GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

speaking of Dunham I'd been kind of enjoying Camping which she produces and cowrites and just learned that this was a UK show first. But I seem to be unable to find the British version in any streaming services or even in a torrent. Is it available anywhere?

I couldn't make it through the first episode of that. Had no idea there was a UK version.

The, actually good, UK version is on dailymotion (and seemingly nowhere else)

Search username 'couchtripper'

But I seem to be unable to find the British version in any streaming services or even in a torrent.

It was made for Sky Atlantic, so is probably exclusive to their streaming service (which possibly only runs on hardware that you have to order from them in the UK?)

you can stream it illegally though

xpost, had this tab open for an hour

i haven't seen camping (uk) but julia davis is a genius

I'm still surprised no one stole it off Sky while running and threw files up on torrent sites though. Ok well this will work.

US version is not so bad though Jennifer Garner is the worst thing about it. Jennifer Lewis is amusing.

yeah, I couldn't take how insufferable Garner was

she's not suppose to be likable in any way shape or form so in that respect it works but still.

IDG the point of wholly unlikeable protagonists. Seems like it's just a defense mechanism for not actually knowing how to write a likeable protagonist.

the only goal of a writing a protagonist is not likeability? it can also be an effective protagonist if you recognize yourself in them, and it's a unique type of success if you can make a wholly unlikeable character that your audience sees themself in. i'm not here to defend girls (altho i guess i liked parts of it) but the "why unlikeable protagonists" thing is a bit of a bugbear, like wishing everyone in wrestling was a babyface or something

IDK where I said "the only goal of writing a protagonist is likeability." But "wholly unlikeable" is not something I want to see very often. It seems very navel-gazing to write too many protagonists like that, basically reveling in your moral faults.

julia davis writes very black comedy and her characters are often horrible. i don't know if it will translate to american tv tbh. cf. how much more likable Michael Scott in the Office (US) is versus David Brent in the Office (UK).

I don't watch the US Office, but I kind of don't think of those characters as "protagonists."

But even the shows where you "laugh at" the assholes wear on me after a while. I guess I liked David Brent because he had a tragic quality. But I'm sort of tired of the "everyone's a self-involved asshole" formula for shows that seems to descend from Seinfeld through Arrested Development (even though that show was at times very funny) to Transparent, and maybe also It's Always Sunny from what I've heard (haven't watched).

it's always sunny is very much like the next level after seinfeld

it's also better than Seinfeld

Curb >>>

There's probably a better thread for this but has anyone been watching the Julia Davis show "Sally4ever" on HBO? Last episode was something else

the poo one? that's where I stopped while binging this last night. I didn't think it was possible for me to still be shocked by something

Yep that's the one

I haven't read the thread yet but I just finished the Girls. Started around Xmas. I watched the first season when it aired in 2012 but never saw anything else - not out of disinterest just circumstance, but also Lena Dunham's public persona and infinite controversies were so overwhelming and a comparable body of work in their own right that I felt too distracted to watch the show on its own terms. I'm so glad I waited two years after it ended to come back and go through the whole show. I didn't watch any of the making of segments or commentary or read along in here.

A few things - it's the show of the decade, a key millennial text that will endure for decades, and Hannah Horvath is among the most deftly written characters I've ever encountered (and deeply sympathetic while often objectively despicable - this is a great achievement). I started noticing the direction about halfway through the show, and one shot in particular, from I think the first episode of season four, where Hannah and Marnie embrace on the floor, the way Dunham cut and framed them was straight out of Bergman. A few weeks later I saw her Criterion Top 10 and sure enough Through a Glass Darkly was on there, with a typically inexplicable and unintentionally hilarious comment: "Like for many Americans, incest is a rough area for me. I just have a natural aversion to it."

I prefer not to think of her public persona, her rich kid ignorance and blinding narcissism, because I don't think she's succeeded as a provocateur in that realm. Almost everything she's done or said or been embroiled in has hurt her work and made more people turn away and even more people - including myself - not even bother because it was all too much to take. But now the dust has settled and she's kept a relatively low profile since the show ended and I could watch it with an even head. And I loved it. The writing, the direction, the performances - all consistently stellar. And what an accomplishment in Hannah and her characterization. She's the only one who "figured it out" and grew up, and it happened as soon as she decided to keep the baby. How awful the rest of them seemed in comparison, still so feckless and desperate and caught up in petty dramas - Hannah is the one that grows up. Marnie is a fucking psychopath and I don't like that she was in the last episode, "I'm your best friend - I WON!" - I'm surprised Hannah didn't kick her out then. Shoshana found her people and she's right, these women have nothing in common any more. I assumed Jessa would end up lost, but Adam's devolution was surprising I suppose, and that last episode with them was heartbreaking and masterfully done (of course she made the right decision - and that this could all be expressed without a single word - oh my god!).

Despite that demon Marnie leeching off Hannah and "winning" in the end, I'm happy where it ended up. Hannah is the only one that gets it and succeeded- Marnie is clearly out of her mind, Shosh and Jessa sort of get it but seemed doomed to repeat their mistakes (Shosh met her fiancé what, a month ago?).

Hannah singing "Fast Car" to her child alone - I wept, because I believe it, I believe they'll make it, it'll be really hard but I believe they'll make it. Few could've written a character as complex, frustrating, impulsive, narcissistic, and irresponsible as Hannah Horvath and move her to a place where you trust her with a child on her own. What a show. Thank You Lena

I think it depends on who you are relative to the main protagonist(s). I watched up until the the surf lessons/sex instructor episode and I was done in by laziness. You see brilliance, I saw the last of my upper most inner eyelids.

It was indeed fresher when it was releases in the moment.

felt like the second to last episode would have been a better ending

I know there was a baby plotline near the end and I really was terribly, completely over it by hearing that,. So lazy, so self indulgent.

felt like the second to last episode would have been a better ending

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

I feel like it's crucial for Hannah to end up alone with her baby though - even though Marnie and her mom are downstairs, but it ends with Hannah and her son upstairs, singing Fast Car. I watched the whole show in 4 months instead of 5 years, and it absolutely benefitted from that, like most shows would. I thought the scope of the show would be bigger than it was, and the situations basically become entrenched in season 4. the more I think about it the more disappointed I am that Marnie was given any quarter after sneaking into Hannah's house in Poughkeepsie and sleeping in her bed and going on her bone-chilling "I won" rant. I have to know Dunham & Konner & Apatow take on Marnie but I'm not ready. How can anyone see this person as anything but a monster, and by far the worst of the bunch?

I mean, that "I won" monologue makes it pretty clear where the filmmakers stand

I haven't finished the series (and wonder if I ever will?) but I appreciate your commentary flappy bird, I've always thought Lena Dunham "in the press" belied the work itself, which at the very least, made me laugh, a lot, which is an achievement

The first three seasons still resonate with me as being extremely deft portrayals of NYC 20-somethings (at least, the ones I encountered) and the bizarre mindset that that city creates in young creatives

I mean to me this is the transformation of great white hope to death to hipsters to basicbitch but we suffer them in parts of ourselves.

I don't know what specifically happened on the show about this but I know know too many smart women still caught up in it ( an I Won thing) and I get really sad that it's even a thing.

Well, I read the wiki synopses and jumped ahead to the last episode and I thought it was great

I don't really know how to type this properly but it is kind of amazing how Lena/Hannah has normalized quotidian onscreen nudebody in a way that is really uplifting. The dovetail of Mom berating Hannah into Hannah berating runaway was perfect. I liked how all the other characters who I essentially don't care about (please save me from ever having to think about an Adam/Desi/Ray/Gay Dad/Mormon Dude ever again) were just not present, that was nice

Marnie was always a total monster and it's only because Desi is an even bigger monster that we entertain the thought that she's not a monster.

I really enjoy Girls but 'child as redemption' is such bullshit

what happened with jessa/adam at the end, again?

Oh I didn't think there was a "child as redemption" thing. Hannah storms out of the house screaming "thanks mom for choosing to raise me with a homosexual father and deny me any semblance of a nuclear family", then she shows compassion for a teenage girl in trouble only to find out she's just trying to get out of her homework, and she gets mad and asks for her pants back and the girl calls her a psycho. So she goes home and Grover and crying. A running theme in this show seems to be that there is a complicated relationship between children and parents. There's a lot of "Jessa is a monster" "Marnie is a monster" about this show but I think the show very aggressively wants you to understand there are no good or bad people in the show, the characters are too complicated for that reduction.

I was pretty drunk last night and was wondering what thread I had posted on. Ha!

earlier post was about how Hannah figured it out and grew up after deciding to have a baby

holy shit this lunatic narcissism

As I planned my summer in Wales, my head filled with visions of romance, I supposed I’d do what the heroines of novels did when they crossed the pond for a new life: go to the shore to take the healing air. Meet a man and move into his stunning manor, possibly watched over by a sinister housemaid. Scurry through cobblestoned streets and into dusty bookshops, furtively pulling up the hood of my cloak. Go to a banquet and dance to piano music in a great hall. Taste gamey meats on a date with a count, then become a countess. Shoot a bow and arrow. Develop a slight accent. Images of everything from Brighton Rock to Emma, The Woman In White to Notting Hill, filled my head. There was even a little 24 Hour Party People in there. But as it would happen, my days were long, and much more Wernham Hogg than Wuthering Heights.

Spoiler: It's about Love Island

we must protect lena dunham at all costs

why would anyone print this inane article

^ probably to quietly point out how she has spent five months in the country without ever noticing that it is a different country to the one she thought she was going to

Emma is set in Surrey, England
Wuthering Heights is set in Yorkshire, England
Wernham Hogg is situated in Slough, England
24 Hour Party People is set in and very specifically about Manchester, England
Brighton Rock is set, and there may have been some clue to this, in Brighton, England
Notting Hill also drops some subtle titular hints as to its setting in Notting Hill, a district in London, England
The Woman In White is set in Cumberland, England and Hampshire, England, and London, England

also Wales has neither counts nor countesses. you can become a countess by marriage in England, but not by marrying a count, because England also does not have counts.

Has she done this before (getting things terribly wrong about the U.K)? Otherwise I'm just experiencing deja-vu and nevermind.

she's just in "britain" and is eliding - just due to ignorance, i would assume - the particularity of the member nations

just due to ignorance, i would assume

yes

this is the point

she literally can't be bothered to look out of her own head for 0.5 seconds to realise that she is thinking about a different country, even when she is writing 9,000 words about how ignorant she is due to making unthinking assumptions

the particularity of the member nations

she's eliding a bunch of European nations too

sounds like you find her annoying sic

It’s dumb spacefiller but would be hard-pushed to find it annoying or lunatic or... anything, really

common or garden yank ignorance wrt these islands is hardly in the top 1000 of lena dunham's crimes of discourse

sounds like you find her annoying sic

I watched and mostly liked the first four or so seasons of Girls