I haven’t been writing regularly about Girls, but not because I haven’t been enjoying it. I’m very impressed with the show’s first season, and look forward to watching it every week. But with Mad Men reviews to write and so much Sunday night TV, the show has slipped between the cracks.

 

I felt like this week’s episode seemed like a season finale, but that’s not until next week. But it was a stellar episode.

Most people who write about or talk about Girls eventually touch on the subject of how unlikable Hannah is. She’s self-centered, self-destructive and says the wrong thing at the wrong time. She thinks about herself a lot in that way that most people who are talented writers like her do. Some of that ugliness I recognize, since there’s a certain amount of delusional self-involvement required to think that the things you write on Twitter are funny, interesting or worth reading. And yes, I write a lot of things on Twitter.

This week, Hannah’s already low self-esteem was seriously shaken when a less talented student she’d attended school with had a book published. The lucky girl’s boyfriend had killed himself, which everyone knows is memoir gold.

Hannah ran into an old teacher there and was asked to do a reading, but with her shaken confidence she bailed on the essay she planned to read and performed something much less genuine and much worse.

The thing we really need to talk about here is the fight between Hannah and Marnie. It’s been festering all season long, and the payoff was rich. It was painfully real in that way that makes you remember your ugliest moment and feel bad about it. I’ve been both of those girls. I’ve been a terrible, selfish friend and I’ve had friends be terrible and inconsiderate to me. And it looks like that. That scene, it was an accomplishment everyone involved should be proud of.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Couchtime/~3/eDVf44wNte0/