Girls put Marnie and Jessa on the sidelines (somewhat) for a Hannah-heavy episode on HPV, old boyfriends, and dealing with depressing revelations. There are some good moments throughout, but it sets up a number of stock story arcs I’m not particularly excited with. The easiest way to do this (and since I’m short on time today) is by looking at each of the four main characters individually.
We’ll start with Hannah, the focus of ‘All Adventurous Girls Do.’ In a nutshell, she finds out she has HPV and her ex boyfriend is gay in the same day, and the episode focuses on her reactions to these situations. Of course, she doesn’t handle the gay story well, especially when the gay ex declares her own father as a homosexual. I enjoyed the way a lot of her scenes were shot in this episode – close to the face, giving us lots of long reactionary shots and straight on conversational angles, and the way she finally accepts her situation and decides to dance it away, rather then spend her time deleting depressing tweets from her twitter account (which by the way, showed her following 900+ people and only having 26 followers… again, “a voice of A generation”). But long-term, her story seems to be about her inability to write and/or find headway in any life situation, and the longer she flounders on-screen devoid of purpose or intent (besides self-preservation), it’s kind of hard to connect with her in a lot of ways.
Jessa’s personality still hasn’t been nailed down by the show very well, except that she’s a completely free spirit and wears dumb shit. Her story could prove to be troublesome: there’s obviously some sexual tension brewing between her and the father of the household she babysits in, and their common interests in pot-smoking and pontification will probably lead to some bumping and grinding later in the season. Soon as he appeared on screen, it felt like we were being hand-fed this storyline – and without some better understanding of Jessa, her story feels a bit lifeless.
Then, there’s Marnie. I really like her character, but this episode sent her off on a very predictable plot arc, which is only going to lead with her being single. She’s going to bang the artist, the catalyst for her break-up with her annoying boyfriend. It’s a chain of events we all see coming a mile away, and Marnie can only masturbate in the bathroom for so long before the writers have to give in to her wanting the short douchebag painter, so she can have an escape route from her caring, loving ‘wimpy’ boyfriend.
Oh yeah, and Shoshanna, who is obviously going to lose her virginity sometime this season or next (Girls was renewed for a second season today). Her character is by far my least favorite, and is supposed to be a nuanced parody of the reality-show sheltered girl who says ‘like’ all the time and watches TV under a fuzzy blanket. But it’s not – to this point, she’s just a timid, silly character who can play the innocent virgin angle and be the vehicle for jokes about awkward sex (and how a girl builds up sex too much, which I’ll admit is a nice little touch). But her character needs some serious help.
This is not to say that I hated ‘All Adventurous Girls Do’, but I certainly thought it was the weakest episode of the first three – even with the very poignant closing scene of the episode. It just feels like Girls is already switching tone: the pilot felt like an ensemble comedy about girls trying to maneuver jobs and relationships in the modern world, and this week’s episode felt more like an indie interpretation of Sex and the City, keeping all the sex, and removing all the fashion and the glamour.
Grade: C+
Other thoughts/observations:
– this week, we learn black girls spend a ridiculous amount of money on weaves, and that sexing up Asian women is frowned upon in art circles. Lena Dunham may not be racist, but she’s not earning any new fans with these nuanced, diverse views.
– seriously, Shoshanna is so annoying. “like” “like” “like”… we get it. I hate young female characters that define themselves by their sexual experiences, too. The combination is cringe-inducing.
– however awful the situational writing can be, the dialogue is still terrific. “Rent is due next week”… “I have pre-cancer!” or my favorite: “My best dyke friend is a dick doctor.”
what did you think of “All Adventurous Girls Do”? Leave your thoughts/comments below!
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I have been following this show, and it is nice to see the reviews evening out a bit. I’m glad that HBO is fostering women as showrunners (and actually quite a few networks are). However, I feel as though this is another of their formula of four 20/30-somethings living in the city, struggling to understand life. Obviously it has been successful with Sex and the City, and Entourage, but How to Make it in America and now this both feel contrived. They haven’t even learned to bridge the gender gap yet. The ad posters show the four girls together, and they all have exactly the same color hair. This just serves to illuminate the fact that this show lacks diversity/dynamism so far; particularly in the fact that none of the women WANT anything, or at least they don’t go after what they want. One thing that I have heard is that this show offers a female perspective- sure, but so did Roseanne, so does Damages, and The Killing, 30 Rock, Shameless, the Big C, Nurse Jackie, and many others but those shows are judged on their merits as shows, not as female shows. As they should be.
If I were to offer the Showrunner, Lena Dunham, any advice, I would say, even if this is supposed to be a light coming of age dramedy, high brow a-la Woody Allen as a TV show for our generation, remember that even Alvy Singer wanted something. That search is what drove the narrative forward. Entourage was interesting because we saw Vince’s desires, and what was at stake for him if he didn’t. The protagonist is cut off from her parents at the beginning of the show, but we never once get the sense that she is actually going to lose anything as a result of it, nor does it kick her into gear, it just is, and in life things can just be, but not in drama…