GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

chick-approved question fyi so don't call me sexist

step 1 - ask "innocent" question
step 2 - told in no uncertain terms question is loaded & offensive
step 3 - "Whaaaaaaat? Me? I was just asking an innocent question jeez"
step 4 - repeat question & reaction to everyone you know ad nauseum to reassure yourself that you're the nicest, most decent guy on the planet while reinforcing the fact that you are a tin-eared self-aggrandising douchebag

fuuuuuuck off

the way that question is phrased & his endless wide-eyed "who me?" faux naivete is ughhhhhhh i want to punch him

srsly

The compairason with Game of Thrones is NAGL.

it's also funny how he conflates artistic purpose with commercial purpose by asking that question. "DUH, THE CHICKS ARE HOT SO PEOPLE WANT TO SEE IT!"

right!?

infuriating

This all reminds me of an anecdote of Paul Newman congratulating Robert Altman giving a nude scene to Cynthia Stevenson, and not Greta Scacchi, in The Player: "You don't show em the tits they wanna see, and show em the tits they don't wanna see!"

Reminds me of an anecdote I am sort of embarrassed to admit but that was a "teachable moment" for me I guess -- in the lunchroom several women were just going to town on Dunham and Girls and talking so much shit about her looks, her clothes, the "gross" stuff she does on the show, etc., and I finally volunteered something like "she looks like she never set foot in a gym, maybe she could just workout once in a while." Oh boy, wrath ensued.

i think theres a valid question to be asked about the nudity, just not worded as dumbly as it was. really, hes saying 'hey you arent very 'hot' so why are you showing us your not-so-hot body all the time? WHY?!'.

he should have asked if she was trying to prove a point, or challenge peoples perspective on what sort of nudity they prefer to see. cos its obv the nudity is OTT, no one is that naked all the time! i think its somewhere between her trying to goad the viewer's tolerance for bigger female bodies (as well as some kind of lack of self respect, or show her characters lack of self respect/awareness, MAYBE)

Right, the wording makes a LOT of difference. And I think probably all of your explanations are partly true -- there's a goal there to challenge perceptions of the female body, of nudity more generally, and there are also character-driven and comedy-driven reasons having to do with Hannah's obliviousness.

"People are naked in real life" is a po-faced answer precisely because Dunham knows as well as anyone that the kind of nonsexual "IRL" nudity she sometimes features just isn't seen much (ever?) on mainstream television. But the way the question was asked doesn't really deserve a better answer.

From the ice-age to the dole-age
There is but one concern
I have just discovered:

Some girls are nuder than others
Some girls are nuder than others
Some girl's mothers are nuder than
Other girl's mothers

As someone who hasn't set foot in a gym in 20 years and has no plans to, I appreciate LD representing me.

quote from thewrap.com article linked that we are talking abt ― flopson , Sunday, 12 January 2014 19:02 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

lol yeah so was the "Huh?"

oh so is this thing on right now huh. Guess I'll just watch it later in the week, not about to start halfway.

did you leave the house in a hurry

Caught up on all of season 2 during free hbo weekend. Almost threw up during eardrum stuff. My cat did throw up, but for other reasons.

...hmm. Not totally sure what to make of the first two eps. More after some marinating, maybe.

Struck by how much better Hannah is in the first two eps of season 3. In season 2 she had some pretty unwatchable moments, like that "you're the bad friend" conversation with Marnie at the end of the coke episode. In these new episodes she at least seems to be becoming a little more self-aware/trying to be a better person, eg. the moment where she lies to Marnie then immediately tells the truth, or the moment where she questions whether it's right for her to take Jessa out of rehab. She feels a lot more human now.

disappointed in handling of Charlie absence :(

otherwise first impression of these eps was positive, esp the stuff w Jessa

the rehab/group therapy scenes in particular were great - wanted to laugh at her snide cynical wisecracking but at the same time it was clear what a horrible, destructive person she was being. and one who is afraid to confront her own issues in a way that is no less obvious or less cliched than those of her peers. also Kim Gordon!

acting was solid throughout. writing felt pretty meh. not as excited about this show right now with the bevy of other quality tv on at the moment; still hopeful there are some standout bottle eps ahead. I really really really don't care about the characters or show continuity or "plot lines" for girls; just want a few mini-movies.

i enjoyed seeing taystee, jessa was absolutely vile, shoshanna kind of held these episodes together for me. agreed w/ forksclovetofu re: the mini-movies being the best parts of this show, so i hope to see more of that.

of all the OH LOOK cameos, the one I did not enjoy at all was Amy Schumer

is that place with chocolate cups real???

Schumer's character was in season 2 too, before her Comedy Central show debuted, so i don't think of her appearances on Girls as a 'star cameo' or w/e

She is awful

"i figured my shit out when i was five years old" is one of the best lines from the show thusfar

in general, i like that jessa is just a delusional, petulant jerk at this point with no redeeming attributes save being beautiful. her rebellious antics at the rehab center were just pathetic and destructive; not glamorous in the least, although you can kind of see why she would think of them that way, and the dissonance between this mcmurphian fantasy and the reality of her situation is something more than cringeworthy. A- for these scenes, and the minus is just because I didn't get the point of that old british guy

lol at "the only people who say that are people without money" re: college is the best years of your life!!!

I would be all in on a show about Jessa, Shoshanna and Adam.

and the minus is just because I didn't get the point of that old british guy

i'm not sure i agree with how it was handled, but surely this was a way for Jessa to get close to someone as a father figure sort only to have her completely crushed when it turns out he just wants to fuck her too

is that place with chocolate cups real???

and the minus is just because I didn't get the point of that old british guy

i'm not sure i agree with how it was handled, but surely this was a way for Jessa to get close to someone as a father figure sort only to have her completely crushed when it turns out he just wants to fuck her too

― an enormous bolus of flatulence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, January 13, 2014 10:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think it also served to deglamorize and give the lie to his glamorous rebellious mystique, at bottom he's a fucked-up pill junkie. so he's no longer a role model in that fashion either.

hard to feel for her though since the episode sets her up as the most unbelievably unsympathetic character I've seen on TV for some time.

she really did remind me, uncomfortably, of those friends whose assurances and promises just go in one ear and out the other because you know they mean absolutely nothing

Withnail!

I liked Ray's amused face when Adam's ex was yelling at him.

Some odd moments where continuity was sacrificed for throw-away gags in this. Like Shoshanna's rocking chair taking up most of the room on the back seat, I was wondering where Jessa was going to sit coming back. Lo and behold, the rocking chair was nowhere to be seen on the return journey. Unless I missed something?

ray's glee in the background of that confrontation was hilarious.

xpost You're right- either they forgot or there was a scene with them ditching the chair that got cut.

the rehab/group therapy scenes in particular were great

are you for real, I thought all that stuff was pretty bad, acting-wise and writing-wise. it sounded like they were all reading stilted lines off cue cards, Kim Gordon included.

mostly liked the episodes though

I thought the awkward young guy in the rehab group was funny. The way he was trying to tell off Jessa yet tripping all over his own sentences.
As small as Kim's part was, she could not sell it. I feel like that's why she was out of frame for most of her lines. Funny cameo though.

Lo and behold, the rocking chair was nowhere to be seen on the return journey.

lol I noticed this too. bad continuity/editing

Not really in my opinion, nothing wrong with letting the viewer fill in the gaps.

So yeah IMO you don't give us Richard e grant as a dissipated wit unless you want us to think abt withnail and a case could be made that jessa is the show's withnail. Hilarious, charismatic, gaping void inside, terrified, destructive.

Tho I guess here it is ' withnail' who leaves 'I'

i kind of imagine Dunham leaving continuity errors in on purpose like "Louie does it, I can do it! ART!"

i liked that you see shosh weirdly bouncing in the car backseat, like is their rental car going to break down or what is the deal and then in the hotel shes still bouncing in the foreground of the shot its just her weird energy

Feel this is mostly otm: Working Girls

Jessa is the most sympathetic character to me now. I've been in rehab, and I was playing the Jessa role there, I guess. Someone needs to do that, since for-profit rehabs are horrible institutions, run by fools, that only care about getting their numbers up.

Interesting. I've never been to rehab but in those scenes it looked like she was sabotaging peoples' sincere if hackneyed attempts at sincerity and - if they are buying into the idea of group therapy - recovery, and also like she had no sympathy for uncool/unglamorous/pathetic people, which is an attitude I am put off by.