HBO series showcases personality, crises, flaws of female leads
Who run the world? Girls.
The now pixie-cut and normally nude queen of 20-something sarcastic wit, Lena Dunham sparkled and shined as the voice of her generation, or at least a generation, with her HBO summer series “Girls.”
It shocked in its honest and awkward portrayal of bad sex, real bodies and the sometimes selfish musings of the young and struggling New York City woman. The girls have been likened to younger versions of “Sex and the City’s” Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha, with a few new personality quirks, and the show’s social media sphere has created a cult following that’s evolved into a “Girls” culture.
The second season, which premiered Sunday night, has started to weave the same story of four distinctly different personalities that all loop together through Bushwick, Brooklyn warehouse parties, family planning clinics and girl-on-girl makeouts on very expensive white carpets.
Dunham, still smitten over two Golden Globes for lead actress and TV comedy, is the creator, director and lead of the series. Her character, Hannah Horvath, has been characterized by almost, kinda getting it together — she does the lipstick but leaves her forehead greasy, eats cupcakes in bathrooms and when she’s not wearing an ill-fitting, oddly styled ensemble, she’s naked.
Last season ended with Hannah sitting on a beach, eating a piece of leftover cake from the wild and charming Jessa’s (Jemima Kirke) surprise wedding. After a fight with her boyfriend, Adam — where she revealed, or shouted, she’s been 13 pounds overweight her entire life and it’s been terrible — he got side-swiped by a truck.
This one opens with Hannah spooning her college boyfriend and new roommate Elijah (Andrew Rannells), who is, in fact, gay. Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet), the type-A posh princess who lost her virginity last season, waves her sage stick through her pink apartment and thanks the higher powers “for all of the gifts I have already received like a keen, mathematical mind and fairly fast-growing hair.”
Marnie (Allison Williams, as in NBC’s Brian Williams’ daughter) broke up with her longtime college boyfriend Charlie (Christopher Abbott) midway through the first season, and now she’s lost her job. She’s the polished, pencil skirt-wearing pretty girl trying to put all of the pieces back together.
Three minutes in, Hannah’s naked — and having sex. Adam’s in a full leg cast and peeing into pots. And still madly in love with Hannah. But she has moved on to Sandy, played by Donald Glover/Childish Gambino. Dunham was criticized for her previously all-white cast, and this interracial relationship has been called her “finger to her critics.”
We love Hannah for her lack of standards and total misplays in love. She says she’s going to do things differently — she’s not going to make booty calls, or intertwine her life with Sandy’s. By the end of the first episode, she wants to borrow “The Fountainhead.”
Despite his varied flaws and wardrobe of strictly too-short running shorts, Adam gets the sympathy card from the start. He had one of the takeaway quotes of the night with, “When you love someone you don’t have to be nice all of the time.”
The play between Hannah and Elijah is the most fun development of the new year. The two plan themed events at their apartment: a fondue night, a Japanese snack night and a “Gertrude Steiny” kind of evening. And to have the sassy humor of “The New Normal” star is an added treat to the mix.
The episode defines each of the characters in an extreme way. It plays on old, loved personalities but also uncovers new weaknesses. Shoshanna sings Sean Kingston’s “Beautiful Girls” alone on a karaoke machine in the corner of a crowded party, and Marnie and Elijah struggle to be comfortable with the things that define them most.
HBO’s teaser for the second episode unwraps a few things lacking in the first, namely Jessa. She had about two minutes of screen time Sunday night, and really, she needs more. Also, Dunham’s real-life mom, Laurie Simmons, makes a cameo.
Girls, we run this mother.