GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

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

Jessa's being "the self-destructive one" starting to get a bit one-dimensional
+
an ep filled with reminders of mortality
+
I was stoned

=

I was half-expecting it to end with Jessa's sudden death? idk

didn't that actress had conflicts at some point i read about on the gawkster or am i just imagining things now

jessa's inflection on "none of this is going to work out for you by the way" was excellent petty evil

low-key but in substance a vicious hateful curse

didn't that actress had conflicts at some point i read about on the gawkster or am i just imagining things now

― my collages, let me show you them (bernard snowy), Wednesday, January 29, 2014 5:32 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Maybe you're thinking about Charlie?

Jessa subplot was silly I agree but otoh the writers probably wrote "DEATH" on the whiteboard when brainstorming for this episode and really who in the room was gonna get up and erase that and write down something different??

I dunno I thought this was a good callback to the episode where Ray told Hannah to write about serious shit (like death) and she failed miserably

i want more ray, i like him

lol c'mon a character like Jessa having a friend named "Season" is one of the most plausible things on this entire show.

Unlike every other movie or TV show where a young person's bedroom has been production-designed with completely incongruous band posters, everything seems totally real on GIRLS

― Walter Galt, Thursday, January 23, 2014 8:56 AM (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah totally realistic that a coffee shop worker and a, what? what does adam do? live in a 2 bedroom apartment in Brooklyn.

adam in this episode greeted marnie with "hey marnie are you enjoying your life of doing absolutely fucking nothing all day?" but marnie has had jobs in the show. rather implausible ones but, you know. adam sometimes makes things out of metal and wrote half of a play and that's about the size of it.

controversial opinion that I would like to be disabused of: jessa is a really boring and rote character. no idea what other people enjoy about her. I think there's empathy and compassion for her despite her sometimes shitty-ness, but I don't get any insight or humor from her escapades. what am I missing?

pessimistically feeling like this show has no real idea what it's doing so far this season. feels like a first draft with stock conflicts and half-hearted Larry Davidisms.

one thing this show is really great at is showing how people are often willfully blind to their, uh, blind-spots. that people sorta choose to see what they see.

adam in this episode greeted marnie with "hey marnie are you enjoying your life of doing absolutely fucking nothing all day?" but marnie has had jobs in the show. rather implausible ones but, you know. adam sometimes makes things out of metal and wrote half of a play and that's about the size of it.

― i lost my shoes on acid (jed_), Wednesday, January 29, 2014 1:58 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wait was that not to jessa

this was the first good ray episode for a minute, the on-going perpetual-high-register general Seinfeldization of Karpovsky has to stop & in this episode that tide was stemmed

maybe it was, you're right.

That Gawker/Jezebel argument was like they were reading right off some thinkpiece from 2009. Hilarious. Also, I love Alex Karpovsky and wish to marry him.

pessimistically feeling like this show has no real idea what it's doing so far this season.

I also feel like it's a little unmoored. Concerned that maybe it's becoming some kind of a "by committee" process at HBO, or else that maybe Dunham is paying too much attention to what various critics say

adam's rent is being paid by his grandma, this was addressed in season 1

the central conceit is that he is a deeply conflicted trustafarian of sorts

i have some problems with the dialogue in this series - that even when it's good, like shosh's line about hannah's hair making her look like a boy on a fancy cookie box, it feels too perfectly above actual language - but i really did like that sweet adam line, i think "i wouldn't know what a tree was"

it feels too perfectly above actual language

His GIRLS Friday

Episode 5 is on demand apparently. Watching now

pessimistically feeling like this show has no real idea what it's doing so far this season. feels like a first draft with stock conflicts and half-hearted Larry Davidisms.

― ryan, Thursday, January 30, 2014 2:00 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark

Just had a #GIRLSidea - they should borrow a page from the X-Files and introduce a Monster of the Week concept that would allow the writers to rest during that week & generate cool and good multi-episode story arcs

ep.5 was kinda like that?

re: language: Shosh has a few good one-liners, but the overall tone of the dialogue in this episode (or at least Hannah, Adam, and Caroline's contributions to it) could only be described as 'hysterical'

... and maybe 'exhausting'

if you accept 'shouty' that would also work

she's not on anyone's side, she's the doctor philllllllllllllll

the eye roll at 'joan didion' was very good

episode 5 was my fave so far this season. the meeting with the editor and her assistant was hilarious as was hannah's narcissism at the funeral. even when she is trying to cover for herself: "no, i never thought he was gay. i thought he wanted to sleep with me actually."

i don't hate marnie at all either. she is just finding her way and doesn't know enough not to be self-centered. the show seems to take it as a rule that adolescence lasts until age 30 or something and none of these characters can reasonably be held responsible for their actions. i mean, hannah on the phone with her father -- just totally shit-talking her lawyer cousin because he doesn't work on glamorous cases -- is just being a teenager. she is an idiot but in a way that mostly hurts herself: small-minded, judgmental, resentful of the world's refusal to indulge their every desire... basically these characters are like holden caulfield, but a decade older.

i don't have any sort of insights about prolonged adolescence and am not even sure if it's a real phenomenon, although it's clear that many people do think it's real. the creators of GIRLS seem to think it's real, and to nudge the audience in the direction of indulging these characters as they make a lot of painful mistakes and don't learn from them right away. my fear is that the show is unwittingly playing into the hands of reactionaries who hear about things like the student debt crisis and think it's about a lot of spoiled kids getting impractical degrees and not thinking about their futures. idk. are twenty-five year olds less mature today than they were in previous generations? i am inclined to answer no. but maybe the existence of a show like girls indicates that our popular culture is, in general, more willing to show compassion for people who are stupid and selfish and short-sighted. this would be a good thing ftr.

i said mean things abt marnie upthread i think, during season 1, but i don't hate her at all anymore either. i eyerolled a lil at ray saying explicitly that her (occluded) good nature is "what makes [her] a sympathetic character"--also at where this scene inevitably went--but i liked a lot marnie collapsing in despair onto the table after her sarcastic thankyou; she made just the right noise. i also liked the hannah/adam/caroline stuff, thought it was well-written/staged/acted in itself even if its relationship to the show as a whole is a lil aimless. in general i think i watch this show for scenes.

are twenty-five year olds less mature today than they were in previous generations? i am inclined to answer no.

I'm inclined to answer yes.