TV Recap: Girls Season 2 Retrospective (part 1)

Lena Dunham

Welcome back to the TV Recap column for the Golden Globe-winning HBO series Girls. Join me as I capture the exploits of the Lena Dunham-penned series as it ventures through another season of scandal, accidents, and life in general. Will it be another great season for the Tiny Furniture director and her growing cast of friends? Tune back every Friday to find out more.

Whatever ideas you had going into season two of Girls were probably destroyed real quick this season. What I find fascinating is how dark and adult the show got. To just look back on season one, the problems were more central They were based on relationships and establishing these characters as loose cannons. However, nobody was having panic attacks and getting into life threatening situations. It was a pleasant first season that almost felt concrete in exploiting Hannah's (Lena Dunham) sexual and social life as well as convincing us that her friends may be better than her. Girls season one was pleasant and surprisingly effective.

Then the episode ends and Adam (Adam Driver) is in the hospital with a broken leg. Who knew that this was going to establish a season in which someone goes potentially deaf, there is a very dark sex scene, interracial dating, and most importantly Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) becomes the most interesting character of the bunch. It is a baffling scenario, but somehow season two managed to reach new highs and lows in the narrative structure and proves why Girls is one of the best shows on TV, though not necessarily a comedy.

I feel like Girls is the estrogen-charged version of Louie, provided that there was a more structural narrative style. It wasn't much so in season one, but like Louie, Girls went to ambitiously dark places and forced you to feel uncomfortable. This isn't a comedy anymore. It may be funny at times, but this seems almost too grounded in realism to be more than a portrait of how this generation struggles to make it through everyday. In that regards, by moving one step further than just being a pleasant look at relationships, this show has sealed itself in a pantheon of classic TV.

Am I saying that season two was the best that the show could do as a whole? Not really. Season one was smoother, but that was also because it didn't feel as risky. True, there was an abortion-themed episode, but it didn't necessarily feel like it was breaking taboo outside of Lena Dunham consistently being naked. Season two also featured the show reaching a point of grating episodes, including a trilogy in which characters did nothing but complain about their lives. True, it established how dark the show could get, but it only felt like filler, considering that the season ended with more desired questions getting answered than solved.

Left to right: Dunham, Zosia Mamet, and Alison Williams

However, the show opening with a sex scene between Elijah (Andrew Rannells) and Marnie (Allison Williams) was a fascinatingly edgy way for the show to prove that we were going to dark places. Adam would end up in jail and we'd get to see Jessa (Jemima Kirke) have a total breakdown on both the family and relationship side of things. Nobody ended up getting out of this without some scars. If it wasn't for the feel that things were delayed, this may have felt more enjoyable. Of course, life isn't always straight forward, which is what I guess the show was trying to get to with unconventional methods.

Where did the show go wrong? I'll start with "Bad Friend," in which we meet Laird (Jon Glaser), who deals Hannah drugs so she can write a piece for jazzhate. There is something odd. Whereas Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) doing drugs last season was funny, this was just depressing. Watching Hannah and Elijah dance, sweating in a room just reminded me that Lena Dunham is a painful person to watch do drugs. Add in that the last half in which Hannah vents to Marnie at Booth's (Jorma Taccone) place just felt too much like a soap opera.

Then it evolved into the trilogy that I keep referencing: "One Man's Trash," "Boys," and "Video Games." While I am a big fan of "Boys" just for giving us a sense of Ray (Alex Karpovsky) outside of the Shoshanna relationship by forcing to have a normal conversation with Adam, the episode did end with a pretty blunt "what am I doing with my life?" This proved to be annoying, especially since everything was better established when Hannah got her OCD and book deadline story line going. Those established in a less blatant way how she is a nervous wreck.

I still believe that "One Man's Trash" may not be the worst, but is the most inessential story in the show's running. Besides establishing things worse than how we have heard them since, it just felt like a meandering excuse for Patrick Wilson to appear on the show. This season also suffered from the pacing issues, which saw the show build up a story ("It's a Shame About Ray") just to not resolve it in the following episode ("One Man's Trash"). As ambitious as this could be, it just was handled so poorly, especially in comparison to how Enlightened handled it during the same Sunday night scheduling. 

Still, moments like "It's a Shame About Ray" are amazing moments of what the show could be. It reveals a lot of concepts about the characters, including that Ray is homeless. It does it with very well written dialogue that may be the show's peak in quality. It raises the bar and teases that everything will get better by cutting off relationships. However, as the show has proven by the end, Marnie and Charlie were meant to be, if only to watch Marnie become a gold digger. I am worried about revisiting this episode just because it feels contradictory to the final episode. However, I still believe it was essential in making Ray feel like a more respectable character.

What is most impressive is how I finally learned to stop worrying and love Shoshanna. I have considered her to be the weakest character. Last season, she was nothing but a gag that made no sense. When it was revealed that it was because she was meant to be secondary, it made sense. That is why I feel like giving her more of a personality here shows what she can do. By essentially dating and then dumping Ray, I feel like she has become a natural character that is as flawed as the rest of them. Also, she feels more human and conflicted, which I feel stronger about because of how she evolved from a gag.

Jon Glaser

Another reason that this show's second season was amazing was because of how it expanded the universe. While the initial cameo of Donald Glover was very disappointing and mostly established to appease internet complainers, the world introduced us to a world outside of the Girls collective. We met parental figures, new bosses, Adam's AA group, and even people that live in the same building. I feel that it is a strength of the show to expand outward, if just to help us understand what is around them. It doesn't always work, as I royally hated Jessa's parents, but it helped the show to tackle a deeper understanding of who these characters are by forcing them into awkward conversations.

I have probably said it many times, but I want to see more of Laird in the upcoming season. He seems like a well rounded person that just had a bad past with drugs. He also seems to be above Hannah, which is a fascinating concept. I don't know how he will fit into the future story, but from his two appearances, he has added a nice new character who is familiar enough, but not close enough to be one of those guys like Adam or Ray who have too much emotionally invested to yell at people. He also seems less sabotaging than Elijah, which I felt risked the show into potential soap opera area.

Overall, I will probably call this hit-and-miss season a success and I am very excited to see where the show goes in the third. However, with the way things are going, I won't be surprise if Hannah in a psych ward is involved. I also worry that Ray is going to be written off of the show, just because he is a fascinating character and moving him to a new location is a logical enough reason to claim his absence. Maybe Shoshanna will continue to date random people. Maybe Jessa will be gone forever. Marnie and Charlie (Christopher Abbott) are probably doomed. 

Most of all, this is something I have never addressed, but is it possible that we'll see Hannah the teenager? We have alluded to it numerous times throughout the show's running. Even Adam brings it up in the final episode. While it will also be interesting to mix in legal battles with her boss (John Cameron Mitchell), I feel like the show is getting more and more personal. Most of all, I believe that we'll find out about Hannah's potential anorexia. Think about it. There have been two references this season about Hannah being skinny in times of crises. Either it is self-delusion, or it is leading us to something greater. I feel the show has been an expert in planting seeds, so I believe anorexia is a potential plot point next season.

Come back on Saturday for part two, in which I analyze each episode and rank them in terms of quality.