That was the tagline for the promo poster for the second season of Girls. The it in that sentence took on very different meanings for the young group of New Yorkers this year: careers, ambitions, relationships, mental stability, plans for the future. The kind of, though, says everything. The (rare) happy endings we witness for most of the Brooklynites at the end of the season 2 finale are all temporary solutions to the larger issue at hand: they are rejecting full-on adulthood. The ticking clock for getting discovered as an artist, or figuring out what you want in a partner, or being at the peak of your physical attractiveness are eating away at these girls. Change, as we've seen throughout the season, has been ultimately detrimental to each of these characters. At first, they thought the changes were beneficial, but it ultimately led to emotional and physical (some self-induced) hardships. These girls are so used to being coddled after being knocked down that they are unable to start anew again, and instead want to go in reverse. Change is what they're now fighting, and they fight it by falling back on old habits and flings (Shoshanna excluded). The last segment of the finale was portrayed as romantic, but it's only romantic in the sense that it makes everyone happy in the short-term, because short-term is the only way they're capable of looking at the world, these aren't real answers to their problems. They want to stay in neutral, but the downward slope to the real world is becoming steeper. To watch the characters battle against that perpetual creep is what elevated Girls to another level of entertainment this year.
Showrunner/director/writer Lena Dunham's choices with her main character Hannah Horvath (Dunham again) illustrate both her bravery as an artist, and the torture, not of being one, but choosing to be one. Much of the conversation that revolves around the show is Hannah's constant nudity. People more outwardly forward with their thoughts might say that she's overdoing it, given she has a soft, pudgy body. I'd be lying if I said I was delighted every time Dunham strips down, but I respect the decision, not just because it's a very noticeable way to show she disapproves of the unwritten rule that only skinny girls should be allowed to bare their bodies on camera, but it fits perfectly within the psyche of the character. Hannah's insecurities and mental growing pains, which we witnessed a lot of this season, cripple her immensely, but her comfort with her own body is one area where she doesn't lack confidence, she's been a little overweight all her life, but she doesn't let that sour her sexual appetite, which allows her to bed what some detractors might say guys out of her league. While she was able to cut loose for a few episodes after she severed ties with an increasingly stalker-ish Adam, the opportunity of an e-book couldn't have come at a worse time emotionally, with her childhood OCD rearing its head again and the scarring of Marnie sleeping with Elijah, which also resulted in her being roommate-less. The tipping point for Hannah is in "One Man's Trash", where she accidentally starts a dream-like weekend affair with a handsome, affluent man (Patrick Wilson) in his gorgeous brownstone home. After soaking in all his amenities and the joy of being with an adult man for once, she realizes she might rather be successful and happy than pursue her dream of being a writer and remaining somewhat miserable. She has been so possessed by this idea that she needs to struggle and be poor and get into some wild shit for her writing to mean anything (that's her argument to her parents as to why they should keep paying her rent). So, with her new epiphany floating in the back of her skull, and her increasingly fragile mental state, she essentially wastes away in her apartment while her book deadline passes. If there's one golden rule for writers, especially how hard it is to make it in any type of writing career, it's that you don't miss deadlines when you get your shot, it's like career suicide. In the final shot of the season, Adam comes to her rescue, but her undoing of her first real job may prove that she's beyond saving.
At times, it's hard to believe that Marnie (Allison Williams) has such awful luck with men and landing jobs. She's gorgeous, bubbly, fun, and seemingly responsible for a young adult, especially compared to her three compadres. And yet it's like she's running in place when it comes to career advancement and finding the right partner. Staying with Charlie for too long was what put her in a rut, which she's still trying to climb out of. When she finally broke it off, she so desperately wanted a different type of guy that she went too far the other way, first by drunkenly half-screwing Hannah's gay roommate and as a result distancing herself further from her best friend, and then ending up with Booth Jonathan (Jorma Taccone), a bizarre but reputable conceptual artist. Even after some incredibly awkward sex (I'll get back to that in a bit) and some blatant hints that he's not jiving on being a couple, Marnie still sticks around until it blows up in her face because anyone that's not Charlie feels like a step in the right direction. She's still tied to Charlie because they have the same group of friends, but her only interest in him is the unspoken competition that exes have with each other, sizing up the other's success and how well they're coping post-breakup, but poor Charlie is not playing the exes game, he's still simply head-over-heels for Marnie. She knows this too, so when she sees him with his new cute hipster girlfriend, she knows how to lead him on just to make herself feel like she has some control. And again, when she discovers he's made a killing starting up a new website company inspired by her, while she's stuck waitressing in a "magician's assistant" uniform, she tries to prove her worth in front of all the people that look to Charlie as a superior that she too has the ability to strike it big by rendering her own excruciatingly bad version of Kanye's "Stronger". It's hard to feel bad for her with the way she treats Charlie, but her sense of frustration is justified, she knows what we know, that she's kind of got the whole package. And she's certainly sympathetic in her desperate cry for attention with the impromptu karaoke. It's only after Charlie knocks her down a peg with his performance criticism that she gives in to his advances, because like what she was going for with Booth, being associated with success is easier than trying to gain some on her own. And Charlie has gained some masculinity with his small fortune, but that will only satisfy Marnie for so long. Alas, we will never witness how the Marnie/Charlie saga will end (the actor who plays Charlie, Christopher Abbott, abruptly quit the show recently), but however they resolve Marnie's sudden single-ness, I think it's better for the progression of her character.
While Hannah and Marnie's high points and pitfalls run very parallel, Jessa (Jemima Kirke) and Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) are each clearly paving their own paths. Sometimes these girls make it very difficult to like them, and none more so than Jessa in Season 1. The arrogance and superiority with which she carried herself because of her European adventures was gag-inducing at times. Her unapologetic non-conformism is both inspiring and irritating to the other girls, but her role as the road-weary hipster is crucial in one way or another to their own world-views. We get to witness how she turned out the way she did when she brings Hannah back home to her flower-child dad and step-mom. It turns out the whole pick-up-and-go-to-another-city-without-telling-anyone routine is hereditary, as her dad was absent for most of her childhood. When she confronts him and weeps about never having a role model, it's apparent that whenever she shot down Marnie or Hannah sometimes as having a cookie-cutter life, that's what she actually was always yearning for. Between this scene and the acid-tongued marriage-ending fireballs she spits at her man-boy husband Thomas-John, I think it's safe to say Kirke is the most naturally gifted actress of the quartet. Wherever Jessa ventured off to after leaving the sweet, succinct note for Hannah, I suspect she'll have to travel a little further before she decides she wants a new way of living. Shoshanna is the bizarro Jessa. She is a 14 year old Valley girl stuck in a twenty-something's body, and her current sexual awakenings are what Hannah and Marnie went through about ten years ago, Jessa longer than that probably. Ray (Alex Karpovsky) is the stepping stone she utilized to get to that point. Who knows if she ever really liked him? But he's the first guy that ever really treated her like a grown-up, and she was completely clueless as to what kind of guy she would like to date. Throughout the season, his constant pessimism wore her down, which led to her romp with a doorman. Her role as the blissfully naive friend might be diminished by next season as she's finally realizing she's a catch.
As empowering as this show is in its representation of post-grad girls, it also hosts two of the more complex young male characters on television. Adam (Adam Driver) is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Before Hannah broke up with him, I thought that was a major step forward for her after the way Adam treated her in Season 1. But it turns out Hannah cast something of a spell on him, and the break-up is an epiphany as to how dependent he was on her company, and how lonely he was before she came along. When he starts dating Natalia, in many ways the polar opposite of Hannah, he kind of morphs into a modest, charming suitor and to see him have a social life removed completely from Hannah made me appreciate his character a lot more. But as it became more apparent that he has won the lottery with Natalia, the shadow of Hannah clearly still haunts him, and, in one of the truly shocking scenes in recent tv history, he violates Natalia in a hmm... irreparable manner. He shows his true colors here, setting up a trial run of his demeaning sexual taste that Hannah was game for, and understandably Natalia is not receptive. Driver's performance in this scene is something of a revelation, both monstrous and pitiful. After this purposeful destruction of a healthy relationship, it would seem that the closing image of season 2 with Adam and Hannah back together is appropriate because they deserve each other and also because the writers blatantly want these two to be the next great tv romance. I don't know, I think they're both infinitely more interesting when they have completely independent story lines. Ray, on the other hand, is clearly on the path to maybe exclusively independent story lines next season. Certainly, the least brushed-over character from season 1, we learn that he's considerably older than the rest of the group, and thinks of himself as a loser. He comes off as an arty-academic type who's anti-establishment, but that's just his own self-justification of why he's a broke thirty-something coffee house manager. He's embarrassed to tell Shoshanna that he's basically homeless without her, and he weeps for himself on a bench in Staten Island, but he also is paralyzed by fear and never really tries to solve his increasing self-pity. He chooses instead to deride other peoples' lifestyles, thus pushing Shoshanna further and further away. The foundation of their dating was based on him deflowering her, and her innocence was appealing to him because he felt he had a sense of influence in all walks of life as her first. But once that wool covering her eyes slipped off, there was no concealing his massive lack of ambition and general disregard for New Yorkers closer to Shoshanna's age. As Shoshanna tells him, "I can't be the only thing you like."
The most noticeable improvement from Season 1 to 2 is the craft of Dunham's directing. The beautifully composed images, from Hannah's profile as her OCD creeps in to the knockoff of the iconic Manhattan shot with Ray on a bench looking out at the skyline with the stray dog, propelled the show to feel cinematic. Many of these episodes could be short films by themselves, and that is hopefully the allure to fellow promising filmmakers with unique voices to come to television. In addition, Dunham's camera is always reminding us that NYC is a main character as well. The impatience these girls possess when it comes to their dreams is directly related to the city they live in. The weight of making it in the Big Apple is constantly resting squarely on their shoulders, and each day that passes they feel their knees buckle a little more. After all, no one moves to NYC to just squeak by, there are a lot cheaper places to make just enough money. The best thing the show has going for it is its genuine portrayal of young adults trying to find their place in the world, particularly those pursuing a career in the arts. We all know these girls, those who have a staggering amount of self-interest. But, as Marnie says, "I'm on a journey, and it's my journey". They aren't going to be this way forever.
The show's calling card may be its sex scenes, none of which are glamorous. In fact, quite the opposite: they're grueling, uncomfortable, messy. But that's life, rarely does anything go exactly the way we envisioned it. And with each sticky, awkward romp or failed job opportunity comes a little wisdom for next time. After all, getting it together is always a work in progress.
-Rex
"Girls" Season 2 is available on HBO VOD
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