Girls Season 4 Episodes 1-2 recap
(Warning – content at the bottom of the page is NSFW)
Of course I watched that GIF all week. Who didn’t watch that GIF all week? It was especially welcome at three in the morning on Golden Globes night when nothing on the internet seemed new and exciting. I mean…that is some hardcore commitment on Allison Williams and I bet that she’s delighted. Nobody can call her a stick in the mud. Nobody can say she doesn’t go for it when necessary. I love too that the show said, right off the bat, that it’s time for Marnie to get over being…Marnie. I look forward, with thirst, to seeing how this plays out in upcoming episodes.
But even though last week’s episode touched in on Jessa, whose charge admitted she likes Jessa better than her own uptight daughter, and on Shoshanna, who has graduated with the least fanfare ever, but is a poster child for why only children are neurotic, this season is firmly about what happens when Hannah moves away from everyone else.
There’s something very scary about being in a good place. When you’re in a bad place, and everyone else is too, well that’s just how things are, that’s life. When you’re in a bad place, and everyone else is in a great place, that’s when you swim hard to catch up with them.
But Hannah is in a good space. She’s doing something good for her, which means she’s constantly looking over her shoulder to see if she’s doing the right thing. It’s nauseating.
I love that the show is willing to do this. They know that to make the character stop stagnating, or to see something different in her, she has to do other things, and I love that there is nothing more detrimental to Hannah than succeeding.
She’s saying all the right things about being away from Adam, which means of course that it’s going to crash and burn spectacularly, and she’s managing not to bite the faces off the ridiculous earnesters in her MFA. (Related: I am going to be recommending DeAugust immediately.) So there’s no way that she can do anything except screw it up.
Every year I love Hannah more, and it’s because she has no idea how to do anything but sort of fumble toward being herself, knowing that it would be so much more comfortable to be at home where okay, there are no bats, and there’s Adam, but who knows who she becomes if she lets that be the only story?
There’s so much to be annoyed by in Hannah, but the show is now turning everything so that we see the stuff that’s kind of to be admired. She is the kind of person who will relentlessly make herself uncomfortable in order to get new experiences, and the kind of person who shuns staying somewhere that’s comfortable. The good and terrible part is it’s making her – letting her – be someone else. I mean, her advice to the girl at the party wasn’t bad. The response to Brooks Whelan was measured and …mature. Iowa suits her.
Except we know she’s not staying, so…oops.
Also, I thought this did a relatively good job of explaining what it is to be a fiction grad student to people who had never heard of such a thing, or who don’t follow Guy In Your MFA on Twitter, who is the best. I have to imagine Lena Dunham thinks so too.
I do think we’re reaching gmax density for use of the word ‘privileged’ though. Any minute now.
