren’t a woman between the ages of 23-28, you’re not going to get it. It’s a smart show, but it’s not a crowd-pleaser. It's not super-eventful either. If you can relate to the show, you'll probably be too bummed and filled with ennui to watch it. If you can't relate, then you won't get it at all.

The writing is good and observant. We like the way the characters seem to be aware of their shortcomings, unlike Carrie Bradshaw and her friends who were just spoiled, wealthy sitting ducks for the viewers to pick apart. We just think the show needs to add a touch more sweetness, fun, and maybe some more conventional humor. Overall, we are going to keep watching this one for a while. 

It’s unlike anything else that’s ever been on TV and it definitely thinks it has something to say about our generation. Because it’s so unique, we feel like it’s going to grow on us. Our grades support that theory. Once the show covers the obligatory sex/pregnancy/job hunt ground and gets into the strong characters and their relationships, we think it is going to get really good. It's been renewed for a second season, so it's safe to commit and see where this weird, controversial little show is going to take us. We have a feeling this is going to be a cult thing. 

Comments on each episode:

Pilot

We sympathized with Hannah right away. One of us is about to get pushed out of the nest (the other has been hanging mostly out of it for a while), and when you don’t have a job yet, in this economy, it’s scary. It’s not that people in their 20s want to live off their parents out of laziness; it’s that the jobs just aren’t there right now. And her boss was awful! We felt really bad for her after she slept with that douche actor guy. He was the worst. Ever. Possibly the worst guy on TV of all time. At that point, we were hoping to see a nice guy who wasn’t totally whipped and lame. We liked the British girl, Jessa, but we were afraid that we weren’t going to like Hannah very much. She seemed a tad pathetic. She needs to fill out a McDonalds application and not steal from housekeeping. 
Episode grade: B-

Vagina Panic

Hannah is still sleeping with that tool. If any man’s fantasy was that we were 11 while he was inside us, we would toss him out. The show gave us our first laugh when Hannah said, “That was so good. I almost came” without a trace of sarcasm. Jessa is doing drugs, even though she is pregnant, and getting an abortion. So that’s nice. So far, we kind of like Hannah’s clothes. Oh man, when she made that date rape joke in her interview, we cringed so hard. Painful. Then we find out that Jessa is not actually pregnant. That actually IS nice. Why is everyone so shocked to see a near-22-year-old virgin? It’s not that rare! Dang. Make virgins all feel like freaks, why don’t you? Hannah, jeez, stop making awkward jokes. Stop talking about AIDS! You peaked comedically with date rape! It was sweet when the doctor said, “You could not pay me enough to be 24 again.” We guess that’s the point of this show. It’s hard to be that young, clueless, and insecure. We know, show. We know.
Episode grade: B

All Adventurous Women Do

Marnie’s boyfriend looks way better with his head shaved. Douche actor is STILL on this show. Ugh, seriously? He’s encouraging her to lose weight. We can’t complain too much because our only actual chuckles from this show happen when he is around. We caught his name this week. It’s Adam. The episode threw in a near-PSA about HPV. Damn, one of us has to get that shot… We may not be boning anyone, but even if we wait until marriage, our husband probably won’t and we can get it from him. Jessa has a job watching children, so there’s that. We knew Elijah was going to be gay, so that wasn’t a surprise or particularly interesting. It was funny where they took the conversation though. “Nice to see you. Your dad is gay.” The little dancing scene at the end was cute.
Episode grade: B+

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As for NYC-22, we hear that it's about two seconds from being cancelled right out of the gate, and it's supposed to be just another cop show. We already have Southland and Rookie Blue in our lives, and it has just been renewed for a fifth season! Yay! If NYC-22 gets picked up for a second season, then we will watch it. But for now, we don't have time for shows that have no chance of sticking around.