GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

No Elijah.

Yeah is elijah just hanging out in iowa now?

That would be . . . weird.

Aaaaand the show needed Elijah back in NYC again. Seems like there's no plan at all this season. I still enjoy watching, but I don't understand why anymore. Oh I did love Ray's comment last week about Marnie dating a "Mumford or Son" though

needed him back if just to land the 'mayim bialyk stand-in role on blossom' line

making Hannah a teacher is p lazy but im down

I may start ff'ding when ray is on the screen tbh

wow the first 2 episodes of season 3 are NOT GOOD.

(except Marnie is musically humiliated in both)

diminishing returns in effect here imo. agree that things feel totally aimless

haven't been able to bring myself to watch an ep of S3 yet, although I am kind of itching to see the Iowa scenes

I like Ray.

itching to see the Iowa scenes

these are in S4

There's no Iowa in S3, only the setup to Iowa. S3 had noticeably bad or at least disappointingly conventional tv stuff throughout. "Crazy" characters of the sort you mainly meet on tv.

The birthday party episode (#3, Dr. Morbius, so hang in there, it gets better after that) was what I'd call the worst one yet produced. Ultimately though, good plot direction cooking up over the season, and some surprisingly good long-build-ups to very funny, satisfying jokes, mean I will still call myself a fan. Arrested Development was only REALLY good for 2 seasons, after all.

xp sorry I meant S4, I watched all of S3

And yeah the growing disappointment through S3 was what kind of put me off starting S4. Plus now I got rid of HBO to save money, so maybe I'll wind up watching when it comes on Amazon, presumably after the season is over.

S4 seems to be where this show has properly hit the skids. loved the last season but yeah kinda aimless right about now.

When I think about it in practical terms I shoudl really have got off the bus after S2. Watching S4 'in case it got better' has been an exercise in frustration at how much I don't care about anybody. Old Man Ray is the only recurring character I give a shit about, following what happened to Adam this series.

oh yeah i've seen 3 of s3, b'day party ep yuck

I actually kind of enjoyed this week's episode, which is the first time that's happened in a long time! (I even laughed out loud when Marnie and Desi were arguing about She & Him). I thought the Mimi-Rose / Adam dynamic was well done and it was refreshing to see a likeable female character who has their shit together.

I can't really begrudge the show for being something that maybe just wasn't meant to have this many seasons. You can only do the stuck early 20-somethings thing for a few years, then stuff kind of has to happen. Even the characters who stay "stuck" have to have their FRIENDS moving on and leaving them behind, making their own stuckness start to feel sad (I think Baumbach has handled this subject well). In Girls, characters' lives are moving but in a way that feels unrealistic and forced, with suddenly several characters from the same group of friends going from nothing happening to a lot happening.

Yeah, I mean being in your 20s in a big city, youre jettisoning friends and gaining new ones all the time, so there feels something forced in having the girls hanging out and still trundling along doing nothing. Last episode was really really bad imo.

it is weird how their social world feels so small - there's never other extraneous random friends around

i feel like this is compelling television and also in real life people often end up hanging out with the same three or four people all the time

shoshanah was hilarious. desi was an asshole/should serve as a warning to ilmers

also adam's a dickhead i hope he gets run over by a truck

Desi and Marnie are both horrible awful people who deserve to be trapped in an apartment arguing about whether or not they are like She & Him imo

marnie isn't so bad. she is just superficial in all ways.

i don't really want to watch hannah try to become a teacher though. seems like it's going to be ridiculous/brutal

marnie isn't so bad. she is just superficial in all ways.

― Treeship, Tuesday, February 24, 2015 4:39 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

How is that not bad?

i mean, there's bad and there's bad. hannah and especially jessa are narcissistic to the point of delusion and this has had disastrous consequences for other people in their lives. marnie is comparatively harmless. she is narcissistic in a way that strikes me as adolescent-like.

we all know marnies, i'm sure. they're just like, people who see their lives as a really shallow movie that they are obsessed with interpreting and reinterpreting

Ok, fair enough. I guess she isn't as vengeful or spiteful as Hannah/Jessa are. Still pretty narcissistic tho.

i love Shosh.
butdussy.

"harvard grad makes good, what an inspiring story!"

Lollll

Elijah also had good lines
"I had just put a bid in on 16 acres"

I love how Elijah constantly spouts all this really weird shit that is amusing in its zaniness and then completely falls apart when you imagine Elijah as a character actually following through w/ these things off camera

Like I don't mean that as a critique, I just enjoy it. It's like there's a secret ~productive~ Elijah running around

Doesn't it seem odd how few characters there are on the show (any?) who aren't completely narcissistic and self-obsessed?

I can't think of one

Laird maybe

those are the defining traits for mid-20 yr olds so, no

it's funny, i didn't get on board with the show until i took it as a sloppy collection of moments that are tonally inconsistent and regularly undercut established character work that still manages to be amusing and occasionally cutting for 30 minutes, like they made a soap opera out of the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie. so it couldn't really go haywire or down the wrong road unless i stopped enjoying the actors.

ike they made a soap opera out of the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie.

holy. shit.

this is such a brilliant summary.

i also watch the show to learn new annoyed sounds from adam that i can make during my commute

stop fucking murdering buñuel you charlatans

Lena Duñuel

Watched a few episodes of S4 last night, I think the first scene I've actually enjoyed of this show was Dunham's takedown of her fellow MFAs.

croup otm

SO otm

rattlesnake cowgirl
heart for sale
whoa wow wonderful
song for marcus garvey
oaxaca blues
kokopeli shelly

that's top six right there

loooool

desi is the worst. so perfectly, punchably realized

Haha I know. As awful and overblown as these characters seem sometimes, I have met all of them (except Shosh! Who is the best anyway) to a tee in real life, and I still have a hard time believing they exist like that.