GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

ray just looked and felt stupid in this episode.

As the bridge between his old life chasing young ladies and his new life as the mgr of Ray's (or Grumpy's or whatever they're calling it), I felt this was pretty comparable to the storyline of Jessa and the dad where she was an au pair.

Normal Adam is uninteresting, as well. I want to see more of late season 2 Adam.

I want to to see a comedy spin-off where Adam's sister gets discovered and has a team of handlers to get her through the day while she dances like a sub-par Elaine, rolls her eyes like a madwoman and hangs out bottom-less in bathrooms frustrated at not being able to break plastic sippy cups. Hi-jinks!

I do have to say that that bit where she tried to harangue Ray into dancing with her and then biting him... man that just hit too close to home to not be funny. I have totally had similar things happen to me at shows

^^^

I'll be slightly offended if they just introduced this character who handles her mental health issues somewhat worse than Adam (though they both are obviously quirky at best) and then conveniently discard her.

she was pretty much the only worthwhile thing in the ep

The passive-aggressive part where Marnie ropes Hanah into singing their nostalgic duet (after Hannah has explicitly told her she'd rather leave that in the past), followed by Marnie trying to convince the back room crowd not to ditch for the fight (despite Hannah's obv discomfort) left me wishing I found her less insufferable. In the insufferable battle (subtext: annoying twenty-something girls), I feel like I would have a wary crush on Jessa, would like Hannah in the right circumstances and not for too long at a time, would simply die of boredom with Marnie and avoid her and would find Shoshanna perplexing. Her speech pattern alone would both apall and fascinate me. I'm sure I would never bother to see the good side of Ray unless I lived right next to the cafe and Adam would fascinate me but from afar. I'm not sure I would ever trust him.

she was pretty much the only worthwhile thing in the ep

Awesome for the lols, truly, but I'm really ambivalent about characters like this unless they're written with understanding and sympathy. She kissed Hannah's dad on the lips, rolled her eyes like a banshee, wept manipulatively, bit Ray and then broke into her brother's place entirely w/o his consent and terrified Hannah in the bathroom (I have to admit I entirely saw this coming and she still startled the fcuk out of me) and cut her hand, oh so dramatically, on a glass she broke in her own fist. Guilty lols unless they do something w/her and her brother...

adam's sister was a bit much.

on the other hand i really like bringing out the undercurrent of just meanness in shosh. was also great with ray just saying "fuck it i don't want to be your friend".

the sister is written pretty much w/o any sympathy or understanding. but there is this underlying narrative of the life lesson that sometimes you think you want to be nice to people and helpful and then just... you sort of get that you should avoid them.

i envy anyone for whom the sister was not immediately familiar

agreed on shoshanna she's like a vanessa bayer SNL character

I think part of my problem is that I don't even think Zosia Mamet is that good. But the character is very one-note, and even when they write in "character development" for her, it feels very forced.

I thought Ray's conversation w/Shosh had as much to do with her moving on (and being preditably callow) and his being a little more sentimental and then realizing, 'wtf, I don't want to be friends with you, you'd be a terrible friend.' Not so much a taking sides thing as a different ages/personalities thing.

The apt scenes with Caroline was definitely written to contrast Adam's rational mistrust with Hannah's generous naivete. Classic urban story...

flopson, according to her imdb, everything I'd ever have seen her in is pretty old. Interesting that she lived ten years at the Chelsea Hotel as a child, though.

shosh meant more to ray than he meant to her. i don't know if it has to do with age or callousness. it's just a painful thing that basically everyone experiences at some point.

I want to to see a comedy spin-off where Adam's sister gets discovered and has a team of handlers to get her through the day while she dances like a sub-par Elaine, rolls her eyes like a madwoman and hangs out bottom-less in bathrooms frustrated at not being able to break plastic sippy cups. Hi-jinks!

― Le passé, non seulement n'est pas fugace, il reste sur place (Michael White), Tuesday, January 21, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i envy anyone for whom the sister was not immediately familiar

― flopson, Tuesday, January 21, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

she was familiar to me sort of but presented in a shallow, almost dehumanizing way, much like the people in group therapy in the first episode. i'm not sure if this is an issue with the show though, more like a brutally honest presentation of how desperate people come across when you encounter them in the real world.

And you're 25 and looking forward to enjoying your birthday

flopson, according to her imdb, everything I'd ever have seen her in is pretty old. Interesting that she lived ten years at the Chelsea Hotel as a child, though.

― Le passé, non seulement n'est pas fugace, il reste sur place (Michael White), Tuesday, January 21, 2014 5:41 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh sorry i meant the character, not the actress. should have made that clearer. actress is cool.

I've never met someone like Adam's sister. I guess I need to go and do that now. I feel so sheltered.
― c21m50nh3x460n, Tuesday, January 21, 2014 5:50 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ah, to have shitty manipulative friends dependent on you habitually ruin your life

flopson, if you were my friend, I would never manipulate you.

I'm usually very direct with people, though, a la Adam with her sister.

Am I the only one who thought her hairy privates were a bit of comic relief?

Comic relief but only after she scared the shit out of me...

Was the Marnie youtube/autotune thing a reference to Rebecca Black

Marnie is so irritating, I look forward to more horrible things happening to her

she's not that bad as far as characters in this show go. her reaction to the charlie breakup is overblown and she seems incredibly self-centered much of the time but then again, i can relate.

she has no redeeming qualities

you don't find perfect teeth redeeming?

The cool trick that the writers played was that the presence of Caroline made Adam feel like the sane, rational, sympathetic character

Am I the only one who thought her hairy privates were a bit of comic relief?

― c21m50nh3x460n, Wednesday, January 22, 2014 10:41 AM (59 minutes ago)

lol she's post-pubescent!

the problem is there really was nothing even sorta redeeming about the sis. like the crazy was at 11 and that's it. no real indication of how anyone could get sucked in by her. just sorta grotesque.

note i didn't think the portrayal of people in group was like that at all

it wasn't as extreme but it was still a thing where these people were presented as both clearly suffering and pathetic, to the extent where you could sort of get why jessa was repelled by them, and the idea that she was supposed to identify with them and their issues.

Actress was on louie some time back, killed it.

she's not that bad as far as characters in this show go. her reaction to the charlie breakup is overblown and she seems incredibly self-centered much of the time but then again, i can relate.

― tɹi.ʃɪp (Treeship), Wednesday, 22 January 2014 00:48 (1 hour ago) Permalink

I think she's kind of a sad character actually. I guess she's supposed to be narcissistic? She doesn't actually ever seem to care for Charlie at all, she only cares whether she can win/retain his love. I think that fits nicely with her interest in Booth Jonathan, which, as the show pretty much spells out, is more about the "idea" of being with him than about him. Of course, the fact that she says that so brazenly and openly, to his face, only emphasizes how narcissistic she is, that it doesn't even seem to occur to her that there's anything wrong with that. In that way, she's very well written and believable.

Whereas Shoshana I just kind of find flat and not very interesting - maybe that's more the acting, idk.

Adam feel like the sane, rational, sympathetic character

Feel like Adam is the sanest, most sympathetic character on this show

That's bananas. I was totally on the side of Natalia and Amy Schumer in that coffee shop scene. The guy is a total asshole *at best*

They were awful in that scene, there's no reason to publicly trash someone like that

Uh, yeah. That was seriously ott.

just wanna say I love Bob Balaban as the therapist

It wasnt the way to deal with that situation but shes justified in hating adam. She was needlessly cruel to hannah though.

yeah Balaban's great. lol @ his book

xp

This show is great again

Adam basically sexually assaulted Natalia (and he didn't seem to treat Hannah too great in the sack either), made him way less sympathetic to me

yeah he's a pig for doing that but she seemed to be yelling at him b/c he dumped her and never called

i think this is the worst season by far

well this ep was the worst since s1 imo

hope it turns around but agree with max. everything so far has been redundant at best.