Girls Season 3 Episodes 1&2

Girls is a very peculiar show, seasons 1&2 were full of promise and lofty goals but, and it’s a big but, they both fell far short of their mark. To basically sum it up here is the preface description of the first two seasons, taken from my conversation with a friend.

“It touches on some good ideas and almost develops them before sliding back into its shell of white girls “struggling to survive” tropes. One interchangeable white bitch gets a decent paying office job, the horror! Another gets a book deal at 24, fuck me that’s awful! And then they bitch during meaningless conversations that ignore moments of genuine cleverness and satirical smarts as if they’re cliché and some sort of annoyance. Season two made The Newsroom look smart.”

Having seen episodes one and two of the new season twice brings me hope that the show is finally going to start delivering on the promise, even if it hasn’t quite gotten there yet. The following review will be of both episodes at the same time.

Episode one starts of by reintroducing each character and establishing the effect of the previous season’s events. Hannah is back together with Adam, Marnie is mopping over her lost love, Shoshanna is still growing and figuring out her style and way of life as she prepares to graduate into the real world and Jessa, well turns out she ran off to rehab.

Hannah and Adam seem to be the most problematic part of the series and yet in this fresh start it is showing signs of growth. Instead of jumping into the tiresome rehash of Hannah trying to work through her issues and get writing, we see her make progress. She has the book deal in place and is working at it. She retains her annoying, and at this point dull personal quirks. Though the first two episodes show these quirks changing and evolving as the character grows, finally! This season retains one problem for Hannah as a character and that is Adam.

Let’s be clear, Adam is a useless hamper to the series. As a character, he was all used up by the end of season one. By the end of season two they were beyond straining to keep him as a character. Rude, obnoxious, no redeeming characteristics what so ever and yet they twisted the story, painfully so, to keep Adam and Hanna together. At the end of the day, he is no longer a character; he is more of a personality quirk for Hannah. He is dull and uninteresting, his antics are distraction that is a waste of air time and his fits of childishness are contrary to the realistic nature of the show. Adam has less growth than Sheldon Cooper at this point in the series. He bogs down not only the show but more importantly Hannah. For the first two episode he bounces back and forth between logic  and  boorish man-child. The logical aspect of Adam is as always, well done, but these moments are too few and far between. So long as he remains, Hannah can’t grow. She will remain a ghost of the character Dunham wants to portray. Ditch him and have Hannah get into the relationships the show hinted at in season two. Just to be clear, Adam is not quirky, he is fucking annoying.

Meanwhile Marnie remains in the same role as always. The privileged white girl who whines about her life as if it’s in some sort of wreck. Enough is enough. I get that she is supposed to be dealing with heart ache, blah, blah, blah!  It’s not that her arc is terrible, not at all, it has some great moments and opportunities for growth, but the show doesn’t take hold of these instances. She always comes off as whiney and pretentious.  Adding more of her mother to the show is a great choice. She bridges the gap between Girls and Sex and the City in a wonderful way, but it also goes to show everything that’s wrong with not only Marnie but all the characters on the show. Amy, Marnie’s mom, is a strong, self-assured woman who can almost be a surrogate for the audience. She tells Marnie in not so many words, to grow up and stop hanging your dreams up on a boy. Marnie brushes it off as if she is a teenage girl. This is a shame because they’ve had her doing this for two seasons already. What’s really bewildering is that Amy is a fun character who can be both tender and serious and this is obviously where Marnie is headed. Too bad they’ve had Marnie, like much of the rest of the cast, stuck in the same spot for two (hopefully not three) seasons in a row. In the first two episode Marnie jumps back and forth between, grown up women in charge of her own world and insane mess. The dinner scene is a perfect example of how Marnie’s ‘depression’ comes off more like a mental.

On a side note, whenever Marnie and Adam share a scene, the character problems seem to fade away.  When these two collide the show always manages to make it interesting. The dinner scene is a perfect example of this. The two mindset and philosophies seem to merge naturally and make the scene worth watching. Too bad as soon as the two go back to their own little boxes the problems arise once more.

Then we get to Jessa, the free spirit, who’s wise beyond her years. At the start of the season they reveal she is now in rehab and this seems great at first. Finally, a character facing the real world and the consequences of her actions! In fact Jessa and Shoshanna are the only characters who have done this. Her marriage falling apart, her free spirit ways, her affair to a married man, they all come with consequences that Jessa can’t handle even if she appears to be the most advanced of her friends. This season it seems that they have finally decided that Jessa should finally have to own up to her follies instead of running away. Sadly though, this falters. Not too badly, but badly enough that you start thinking about how it could have been handle better. The problem is that the rehab story is very clichéd. It looks as if the show has taken all the wrong parts of Californication and applied them to Jessa. In the first two episodes she is portrayed as a young, female version of Hank Moody with all its snark and laisez faire attitude. Yes I know that Jessa already wore that hat, but the rehab and how it is handled is just too much, it pushes Jessa from being a real person and into the realm of self-parody. That is a terrible shame though, as this could have been so much better if these scenes had sincerity too them. Instead, the clichéd atmosphere of the scenes ruins any touching moment that seemed to be boiling beneath it all just waiting for an escape. It becomes painfully evident when characters make jokes that would be great, but they flounder since these scenes have no weight to them. They aren’t heartbreakingly sad, but they aren’t cheesy god awful (like what seemed to happen by the end of Californication), they are just there.

The last character, probably the best, is Shoshanna. The air headed kid of the group, the one that all the other girls look on with a kind of envy and protectiveness. She is the only character so far who has sustained any growth throughout the series and she continues it here. In season one, she is an introverted princess, so frightened by the outside world that she keeps herself bottled up, while lying to herself about her openness. In season two, she finally steps out into the world, she finds it terrifying but she has the courage to grow and face the world head on. Now in season three she has become bolder, more self-assured, even if her bubbly ignorance still follows her sticks to her like glue. She is by far the only truly likeable character in the series, this may be because she is the only character with a backbone. Where everyone else runs back to the comfort of what they know best when trouble strikes, Shoshanna faces it head on, even if the outcome is not in her favour.  She is her own woman, much more grown up than any three of her friends, without the burden of wallowing in self-pity. She does not seem to be afraid of the future, but relishes the opportunity.

There is one great scene in the second episode where she and Hannah discuss Jessa. This season sums up both characters perfectly and does it with more skill than was displayed with character development over the last two seasons. Hannah moans and complains about how hard life is (the one with a book deal, and a steady job that can pay for a decent apartment in New York, yeah you’re really down on your luck), this moaning and groaning sums up Hannah’s pessimism perfectly. Meanwhile Shoshanna is upbeat and ready for the challenge of the real world. Where Hannah looks to the past, Shoshanna is all about growth and stepping into the future. I would venture to guess that this is also why Shoshanna is the only likeable character. In a show about whiner and mopes, Shoshanna glows with hope and optimism, committed to overcoming her obstacles rather than complain about them with a bucket of ice cream.

Phewph! That took longer than expected, or probably needed. Don’t worry though, soon as I can afford an editor I’ll fix it up.

Character gripes aside, the first two episodes of the season were pleasant. The dialog has improved greatly from last season. While the show has always been well written, it’s been a tad too spot on for me. It has always sounded like a regular mundane conversation that you could have with your friends. I know that this is supposed to be the appeal of the show but, the lack of pizzaz in the dialogue always leaves me unfulfilled as a viewer. We watch shows like this to escape, not get sucked back into the monotony of the everyday. Thankfully the first two episodes show a pulse when it comes to the dialogue. It’s clever and witty without losing the weight of the subject, for the most part. Amy Schumer’s brief appearance is a perfect example of this. The vitriolic lashing that she gives Adam is great fun to watch while also being something that you might one day encounter for real.  Dunham seems to have finally taken Apatow’s tips on how to merge real world drama with fantasy land wittiness to heart.

Unlike the last two seasons which have now become mostly a mishmash of events in no particular order (except the scene’s which brought forth nothing but my animosity towards the show, how they handled Donald Glover’s character arc being a prime example), this show already has two really good  scenes, both of which are from the second episode. The opening starts of pretty standard, but is tells you everything you need to know just as Adam slams the radio several times to break it. It foreshadows that the episode is all about expectations vs. reality.  Hannah expects something cool and hip but instead ends up with a doldrums affair. Here Lena Dunham shows that she is getting a hang of melding a realistic take on a show about the daily life of twenty-somethings and the realities of this being a TV show. It shows boredom without actually making the viewer bored. The second scene is the one detailed above about Shoshanna and Hannah sitting in the motel hallway. Its glimmers like this make the show worth watching.

The only real problem I had with these first two episodes, is the stench of the last two seasons lingering around. Marnie’s whiny nature lags in the first episode but Girls handles it better in the second episode by having the culture clash of generations played up. Sex and the City versus Girls is handled well without it being a stabbed at the former. One thought though, what the fuck is gimchi and safora?

Finally as previously mentioned, the idea of Jessa having to face the consequences of her actions is a great idea, but it is not handled well. The scenes have no weight and the good jokes drown in the mediocrity. The idea of her older British companion being a mirror into the future for Jessa is great but at the last minute it is all dashed by an instant one eighty in characteristics. I expect that this is more of a stumble than a fall for the season. Jessa will probably take all season to truly grow up. Hope she doesn't just up and disappear again, it grows tiresome.

Overall, the show still has a long way to go before it can live up to its potential. The acting is and always has been good to great, but the stories have always dragged down the performances. Season three seems to be on track to rectify this though.  The characters are all positioned in such a way that growth seems to be in their future, even if the handling of this growth will be rocky at times.  A promising start to the season, sadly so were the last two premiers. Let’s hope this time they deliver.