Girls, Season Four: Episode 2

On Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 09:02 AM, Leandra Medine wrote:

Did I see a preview for an episode that chronicles a growing affinity between Adam and Jessa? I’m jumping the gun here, I know, but, THE PLOT! IT THICKENS!

Re: last night, Elijah is acting like his namesake, eh? And doing these wonderfully prophetic things like showing up for his friend Hannah, who needs him to get her white girl wasted — who ostensibly made a buddy named “Jonesly.”

I know I didn’t go to real college, but I think this episode made me feel more confident in my decision to have chosen a liberal arts school in NYC. That blue goo wresting scene gave me Sunday terrors like no deadline before ever has. Maybe I’m just getting older or have officially metamorphosed into Abie (my partner-in-sex for the uninitiated, who maintains the demeanor of a 76-year-old polo player).

Separately: Marnie is still a point of frustration, huh. That FaceTime conversation — and the accompanying knit scarf — gave me the heebee jeebees. She truly does not understand the ramifications of her actions.

In Iowa: That writer’s workshop was pretty accurately depicted. As was that brief monologue on “wrenched guts.” I’m glad I’m not still in school, kind of sorry you are. But let’s not even go there, right? Want to talk big picture/narrative arc? What did you think worked vs. what didn’t? I found the conversation across the episode particularly on point. Sorry, I mean fleek.

On Jan 19, 2015, at 9:53 AM, Mattie Kahn wrote:

It’s early days still, but the thing I think I like best about this season so far (and about this episode, in particular) is the way it’s given us an opportunity to root for Hannah. I know she’s narcissistic and insane. But mostly she’s 25, trying to love the people she loves, hate everyone else, and hold on to a bike and her sanity in the Midwest. That stuff is hard and it sucks. The fact that she calls her parents (collect, no less!) is proof: It’s easy to play an adult; it’s difficult to see yourself as one. While she is her most delusional self in this episode, I empathized with her in ways that I usually do not. I want her to find a way to be happy.

It seems unlikely that Iowa is the place for her to do that. New York might force you to grow up too fast or allow you to act like a baby forever, but Iowa does something worse: it gives you all the toys you need to play house. That Hannah moves into a small palace, recognizes the satiating merits of grapes, and has outfitted herself in what looks like the inside of an Anthropologie catalogue does not prove that she is an adult. It shows just how little she knows about what it takes to care for yourself for real. The only person this season who seems capable of that kind of awareness is Elijah. Or Ryan Reynolds, as I (and at least two people in the airport) now like to call him.

And while our favorite party-going prophet demonstrates just how much Hannah still has to learn, Marnie makes her look like a goddamn sage. I went back and forth on this for about three and a half minutes before I concluded: the fact that Marnie refuses to “let” Hannah talk about Adam does not make her a good friend. It just makes her seem selfish and preachy and in utter denial of her own situation. The only thing worse than her misguided attempt to be there for Hannah and her flagrant disregard for monogamy is her newfound dependence on what looks like a Conair hair curler. Give it a rest, Marn.

Can we do a little detective work, though? What are we supposed to believe even happened between Hannah and Adam? How long before she makes her triumphant return to New York? And do we all look like Hannah when we dance?

P.S. I don’t know that the world can survive the union of Adam and Jessa. Maybe this is how it all ends.

P.P.S. A fun game to play with friends: name every time and the circumstances under which you ever fell asleep in a bathroom. I promise you the stories will be very, very good.

On Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 10:29 AM, Leandra Medine wrote:

A few points.

First: how would Marnie even know how Adam is doing, right? To our knowledge he hates her and can only withstand her presence when Hannah demands it.

Also, such a good point about Marnie’s tolerance or lack thereof for Hannah’s Adam lament. I have never — except in really dire circumstances — understood the concept of not allowing your friends to indulge themselves about a break up. Especially one that is so recent, right? If they’re not talking to you, or someone, they’re in their own heads, writing their own narratives and as far as Hannah’s mind is concerned, there is some distorted shit going on in there regardless of heartbreak or melancholy.

Second: Is your assigning awareness of adulthood to Elijah your recognizing his own sense of it? Because it seems more like he went down to Iowa because he needed a jolt of Hannah as much as she did him. And together, they unite over forgetting themselves.

Re: investigative journalism on the saga that is Hannadam (it is good thing I’m not involved in the selecting our words of the year): Do you think the pep talk she delivers while in a drunken stupor on line for the bathroom at that frat house is an indication of anything self-meditative? Is the advice she gives to Iowa lonely girl actually advice to herself? Is her stealing said crier’s spot in line and slipping into the actual bathroom her representative of that?

I’m also compelled to think the flying bat in her dramatically sized house is indicative of something. Mostly, though, I so want to talk about the workshop. It’s like this self-involved, immature New Yorker has been released from her cage, where a group of similarly self-involved animals appeased her by virtue of not actually listening/caring/acknowledging and now she’s in the real world. In Iowa. Where there is a zero tolerance policy for her self-aggrandizement.

On Jan 19, 2015, at 11:20 AM, Mattie Kahn wrote:

I guess it is a bit of a stretch to suggest that Elijah’s Iowan adventure is an indication that he has achieved self-actualization, Nirvana, etc. But I do think we should recognize that he is the only person who knows how respond to Hannah’s obvious cry for help. All she needs is for someone to show up and be present, and he does that.

But while his presence is a strange kind of comfort, it doesn’t compel her to do what she needs to. Unless she snuck a copy of Priya’s story into the bathroom with her, it looks like Hannah is not going to do her homework in Iowa. I guess she’ll have to metabolize her notes some other time.

I know that the Internet is aflame with people desperate to talk about the extent to which the workshop scene addresses the fact that critics have long confused Hannah Horvath and Lena Dunham. I wonder what you think about that. I happen to feel that only the world’s most self-aware person could fashion a character so blissfully ignorant of reality. Given that, I try not to conflate our unhappy protagonist and her creator.

But I suppose I do understand the temptation to situate fiction in some kind of real framework. It’s only human. Look at Chester Chong! He’s dying to do it. We want to recognize truth in narrative, and it’s easiest to see this whole show as a portrait of the woman who came up with it. But how does that impulse even help us evaluate art? How does it impact the way we relate to the series?

When Hannah contests the criticism of her work at the bar later, she asks one of the girls from the seminar to talk to her about it “woman to woman.” It was probably my least favorite moment of the episode. Her attempt to harness female solidarity feels so forced here, and I wonder what you made of it. Is it true that women understand the project of Girls better than men can? Do you think female critics are more or less sympathetic to the show? How deep is our desire to be understood by “our own kind”?

That Hannah uses the same conspiratorial tone of supposed female empowerment to school that tearful undergrad in the laws of long-distance relationships only makes her seem sadder. I think you’re right. She wants someone who understands to give her this speech, but no one else in Iowa is playing her game. And neither is Marnie or Jessa or Shosh or her parents.

“Let’s forget who we are,” she tells Elijah. As if Hannah could abandon herself for even five minutes. She’s stuck with herself. Wherever you go, there you are.

On Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 12:07 PM, Leandra Medine wrote:

In regard to that scene at the bar when she is talking to the blonde girl, I found for the most part that Hannah was once again projecting — this time her self-involvement. Her narcissism has literally transcended the events of her own life and her distorted mode of thinking has forced her into the earnest assumption that OBVIOUSLY for her fellow female comrade to not sympathize with her story has to mean she herself is a victim of sexual abuse.

On Jan 19, 2015, at 12:49 PM, Mattie Kahn wrote:

This whole episode was so Hannah-centric. Literally. She was in just about every scene. I missed our supporting characters, I think. And I like the show better when the screen is more heavily populated. I even missed Ray! And you know that I’m still trying to figure him out. Skype sessions and collect calls are no substitution for the real thing.

It looks like we’ll see at least a bit of Jessa next week though. Not sure how she’ll do in jail, but I feel like she has enough fight in her to survive.

On Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 12:53 PM, Leandra Medine wrote:

And Ray! But yes, I agree. I don’t know that she’ll last in Iowa for too long and generally felt like maybe not enough information was disseminated this episode which seems ironic given, hello! This is the Information Age!

On Jan 19, 2015, at 12:57 PM, Mattie Kahn wrote:

Isn’t it weird? I loved the episode while I watched it. The image of Hannah at a frat party will be forever burned into my memory. But I feel like there isn’t as much to discuss as in weeks prior.

I understand how consequential her experience of Iowa is to her career as a writer, but I don’t find myself caring whether or not her prose improves in that little shingled hut. I just want to see her return to Jessa and Adam and New York. And it’s not because I don’t care about her professional life. It’s because I don’t think she really does, and it’s kind of hard to watch.

On Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 1:00 PM, Leandra Medine wrote:

To return is to regress, which I think needs to happen in order for the show to remain interesting, which in itself is kind of unusual, right? To set yourself up to be rendered interesting only while you’re acting like a grown up baby doesn’t really leave room for sincere evolution.

On Jan 19, 2015, at 1:06 PM, Mattie Kahn wrote:

I think the thing we’re asking ourselves here is the same frustrating question that Girls is always sort of dancing around: How much do we expect these characters to evolve?

It seems like it might be a while.