GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

http://www.quickmeme.com/img/fa/fa87a4aa3343c8063a073e8f11be03b29c8f12e7e1973f5b4f6808bf4e0760fd.jpg

shoshanna feels like one of those occasional tertiary side characters who is funny precisely because they are a (one-note) "type" who has been inflated into one of the main characters. it's like if the soup nazi moved in with jerry or something and just kept on doing the same schtick. not that it really bothers me though.

i think this is a pretty good show, probably in the top 25% of recentish TV dramas. it's not one of the best things on TV, it's not one of the worst, it's not revolutionary, it's just... pretty good. like all shows it has subplots and whole episodes that fall flat, and others that are very good. which i'm fine with.

kramer was sort of one-note

Yeah, some of Shoshana's lines this season have felt more like, "Wouldn't it be funny for Shoshana to say this?" than genuine-sounding dialogue. But I guess she's always kind of flirted with caricature.

i laughed when the guy at the bar described shoshanna yelling "hey hottie you know where to find some dank weed"

I think this season is a lot less organic so far... like, Caroline is Poochie

Just throw a grenade into the foxhole and see what happens

I'm not gonna stress though, still gonna watch

Like these tricks feel like what people do in creative writing classes do when they're on deadline at the end of the semester and are at a loss

I don't think the pressure of meeting the deadlines of a season has been conducive to the writers

They should take a year off like Louie

kramer was sort of one-note

― tɹi.ʃɪp (Treeship), Thursday, January 23, 2014 10:08 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you know, I thought of that. i'm actually not a seinfeld fan, but I didn't want to anger those who are/were.

"Did Marnie finally throw in the towel?"

great episode imo

When you watch these on-demand, there are these little after-interviews with Dunham and they're awful. It's just like Dunham explaining what happened in the show and why in the most captain-obviousy way whatsoever.

Yeah those are the worst.

As for ep 3 -- the introduction of Adam's sister was sort of oddly handled I thought, like she was actually a seriously disturbed and disturbing character being handled in what seemed like a comic and lighthearted way and I wasn't sure what to make of it.

ok dying at the gawker bit.

just finished seasons 1 and 2 on dvd. had to watch season 1 twice because i really didn't know what to think about it. specifically whether we were meant to like these people.

and according to the commentaries, the special effect in 2.09 is glycerin and conditioner. lena's dad complained about the amount, saying it was too much. odd conversation to have with your dad...

feel like Laird is now my favorite/most sympathetic character

show seems to be going out of its way to make it really clear how horrible a person Jessa is

There was a subtle little touch I liked in the rehab ep, in the scene where Adam and Shoshana go off on a hike in the woods and Lena refuses and lies down and can be heard listening to This American Life (on her phone, I guess). There was sort of an insight there into both the security blanket-like effects of NPR programming and into Hannah's character there, I thought.

Funny about Laird, cuz same actor plays the comically-evil Councilman Jamm on Parks and Rec. Love that guy.

http://www.manrepeller.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/130123-ep13-laird-600.jpg http://24.media.tumblr.com/b8eb988d30369e87f6ac447a5b9a101e/tumblr_mr6iaxQKoD1r5pl3ao1_500.gif

yeah jon glaser is awesome

hardest lols in the history of this show at "fat-free muffin of sociopathic detachment"

1 - Seems like a lot of the characterizations on here have reached self parody
2 - some pretty good dialogue this week
3 - lol gawker
4 - marnie is totally the kind of asshole who jogs full tilt down the sidewalks of chinatown with headphones on

marnie is getting so marnie in these new episodes she's gonna go meta soon

also Adam's sister's clothing ensemble when they went to the cemetery was so great

Digging the hell out of this season so far. Leaning equally on the humor and loathsomeness is a good lookfor them.

hannah is now at larry david levels of cartoonish self absorption.

she always was.

Yeah but now it's extra super duper obvious

Like I have had tons of convos w/ ppl who legitimately do not pick up on the fact that Hannah is meant to be a pretty unlikable character and I feel like this is the first episode that gets really explicit about that and also the first that uses it as a plot point.

otm

yeah this ep was maybe a shark-jumping moment w/r/t the characters seeming like actual plausible people instead of (or in addition to) broad (lol) caricatures. I dig it tho. I also continue to envy the (old?) people who are all head-scratching "Do real people actually do that???" yes my generation is legit filled with narcissists and addicts and compulsive liars, let me show you them

How the hell did Laird get a turtle into a POM bottle

Only plausible explanation is that he put a baby turtle inside the POM bottle and the POM bottle was the turtle's home for 3 years because that's how long it takes for turtles to grow that big

I thought this episode was pretty good

Despite the hammy device of killing off a minor character

I feel that we've all had a distant relative or acquaintance die

And we don't feel the feels that we've been taught to feel

It's a good topic for exploration I think

Totally saw the Caroline "I made it up" reveal coming

Was hoping that Adam would have gone "Hey wait /I/ had a cousin named Margaret" at the end for the double twist

Unfortunately it seems so obvious that Hannah would only be able to feel the feels about death if that death were fictional

And the ebook jokes really fell flat

Also Marnie's Youtube page felt unrealistic because it had like 800+ votes and only 1600+ views

That's an insane vote to view ratio

I dare anybody to show me a Youtube with a ratio that even comes close

haha I love yr attention to detail. did you catch the knob falling off the oven during Marnie's crazy smoothie-making scene?

*minor SPOILZ* I believed Caroline's story for about 0.5 words, I think the second sentence was something like "he used to sit in the living room for hours beside her hospital bed"—I didn't even consider the Hannah-can-only-feel-bad-about-a-fictional-death angle tho, that's interesting.

Man I didn't catch that

But that scene made me think Marnie was turning into a #lifehacker

Like in the last episode of High Maintenance http://vimeo.com/channels/highmaintenance/79948720 High Maintenance - Very good web-series. Discuss.

I don't know if I'd ever use coconut water as a smoothie base

That's crazy

I used a sample of coconut water to cook some rice for Indian food, because drinking it is not an option.

Guilty LOLs at Hannah's reaction to loss of editor. Every writer facing an 'orphan' situation (when the commissioning editor for one's book leaves/dies) just sits there thinking but not saying 'how does this affect my project?' and I refuse to pretend otherwise.

yeah marnie's smoothie made me gag

"he used to sit in the living room for hours beside her hospital bed" is not nec. a red flag -- "hospital bed" doesn't mean "bed in a hospital", it means "bed with all the accoutrements of a hospital bed." it's fair enough that a terminally ill and largely bedbound kid would have a "hospital bed" in whatever room they were in. that said caroline's story was still pretty transparent, i think!

i didn't pay attention to marnie's smoothie-making, what did i miss

1/4 of a banana in some coconut water is apparently a smoothie.

Coconut water is a fine base for a smoothie.

flag post city. population: treeship

haha I love yr attention to detail. did you catch the knob falling off the oven during Marnie's crazy smoothie-making scene?

this was really funny somehow. this whole ten-second scene, with the self-help monologue in the background and marnie's determined face.

How the hell did Laird get a turtle into a POM bottle

― 龜, Tuesday, January 28, 2014 2:48 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Only plausible explanation is that he put a baby turtle inside the POM bottle and the POM bottle was the turtle's home for 3 years because that's how long it takes for turtles to grow that big

― 龜, Tuesday, January 28, 2014 2:49 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i thought about this for five straight minutes too

this only just occured to me now and it's blowing my mind

The turtle thing was pretty strange. Also what the fuck is going on with Jessa the past two episodes. Was her friend really named "Season"? And what was the point of that whole subplot?

pom bottle being the turtles world was my immediate thought and i really appreciate them never bringing it up

yeah this ep was solid except for the jessa subplot

xxpost re jessa I'm not really sure, seems like part of an ongoing point about jessa + people/relationships

jessa's friend faked her own death to stop being friends with her, so it seems like the point is that jessa's relationships even on a friendship level are v v dysfunctional and that she pretty much does what she wants without really any regard for other people and she is basically oblivious to their needs etc

but then that girl was maybe kind of fucked up already if she's going to fake her own death instead of manning up to jessa

idk I kinda liked the subplot, it made me lol because jessa is so weird I like her

her convo with shosh was hilarious too btw