Girls isn’t just
about Hannah Horvath, depressingly self-centered protagonist, but rather it’s often just as much about her former roommate
and nominal best friend (and equally selfish, narcissistic human being) Marnie.
The last two episodes their relationship has been sidelined, which make sense
since they’re no longer roommates. There was a single scene in each episode
where Hannah spewed out the polite bullshit of “I’m so busy” as to why they
haven’t hung out as much since their fallout last season. However, there’s more
to it than these simple epitaphs holding back the two of them from continuing
their bond uninhibited, and it’s not merely that Elijah and Marnie had the
obligatory awkward sex scene written into the contracts of the regulars of the
series. The simple fact, as the surprisingly spot-on quote from downstairs
neighbor and recovered drug addict Laird notes, is that Hannah and Marnie aren’t
exactly the most suitable pair of people for eachother. Their deep seeded
self-interest and their naiveté about other people’s feelings and the way the
world works is easily combustible when put under enough pressure (as we already
saw happen last season).
This blow-up didn’t need the spark of Elijah and Marnie boning for an infinitesimal amount of time. Some action or event was going to lead to this down the road. However, no matter the cause of the blow-up, Hannah probably wouldn’t have reacted much better had she been cocaine-free when the big reveal came. She might not have headed over right away to pseudo-intellectual poser Booth Jonathan’s apartment and created an even more disastrous mess than already existed. But she would have confronted Marnie and it in all likelihood would have ended very, very badly.
This aspect of the episode intrigued me immensely, but elsewhere a fair amount felt cartoonish. The internet company “JazzHate” (its name bizarre and funny, but stretching credulity) is oddly broad and unbelievable. I totally buy into Hannah attempting to get a job with some company; I buy even more so that at best she’d only manage to scrounge up a freelancing gig. However, it begins to descend into a Dhali’s melting clock like self-aware oddness when the interviewer Jame (Not Jamie!) provides freelance suggestions, including having a threeway with people on Craig’s List, and, the one she eventually attempts, to write about her experiences trying cocaine. The strangeness of this scene isn’t from the typical observation of small character beats or the peculiar nuances of something (which the series is very good at writing), but the wholesale imagination of a company whose motto is: “This is where the magic happens” (a joke hard to describe in fullness without the visual imagery and Jame’s explanation accompanying it). However, Hannah is so desperate for a job and money that she goes to her junkie neighbor Laird (who of course until Marnie brings it up Hannah didn’t realize was a junkie but thought instead he had leprosy) and has him buy her cocaine.
Similarly, Booth Jonathan is an almost implausibly fucking weird dude who isn’t cool, but rather just deeply dickish and even possibly disturbed. If his pet project art designs have any indication (the dollhouse inspired by newspaper accounts of murder featuring the iconic Shining phrase “Redrum” would suggest Marnie is an idiot for having an interest in this guy), the guy is just a weirdo with not much real talent (WHAT IN FUCKS NAME WAS THAT BOOTH WITH THE TELEVISIONS??!!). But as Hannah notes, Marnie is perhaps a little “obsessed” with the guy. She finds (in that young twentysomething way) his art to be transcendental or “fucking genius” when it’s really just empty and pointless and makes no real meaningful statement. But as we’ve seen the past (e.g. last season's "All the Adventurous Women Do", in fact, where we first meet Booth) Marnie is very naïve, hopeless and desperate when it comes to relationships. She’s emotionally unstable and vulnerable. She’s susceptible to the charms of people confident enough (and honestly skeevey and douchey enough as well) to tell her what they want her to do and be. She became frustrated with her relationship with Charlie because Charlie was a “yes man” who didn’t challenge her or push her to be anything she didn’t want to be (and at the same time now, she truly does miss Charlie being in her life and the hole now left in his wake). So of course she has the creepiest, most awkward, most unsatisfying sex of the week with Booth (who has her describe a creepy, blank gazed China doll he has placed watching them fuck). It’s totally in-character that Marnie would do this sort of thing, but Booth reads like a walking cliché, spouting off such string thin faux intellectualism as “The early 90’s were so suburban”.
If we’re being honest, all this previous build up made the episode into the least strong of the first three episodes thus far this season. At least, that is until Hannah arrives at Booth’s apartment to yell feverishly at Marnie. That final scene feels like it put everything that came before it into sharper focus, as if everything prior was “all prologue” to the oncoming train wreck. It actually took me completely by surprise that Elijah’s coke-fueled state would push him over the edge and lead him to confess to Hannah that he slept with Marnie. It’s the type of plot development that in the hands of a lesser show they’d drag out melodramatically, hanging it like a dark plague over all the forthcoming events of the season. However, Dunham pulls the rug out from under us and provides a far more interesting and exciting direction for the series that will hopefully lead to some much needed exploration of the relationship between Hannah and Marnie.
I haven’t even gotten to the best part of this blow-up, which is the piece of dialogue which provides this episode with its title. “May be you’re not the good friend and maybe I’m not the bad friend!” Hannah accusingly sneers at Marnie and a heartbroken Marnie has no course of action but to stand there and take the piling on of crap against her. It’s all true to an extent but it’s done so tactlessly and mean spiritedly that it once against makes Hannah look like a total asshole and leads our sympathies to shift to Marnie. I have my qualms with Marnie, but when she blurts out, “Alright! I’m a bad friend,” it’s a painful and sad moment that’s coming from an incredibly damaged individual.
Drugged up Hannah leaves infuriated and unfulfilled, not even able to enjoy her coke-filled adventures from earlier in the episode, and so she wants to forget her troubles and bury them. What better way to achieve this than to hook up with some random schlub? Well, perhaps, that rando shouldn’t be your downstairs neighbor (who has a weird stalkerish obsession with you). But Hannah has never been one to shy away from doing something rather stupid and questionable, and this is actually perhaps her least eye raising action to date. In the wake of breaking up with Sandy, unhinging Adam, and falling out with Marnie, it’s not entirely surprising, but it’s hard not to cry out: “Why Hannah?!” Hannah may never learn, and her taking to heart a life lession in full would probably make this series stale and unmemorable; however, she’ll still coke up and rage out even when there’s no sensible logic to it. But then again, who needs logic when you’re in your twenties?
Stray Observations:
-“Yea, all the junkies at my place hang out by the mailbox” – Why is there not more Shoshanna?! She is the best underutilized character. We do, however, learn that she’s still with Ray and has the sort of relationship complaints next to no one cares about (Hannah, in perfect character beat, ignores Shosh and cuts her off midway to discuss her cocaine plans).
This blow-up didn’t need the spark of Elijah and Marnie boning for an infinitesimal amount of time. Some action or event was going to lead to this down the road. However, no matter the cause of the blow-up, Hannah probably wouldn’t have reacted much better had she been cocaine-free when the big reveal came. She might not have headed over right away to pseudo-intellectual poser Booth Jonathan’s apartment and created an even more disastrous mess than already existed. But she would have confronted Marnie and it in all likelihood would have ended very, very badly.
This aspect of the episode intrigued me immensely, but elsewhere a fair amount felt cartoonish. The internet company “JazzHate” (its name bizarre and funny, but stretching credulity) is oddly broad and unbelievable. I totally buy into Hannah attempting to get a job with some company; I buy even more so that at best she’d only manage to scrounge up a freelancing gig. However, it begins to descend into a Dhali’s melting clock like self-aware oddness when the interviewer Jame (Not Jamie!) provides freelance suggestions, including having a threeway with people on Craig’s List, and, the one she eventually attempts, to write about her experiences trying cocaine. The strangeness of this scene isn’t from the typical observation of small character beats or the peculiar nuances of something (which the series is very good at writing), but the wholesale imagination of a company whose motto is: “This is where the magic happens” (a joke hard to describe in fullness without the visual imagery and Jame’s explanation accompanying it). However, Hannah is so desperate for a job and money that she goes to her junkie neighbor Laird (who of course until Marnie brings it up Hannah didn’t realize was a junkie but thought instead he had leprosy) and has him buy her cocaine.
Similarly, Booth Jonathan is an almost implausibly fucking weird dude who isn’t cool, but rather just deeply dickish and even possibly disturbed. If his pet project art designs have any indication (the dollhouse inspired by newspaper accounts of murder featuring the iconic Shining phrase “Redrum” would suggest Marnie is an idiot for having an interest in this guy), the guy is just a weirdo with not much real talent (WHAT IN FUCKS NAME WAS THAT BOOTH WITH THE TELEVISIONS??!!). But as Hannah notes, Marnie is perhaps a little “obsessed” with the guy. She finds (in that young twentysomething way) his art to be transcendental or “fucking genius” when it’s really just empty and pointless and makes no real meaningful statement. But as we’ve seen the past (e.g. last season's "All the Adventurous Women Do", in fact, where we first meet Booth) Marnie is very naïve, hopeless and desperate when it comes to relationships. She’s emotionally unstable and vulnerable. She’s susceptible to the charms of people confident enough (and honestly skeevey and douchey enough as well) to tell her what they want her to do and be. She became frustrated with her relationship with Charlie because Charlie was a “yes man” who didn’t challenge her or push her to be anything she didn’t want to be (and at the same time now, she truly does miss Charlie being in her life and the hole now left in his wake). So of course she has the creepiest, most awkward, most unsatisfying sex of the week with Booth (who has her describe a creepy, blank gazed China doll he has placed watching them fuck). It’s totally in-character that Marnie would do this sort of thing, but Booth reads like a walking cliché, spouting off such string thin faux intellectualism as “The early 90’s were so suburban”.
If we’re being honest, all this previous build up made the episode into the least strong of the first three episodes thus far this season. At least, that is until Hannah arrives at Booth’s apartment to yell feverishly at Marnie. That final scene feels like it put everything that came before it into sharper focus, as if everything prior was “all prologue” to the oncoming train wreck. It actually took me completely by surprise that Elijah’s coke-fueled state would push him over the edge and lead him to confess to Hannah that he slept with Marnie. It’s the type of plot development that in the hands of a lesser show they’d drag out melodramatically, hanging it like a dark plague over all the forthcoming events of the season. However, Dunham pulls the rug out from under us and provides a far more interesting and exciting direction for the series that will hopefully lead to some much needed exploration of the relationship between Hannah and Marnie.
I haven’t even gotten to the best part of this blow-up, which is the piece of dialogue which provides this episode with its title. “May be you’re not the good friend and maybe I’m not the bad friend!” Hannah accusingly sneers at Marnie and a heartbroken Marnie has no course of action but to stand there and take the piling on of crap against her. It’s all true to an extent but it’s done so tactlessly and mean spiritedly that it once against makes Hannah look like a total asshole and leads our sympathies to shift to Marnie. I have my qualms with Marnie, but when she blurts out, “Alright! I’m a bad friend,” it’s a painful and sad moment that’s coming from an incredibly damaged individual.
Drugged up Hannah leaves infuriated and unfulfilled, not even able to enjoy her coke-filled adventures from earlier in the episode, and so she wants to forget her troubles and bury them. What better way to achieve this than to hook up with some random schlub? Well, perhaps, that rando shouldn’t be your downstairs neighbor (who has a weird stalkerish obsession with you). But Hannah has never been one to shy away from doing something rather stupid and questionable, and this is actually perhaps her least eye raising action to date. In the wake of breaking up with Sandy, unhinging Adam, and falling out with Marnie, it’s not entirely surprising, but it’s hard not to cry out: “Why Hannah?!” Hannah may never learn, and her taking to heart a life lession in full would probably make this series stale and unmemorable; however, she’ll still coke up and rage out even when there’s no sensible logic to it. But then again, who needs logic when you’re in your twenties?
Stray Observations:
-“Yea, all the junkies at my place hang out by the mailbox” – Why is there not more Shoshanna?! She is the best underutilized character. We do, however, learn that she’s still with Ray and has the sort of relationship complaints next to no one cares about (Hannah, in perfect character beat, ignores Shosh and cuts her off midway to discuss her cocaine plans).
-Also: next to none Jessa, who is illegally selling wares of
clothing on the street in front of her apartment.
-“I get that it takes what it takes to get through life” –
Hannah feigns to know what it’s like to be a drug addict.
-“You work here… that’s depressing” – Booth may be a total
weird dick, but he has a point. I also can’t stop thinking about Elijah’s
beautifully spot-on description of Marnie’s work outfit from last episode: “Slutty Von Trapp”. It
is burnt into my mind.
-Apparently there’s a proper dress code for doing cocaine. I
never would have guessed. Elijah describes his outfit choice for Hannah: “It’s
inspired by a girl I went to middle school with who fucked her uncle and dad”.
-“She’s feeling sassy…?” “No she’s sad” - Does it really
matter? I’ve heard of fetishes before but …
-“I was supposed to be your last” – There’s a level of new
patheticness to this whole statement. How insecure do you have to be that this
holds some value for you?
-Laird wants Hannah and Elijah to take his heroin away from
him. Elijah is very enthusiastic about this prospect, while Hannah is not.
Grade: B-
Grade: B-
No comments:
Post a Comment