GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

I liked the show, but the characters were awful people, which made it hard to watch at times. Broad City ended up being the show I wished Girls would have been.

i lol'd so damn hard at Marnie being like "Hannah, I'm still here. I'm your best friend. It's me. I won."

worst prize ever

Morbs, do you actually watch this show??

After watching the penultimate episode, I've finally come up with what I want the last one to be. I want it to go full-on Hubert Selby Jr and expose Hannah as a pregnant homeless junkie, with all the happy endings of this season like Mulholland Drive before Club Silencio. Just be a series of cut scenes showing where Hannah is shown to be an unreliable narrator.

Hannah's dad isn't in a happy relationship, he went full blown and died during the AIDS epidemic while he was still trying to keep it secret/was in denial. Hannah's mum hit the bottle hard as a result and drank away every penny. Because of this Hannah has never really been able to live the trust fund lifestyle from the series that lets her dilettante around.
Elijah has been the one sustaining Hannah and paying for the apartment, and finally blames her for ruining things with his BF (who is still probably Dill but isn't famous) and his not being able to act because he felt responsible for keeping a roof over her head. Finally he lost patience (because a typical Hannah drama meant he didn't get the part in the musical) and kicked her out.
Shosh never left Japan, where she was happy.
Marnie and Desi were a successful act, but Hannah tried to split their relationship up after she tried to seduce Desi while she was stoned (maybe on the last roadtrip?).
Jessa and Adam are happily married with a kid, and everything we know about Hannah and Jessa (and their respective roles) are the other way round.
Ray died alone and pissed off in his apartment, not Hermie.
Laird is the baby's father, after he had a lapse back onto druqs.
Caroline was actually Hannah.
There is no Professor of Internet, just handjobs for cash in alleyways.
The final scene is Hannah giving birth, alone, behind the dumpster she lives at. Fade to black. Play something off Carrie & Lowell.

We can but hope. And be disappointed.

― Mud... Jam... Failure... (aldo), Thursday, April 13, 2017 7:21 AM (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so you want the show to end like Roseanne did?

i thought the last few episodes were great

esp this:

And I like how the ending book-ended the show, it ends up being about a v specific "young adult" period, that starts with Hannah living on her own in the big city and ends with becoming a parent, I just liked that v clear delineation.

like we all make so much of that time in our lives then it just kind of.....fades away....and you realize then it was just the precursor to trying to be an adult human not any end in itself

I also like how she didn't actually grow or transform as a result of that period - she's still an immature, incompetent narcissist, except now she has a baby she didn't want or plan for. the ending has a definite "the more things change the more they stay the same" sort of fatalism to it.

Haha you're right. I forgot Roseanne ended that way!

Well, this was pretty good I guess. Hannah behaving like a mom to the teenager and then realising that's how she was being was the real end of the show, the final stuff with the cop and Grover was just Lena Dunham closure.

I thought it was kinda lazy, the whole "Oh look, here's a convenient epiphany that I've stumbled across in the woods". And the young girl was a terrible actress. It's basically the same ending as the last five minutes of Mad Men.

I think yer all being a little harsh on the show, though - I've enjoyed all six seasons (to various degrees), and could've happily watched a Shosh-heavy 7th. Weird/interesting that Marnie and Elijah became the most interesting characters.

thought the finale was solid, some bad-ish eps this last season but its to be expected by trying to "wrap up" &c; lena is a good actress & i will remain interested in w/e she does next

i would have been a little happier if the penultimate episode was the finale and they left it a little more open ended

but there was a lot of good stuff in the last episode

i thought the final scenes between adam and hannah and hannah and jessa were really affecting....the "we were all just doing our best"..."our best was awful" was great, and the silent end of adam & hannah's relationship touching

one thing in both those scenes, i think dunham is really great at crying like she's trying to hold back tears in a very real way that doesn't seem over the top, both those scenes were particularly great

Haha you're right. I forgot Roseanne ended that way!

Well, this was pretty good I guess. Hannah behaving like a mom to the teenager and then realising that's how she was being was the real end of the show, the final stuff with the cop and Grover was just Lena Dunham closure.

― Mud... Jam... Failure... (aldo), Monday, April 17, 2017 2:24 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah the end of Roseanne is one of the weirdest fucking show finales ever and no one ever talks about it! and it was a hugely popular show....

i guess it reflects Roseanne's pharmacology at the time

Really awful 'Girls' piece by Elizabeth Wurtzel in the WaPo today. I'll spare everyone the link because you really shouldn't read it.

"Elizabeth Wurtzel" is warning enough!

I honestly don't get the "unlikeable" critique as a standalone... as if all the major characters on The Sopranos (except i guess Melfi) weren't inescapably unlikeable.

making sociopaths relatable was one of the Sopranos general strengths/m.o.s

HBO: making sociopaths relatable

haha

you need to pivot to marketing, Eazy

i <3 wurtzel ty

but yeah, Shakey, but only to a point. Just when Tony was on the verge of seeming self-aware and cuddly you were reminded what a homicidal fuck he was.

I haven't seen the last 3 seasons of Girls so i don't know if they've been regularly doing that or not.

sociopath has to be the most misused words on the internet

I agree re: Sopranos Morbz.

re: GIRLS, it's not quite so extreme (nobody's a murderer, for ex.) but it was also not handled as deftly imo. The show, especially in latter seasons, seemed to go out of its way to display characters' loathsomeness w out making them v relatable (imo), so when it came time for the viewer to give a shit about whatever emotional conflict was being foregrounded, it just didn't work.

was kind of an odd ending to a show. episodes that came before were a lot stronger i felt, though that seems to be a trend in tv now, penultimate episodes of seasons/series being better than finales.

they had hannah being a total nightmare and awful and freaking out about being a mother, then, seemingly inevitably she had that little epiphany out of nowhere, and went home, and was ready to deal with motherhood and could breastfeed all of a sudden.

i liked the ending a lot. it invalidated everything we saw thus far. your 20s are fucking drama and full of idiots and then you grow up and move on and they are gone except the one friend you hate and all that drama was for nothing. p good stuff.

haha yes that was my takeaway too

xp lol otm

unless you're a ridiculous gaybot like Elijah, who will probably go on like that til he's 60 or we all get nuked.

Michael Sicinski‏
@msicism
So take note: you're a narcissistic child until you have a baby. A trajectory even Dunham's right-wing haters could love.

she's STILL a narcissistic child at the end!

29 is much too young to stop being a narcissistic asshole anyway

i think i only fully became not an asshole around 34 - that might even be pushing it

she's STILL a narcissistic child at the end!

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, April 18, 2017 12:54 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

she has her epiphany at the end and then goes home to stoically and competently take care of her baby.

yah there wasn't much evolution or growing.. they were all still the same shitheads. hannah's mom basically said "it doesn't get better." the only conceit was you lose your friends eventually. she didn't have an epiphany in the except "i finally bonded with my baby and that's more important than all my shithead friends that didn't actually matter." (just all my take away idk)

i figured esp given her background she was suffering to some degree of postpartum depression, which is no joke

re: GIRLS, it's not quite so extreme (nobody's a murderer, for ex.) but it was also not handled as deftly imo. The show, especially in latter seasons, seemed to go out of its way to display characters' loathsomeness w out making them v relatable (imo), so when it came time for the viewer to give a shit about whatever emotional conflict was being foregrounded, it just didn't work.

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, April 18, 2017 12:08 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sociopath doesn't mean "self centered" or "asshole" or "jerk a lot of the time"

I never said any of the GIRLS characters were sociopaths. If you want to argue about the Sopranos characters, that's a different story.

i figured esp given her background she was suffering to some degree of postpartum depression, which is no joke

it wasn't really played as post-partum depression though, the problem was characterized as her being...exactly the same as before.

They mentioned post partum depression as being a factor in the "inside this episode" bit after the show

The teenager she ran into reminded me of Louis C.K.'s petulant/entitled voice.

xp I can't watch those, they make me question any enjoyment I got out of what I just watched

i figured esp given her background she was suffering to some degree of postpartum depression, which is no joke

it wasn't really played as post-partum depression though, the problem was characterized as her being...exactly the same as before.

― change display name (Jordan), Tuesday, April 18, 2017 3:56 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

totally disagree the handwringing over the breastfeeding and the "my baby hates me" stuff seemed to be pretty squarely conveying that

seemed more like post-partum frustration? i don't have kids though, so what do i know.

I definitely skipped that article about bottle-feeders who are upset.

I didn't particularly love the episode or the ending of the series for various reasons...

but I watched it next to my wife who was breastfeeding at that moment, so a lot of it hit home.

Like, on one hand all that handwringing and that 'my baby hates me" stuff is like. pretty par for the course even without going as far as being described as post-partum depression. I'm not sure where that line is drawn between your totally expected freakouts about being a new parent and what is "officially" ppd and I'm not sure how important that is, but for that reason I didn't need the creators to discuss ppd to understand that she's under a particular stress and perhaps acting in an extreme version of who she always has been due to it.

But the complaint online about bottle-feeding, I mean, everything in that episode is 100% accurate about that stuff and totally fair and I can't believe any parent would be pissed off. Every single study shows benefits to breast feeding...and every single parent probably comes to terms with the fact that it's hard work and may not be doable and even if it's not, your kid can still turn out ok so you just do whatever works.

I agree the show was pretty accurate, but the dialogue ("hey, this formula stuff is ok after all!") was like PSA-level risible.

I get the online bottle-feeding complaints - unfortunately. I used to work for a breasfeeding org, and there is more chance of resolving israel/palestine than the breast vs. formula people.

how did "fast car" become so ubiquitous? there was also a period in the early 00s when indie/avant garde artists embraced it and covered it (Xiu Xiu and Jim O'Rourke).

I wanted to slap the shit out of Marnie during that part. Actually, during most parts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vScKQ4gexwk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkl_Vq1SWKg

Fast Car became ubiquitous when it was released and was a huge hit on MTV and radio and was a top ten hit on the Billboard charts

Fast Car became ubiquitous when it was released and was a huge hit on MTV and radio and was a top ten hit on the Billboard charts

I know. I was asking how it became so ubiquitous with avant garde artists doing totally out there versions of it. Tho tbh I can only think of.... 3 off the top of my head. Sorry this is a weird thread to post this in. I hope Lena runs in 2020.

So...Lenny Dykstra

he's been on fire ever since his interviews on Howard last year

"American Bitch" (with the novelist creep) is a great episode. I can only remember two other episodes that I thought were that good (granted, I've skipped around a lot) - the early one where Hannah sleeps with an older guy in a nice townhome and imagines a bourgeois life, the one from season 4 or 5 where Marnie hooks up with her ex. Makes me wonder about an alternate show without the standard wacky comic touches and the rest of the cast.