GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

I think Hannah *is* from the midwest, isn't she?

I cared about whether Adam gave in and decided to be Hannah's actual bf in series one, despite his sociopathic tendencies and her frustrating selfishness. I also cared about him walking out on his play and (in the same episode) apologising for lashing out at the driver who nearly ran him over (even though the actual act of apology was ridic). Maybe I just care a lot about Adam because I lust after him but I also found his character development unexpected and convincing. I haven't cared about anything on season two besides the garbage bag episode which was interesting.

has s3 started?

starts Sunday

thanks.

feel like the attempts to add depth to the character have in almost every case been a shortcut or a failure: the OCD, Adam's alcoholism. Ray's panic at not having a better job at his age is sorta specific and, yeah, *real* i guess. it would have been far more interesting to avoid going down the list of everyone's Past Trauma that the show has started to indulge (there's that word again) in. but i chalk this up youthful writer missteps and i hope it's overcome.

xp yeah actually I did initially find Adam to be "likable," and I liked the way he was sort of the "Id" of the show serving to contrast with the bewildered, mild anhedonia of the other characters. Somehow he lost me along the way too.

it is that or else it is the Introduce Character Siblings stage
xp

Also I will probably watch this on HBO Go because it's badness is kind of compelling (not unlike Entourage) and I like to watch those shows and question how they get all the resources thrown into making them. That may abate this time, as Charlie was the worst character and storyline and will be missed for that.

hope s3 opens with Charlie's funeral

and then Marnie sings a terrible song

and is pregnant with beautiful brown baby

Pl

/thanks to 'citizens united,' the GOP might get destroyed . . . by rich trustfund objectivists? the irony

http://www.vocativ.com/10-2013/gop-scared-conservative-kids/?test/

i like how that one guy is all "i don't believe in a luck" while he and his coterie of 'tantric' Galts are piggybacking off the a dude who inherited millions of dollars.
--|citation needed| (will)

Likability is a thing with TV characters. We choose to spend 30-60 minutes with them a week (or in this era, perhaps three hour blocks for weeks on end) - there's a level of grating that can be hard to look past.

Tony Soprano and Stringer Bell were vicious sociopaths - but they were also charming and had enough depth that the show made you forget that you were watching someone you wouldn't want to be alone with IRL. No one on Girls (except Shoshanna) has shown much in the way of redemptive qualities as either a (fictional) human being or as a character.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Thursday, January 9, 2014 5:36 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh god this is just so awful you can not watch itch up
seriously they made friends for you
--mustread guy (schlump)

Xp Baby, Booth, Jonathan

lol Shakey

i feel like i could go to any post in this thread, chosen totally at random, and read the same 2-3 arguments, over and over and over again

not really complaining, well kinda

that's racist

fwiw schlump I really enjoyed some of your posts just now even though I don't completely agree with them in relation to girls

e.g this:

i remember reading miranda july talk about her movies & say like ... should i make them .. about .. prisoners? so it's more real?, because there's this sorta ... protesting-too-much intolerance for introspection from viewers whose demographic is being portrayed too closely for comfort. like i am white & occupy coffee-drinking internship-pursuing metropolitan-city situations that it would be gross to pretend are significantly different from girls, & i feel like some rejection of the show can be from an impulse of disliking seeing my demographic portrayed with a self-important focus, like the introspection is gauche. i think the big leap she took in really interrogating her scene from within, & writing scenes like the hiv one i mentioned, or foregrounding dissatisfing sex to i think such kinda societally-reassuring-ends, is such an achievement, & the rejection of it as marginal on account of the obvious privilege of its protagonists is frustrating.

hurting i put one of your quotes between aghast tildes & felt bad because yeah, same, i am obviously satisfied to damn you all to hell itt but there is no personal animosity & i am totally into reading your just casual breakdowns of meals eaten in queens elsewhere

also for sure this thread is ad infinitum times infinity but that is why we just need to agree that likeability is off limits & carry on maybe just talking about its other failures

oh no offense taken, I didn't even know what an "aghast tilde" was let alone that I had been put between them

fine, I think your "friends" comment made me realize that "likeability" is kind of an awful word that doesn't even convey what I'm trying to get across anyway

I do think ability to make you care, or at leat want to know, what happens to its characters is a pretty important quality in an ongoing show with ongoing plot threads though. I mean I don't want to make any blanket, prescriptive statements about what every x show has to have, but it's just sort of logical that if part of the goal of a show is to get you to want to keep watching, it should do that. It's not the only strategy, I mean obviously there's shit like Seinfeld, which I don't really like either, but which obviously got a lot of people to keep watching while not giving you any particular reason to care what happens to the characters.

You're describing a soap opera

not really

I'm describing like 90% of fictional writing

the whole "nobody was likable on Seinfeld" thing is grossly overstated, half of the show was people sitting in a diner saying funny, clever things and making you feel like you were there hanging out with them or wanted to be

yep

plus you could like them in their dislike of each other

when it comes to likeability (and larry david def was likeable, despite being deeply irritating), i dont think they have to be per se, but its hard to be sympathetic to these privileged characters who cant seem to stop moaning about how bad they have it - yes being in your mid 20s is hard, but these girls dont have it THAT bad - ive never seen them have no food in the fridge, or fail to make rent, or do jobs they REALLY hate, or be in relationships that are truly horrible. i know the show also invites us to laugh at their myopic self-absorption, which is one of its plus points, but compelling though the show is (and callow and smug as someone said upthread is right), im a bit sick now of the general fascination not just with unlikeable characters (many of my favourite characters are seemingly unlikeable) but people who act like arseholes (don draper is another one, admittedly one i cant stop watching).

also, re: sex in this show, seems a bit tragic that they never seem to feel anything when fucking. im sure this is the point (and also its funny) but seems a bit weird (unless the point is to show that mid 20s women havent figured out how to enjoy fucking yet/women dont really enjoy sex/whatever).

Banned. You're banned

also, while watching this show, i keep thinking lena dunham must have wanted to be in jackass (surely the only body part of hers we havent yet seen is her vagina - fingers crossed for season 3!)

You're banned

Excited about Gaby Hoffman as Adam's sister.

esp if he greets her like he did when they spoke on the phone

adam actually has probably the best lines of anyone - "would you have fucked me when I was four?" (obv writing it down here, that looks awful)

you can't criticise girls for being full of unlikeable characters who are riding high on self importance & behaving unlikeably & unable to correctly order or process or inhabit their problems or do so with appropriate pathos when this is what the show is about

What if I don't like what the show is about? In fact I think that's my least favorite thing about it.

srsly

unless the point is to show that mid 20s women havent figured out how to enjoy fucking yet/women dont really enjoy sex/whatever

seems to me the main problem is their boyfriends don't know how to have sex

Nice humblebrag there Shakes

ssex with Adam and Booth Jonathon looks downright traumatizing

hey look, we're dads here, we obviously know how to have sex (high-fives shakey)

No wonder you two only identified with the Garbage Bag episode

yr right fucking Hannah in a graveyard or whatever that was looked pretty traumatizing too

No wonder you two only identified with the Garbage Bag episode

oh wait you meant some other episode and some other poster.

ftr as noted upthread the episode I was most moved by was the one with Jessa and her parents. Garbage Bag episode was some silly nonsense.

Shut up Sex Knower

The garbage bag episode was alright but didn't really live up to the hype for me.

I liked the "entire cycle of a relationship in 24 hours" concept.

you can't criticise girls for being full of unlikeable characters who are riding high on self importance & behaving unlikeably & unable to correctly order or process or inhabit their problems or do so with appropriate pathos when this is what the show is about

What if I don't like what the show is about? In fact I think that's my least favorite thing about it.

― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Thursday, January 9, 2014 11:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

like ... that's okay then. you can be one of the people who does not watch it because they do not like it. it's so easy. what i am saying is that to dislike girls because of the parts of it that depict difficult, inconsistent, unexemplary humans is to dislike seinfeld because of the parts of it in which people poke fun at the foibles of everyday things. it isn't to be like 'oh seinfeld huh i never liked the slap bass' or how loudly george's father speaks; it's to dislike a show that just clearly isn't for you because of the things that make it for some people. girls is a comedy about anxiety, this group navigating those various kinda topical, cosmopolitan pressures, kinda freshly conditioning a portrait of certain 'types'' weird portfolios of characteristics, fluctuations in behaviour, things that people might or might not feel worthy of contemplation. i'm not saying don't watch this if any part of it doesn't appeal to you; just that to hate on it for the parts that depict people you find whatever is to kinda complain about the thing you signed up for. there's wishing it was a different show - just the comic parts, just the whatever else - but it isn't that, & it is (/was! first season!) the thing it is.