GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

AVC: What do you see as the arc of season one, without spoiling, obviously?

LD: I think for each of the characters it’s different. I think for all of the girls, they’re getting further away from college and feeling more of a panic about establishing their place in the world. I feel as though it’s Marnie figuring out that she can’t control the world—she needs to loosen up and will be happier in doing so. Shoshanna’s attempt to figure out how to have sex and what that even means, whether that’s going to make her a fully formed person. And Hannah starts out the season with this assumption that the world is just going to provide for her, and is then left grappling with that realization and realizes also that if she doesn’t put in the work as a friend, as a writer, as a girlfriend, she’s not going to get back the results she needs, but of course she’s not self-aware enough to totally see that. And then Jessa, it’s sort of like, what is behind a free spirit? What is behind that person who acts as though they can float through the world comfortably? So there’s those personal character arcs and then all together just the drum of, “Oh, there’s some urgency to us figuring out what we have to do next.”

just a reminder to anyone who hasn't seen it yet that Tiny Furniture is on Sundance Channel tnite @ 8

also in weird title synergy apparently they have a new series called Push Girls about women who use wheelchairs

i don't know if it's sundance or my tv but the volume on this is totally fucked :(

its prob cause of people dancing on the sun or w/e

http://images.artistdirect.com/Images/artd/amg/music/bio/583722_smashmouth2_200x200.jpg
"fuck i care about your cable"

I thought this was really good.

altho lol LCD Soundsystem and Robyn in one ep is kind of baiting

and Zosia Mamet being the insane polar opposite of her Mad Men character continues to throw me.

This show is so fucking good

yeah i am kind of loving it. i lol'ed a number of times tonight.

going to bookmark this thread now that the initial froth of concern has abated

concern froth is the second-worst kind of froth

http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/blogimages/rick_santorum_official_photo.jpg

that was some great tv

from the quiddities thread for those that don't read it:
http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/witnessing-a-change-in-williamsburg-brooklyn/

reading that kind of thing makes me needlessly frustrated, but doesn't everyone deserve their own elegy? i don't know why this particular one should tick me off.

renewed.

I'm a little surprised by how much I agree with Gawker's take. Although I think the show (like Tiny Furniture) is well-made and shows Lena Dunham to be talented both as a director and as a chronicler of a very particular milieu, I'm undecided as to whether it is a show by or about narcissistic and deeply-regressive Girls (or whether it's both). And also undecided if my finding this to be a vaguely unpleasant show filled with repellent characters is just an M.P.

whoa, if anyone's even close to truly narcissistic on the show, so far it's the guys

Oh, I don't mean to single the girls out. Almost everyone on the show is repellently narcissistic. And to the extent that they aren't, they're painted as kinda douchey for, I guess, not having their heads planted squarely up their own assholes.

self-involved is one thing, and a lot of people in their teens and twenties are just that. narcissistic is an unfunny, kind of scary mental condition.

hate that gawker style

the friendship between the girls, especially marnie and hannah, is enough of a positive connective tissue to balance out the occasional strays into ridiculous, self-involved horeshit that they might take.

i gotta say, apropos of nothing - a lot of ppl in their teens and twenties, esp in this 'milieu' are self-involved. but tons of them aren't! i don't know what the prevalence or lack thereof of self-involved narcissists in any given community has to do with anything.

that's true. actually i don't find anyone here except jessa to be really self-involved. i mean, within the confines of a tv show.

the friendship between the girls, especially marnie and hannah, is enough of a positive connective tissue to balance out the occasional strays into ridiculous, self-involved horeshit that they might take.

So many of the descriptins of Girls remind me of Cassavetes' Husbands.

The show is just too good for me to care that I should hate it.

Yeah. It's actually funny!

TBF, I'm not saying it's a bad show or that the milieu is unworthy of depiction or that characters have to be heroic/likeable/empathetic/giving. I'll probably keep watching for a little while, if only to see whether there's anything resembling growth among the characters or if it's just gonna be wallowing in painful awkwardness and bad decisions unsympathetic characters like its a scenester Gummo. Like, there is an extent to which it's hard to watch inasmuch as it reminds me of my (past) self and crowds I ran in, and to that extent, this would mark the first time that I totally get why some people can't watch comedy based on awkwardness and discomfort. But then OTOH, the extent to which this is in any way an accurate depiction of young, single heteros today is the extent to which I'm willing to voluntarily retreat from the dating pool altogether.

This show is funny and beautiful and very ambivalent toward its characters, the neverending shitstream it's been getting in critical circles is baffling to me. Lena Dunham ranks very highly among the people in my generation I am most impressed with right now. Forgive me if that's a little too close to 'voice of a generation' in earnest, but w/e, I think she's a genius.

i think ambivalent is almost it, though the word that has come to mind for me is patient

the neverending shitstream it's been getting in critical circles is baffling to me.

i think the clue is in the title.

ep 3 not as funny as ep 2, but still really charming and smart.

and hannah to me is a privileged and intellectually, if not emotionally, impressive character - i mean, her twitter feed - serious lols. to me there are as many things to dislike about her as there are to like. and that's just people imo.
xp

and that reflects a lot about what this show is saying about friendship, i.e., you can love your friends and really like a lot of who they are and what they do, but you can also not like everything about them and still be great friends

her twitter feed - serious lols.

THIS. worthy of a pause.

the neverending shitstream it's been getting in critical circles is baffling to me.

i think the clue is in the title.

OTM -- even more true of the criterion fandork response to them releasing 'tiny furniture.'

wait "Baggage" is a REAL SHOW?

omg it is! the comedy writes itself, etc

great ep; this is progressing well and is starting to investigate things that kind of matter? I'm getting invested in the characters.

Forgive me if that's a little too close to 'voice of a generation' in earnest, but w/e, I think she's a genius.

― sleepingbag, Monday, April 30, 2012 6:35 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

After 3 eps of Girls happy to call Lena Dunham the voice of my generation. Better her than say Mark Zuckerberg.

"my best dyke friend works for a dick doctor"

holy wtf

also sorry for the play-by-play thingy a day late, but
I thought the under-25s all got the vaccine or something. Do I have Jenny McCarthy to blame for this plot device?

Hannah'd have been out of high school by the time Gardasil rolled out and started getting required by many public school districts. Quite easy to believe that she'd not have gotten it if she hasn't gotten a physical in a while.

I didn't know that it was required by public schools! I just know a lot of women who got it. I mean, uh, the vaccine. HPV too, I guess.

OK I got to the scene where it's revealed "oh yeah Jessa (sp?) has like two strains"

Lena Dunham ranks very highly among the people in my generation I am most impressed with right now.

Clearly we have determined your generation has pervasive issues, then.

I kid, I kid. (I don't kid.) No, really. I kid.

Has there been a more or less definitive portrait of Gen Y yet? I've heard all the horror stories (parents calling bosses at work, over-praised/coddled/priviliged kids unable to cut it in a competitive world, etc.), so maybe it's just a matter of filmmakers (like Dunham?) getting old enough to make movies about their formative experiences, displaced the Gen X default that us fogies impose. Even the so-called mumblecore folks are really mid-30s Gen X age, no?

Also, is "Kicking and Screaming" the ur-mumblecore movie? A kind of post-college purgatory comedy?

Gen Y can't get jobs where they get to make definitive portraits of themselves yet dude.

there are a lot of Gen X movies of aimless 20-somethings but they're not quite mumblecore imo

It's a different kind of aimless 20-somethings, though, isn't it? Isn't one of the traits of Gen Y that they've been coddled their entire life (everyone's a winner, everyone gets praised, etc.). and are thus not really prepared for the real world? Gen X was more a neurotic, angsty"I came from a broken home, soul destroying suburb, I just want to be me" sort of vibe. Gen Y is almost the opposite, an over-amplified sense of self-worth encouraged by over-attentive parents with money. Not angsty, just aimless.

Nobody I know except me is remotely like this btw ^^^^ mostly I just know anxious people