Welcome back to another round of Girls TV Recap. This year, we will follow season five and the perils that Hannah (Lena Dunham) and her friends face as they grow up and learn how to be mature... hopefully. What new experiences will they face? Come back every Friday for the latest recap including thoughts and predictions for each episode. Will it remain one of the best comedies on TV? You'll have to read to find out.
While the premiere episode gave us a look into the Girls universe, there's very little that we saw that could be construed as being new or improvable for the characters. In "Good Man," the team returns to their daily, menial tasks and discover that while they have moved on from their stagnant past, maybe things aren't much better. With several plots going on, including the return of Hannah's parents, it's a wrenching episode that captures the feeling that while the show has pushed its characters further away, they're still very much problematic.
The episode opens with Hannah becoming worried that there is an intruder. She sends Fran (Jake Lacy) to check, but it turns out to be his psychotic friend. They move in with Elijah (Andrew Rannells), who still has complicated feelings for Hannah and works for Ray (Alex Karpovsky) at his coffee shop location, which is adjacent from another coffee shop called Helvetica - of whom bothers Ray for not putting cups on their coffees and ends up having customers steal from Ray. The payoff is that Ray upsets an androgynous woman by mistaking her gender, forcing him to leave without any catharsis.
Meanwhile, Hannah works at the school still and is confronted for teaching the kids literature from Phillip Roth. This doesn't go over well, but she immediately shrugs it off when her father (Peter Scolari) calls while sounding wounded and weak. It is discovered that he hooked up with a gay man online and lost his wallet. During this time, Hannah receives a call from her mother (Becky Ann Baker) wishing to have a divorce. Hannah calls Elijah for solace, though Elijah shrugs it off for his own endeavors, leaving the Horvath family to muddle in their own problems.
Meanwhile, Adam (Adam Driver) is doing fine while moving on. He visits his sister Caroline (Gaby Hoffman) and her boyfriend Laird (Jon Glaser), who have a child. Laird is all keen on Adam having a child, which upsets him. Adam decides to hang out with Jessa (Jemima Kirke), but the lines become more confusing as the day goes on. Between going to an amusement part and uncomfortably avoiding eye contact while masturbating, they try to make things work - only to discover that maybe it will be hard to remain as platonic as they would like.
Rating: 4 out of 5
And with that, this is how the fifth season kicks into gear. As great as "Wedding Day" was, I usually enjoy episodes that somehow feel like they have more of a driving force to the overall narrative. There's a lot of compelling points to be made throughout this episode. The most of which is Fran, who seems like a nice guy but is inevitably such a secondary figure in this universe that he hasn't exactly clicked with any member of the ongoing cast. At most, Elijah seems to put up with him. While it is important, he is now on his third episode with Girls, and there's not a whole lot of sense as to why we should care about Fran. Maybe plain and boring is the way to go for this character, but you really do want to understand what Hannah saw in him at some point.
Though it is also tragic to note that Hannah has to pretty much be the hero to many people's problems during this episode. The most noteworthy is her father's, whose announcement of being gay last season was an effective shift in the series. However, the slow and depressing fall into a loveless marriage never overshadowed the rest of the series. To have him pretty much turn to Hannah to be the parent is itself tragic and makes you wonder how Hannah is going to do since she is likely to be the parent in these characters' lives, even though she is younger and isn't too far off from being the one who had to be thrown out without rent money a mere four seasons ago. Of course, she is the one who turns to Philip Roth for literature inspiration in a youthful class, but the rest of her seems to be in for an unfortunately bleak season.
Among other things is the strange and ongoing relationship of Adam and Jessa. While there's a sense that Jessa doesn't want to take on the baggage of Adam, there's an ongoing sense that maybe he just needs someone to love. He tried that last season, but things clearly didn't pan out. The last time that these two got together, it didn't exactly end well. Both were arrested and Hannah needed to bail them out. Considering that Adam doesn't even see her this episode, there's a good chance that any of their problems would only be resolved by them working together. So while it isn't a relationship that is likely to work, you'll have to give them credit to just go simple and awkward at home instead of peeing in the street.
If there's one great recurring motif throughout the episode, it is everyone's insistence to push off what they're doing to focus on someone else's problems. Helvetica's customers go to Ray's to solve their lid problem. Hannah drops her job just to help her father. Elijah, who is the least involved, does likewise at the expense of annoying Ray. The level of irresponsibility that comes in the confident moments is staggering and evidence that maybe nobody has really grown up. In honesty, I do hope that there's more to this season besides more silly and characteristically lazy moments. Still, the episode packs on the themes nicely, even nicely reflecting Hannah's attraction to Roth by the novel's Jewish relationship problems. There's a lot of great subtext to unpile here, especially since the intimidation to grow up lingers over most of the episode.
Girls has another solid episode. I will be honest when I say that maybe last season's choice to go away to college was ultimately a detractor. It was much deserved, but it definitely kept the show from doing what it does best, which is showing the complexities of adult life. It is a relief that Hannah does seem capable as an adult, though you'd wish everyone in her life wasn't so intimidating to her in the other direction. I still like the show and feel like of any character, Hannah will be the one to change the most. However, I still want to believe that there will be more to the season than Hannah dealing with her parents' divorce. As rich as it will be to the story, I do think that there's something interesting to be taken away from the time jump and the missing characters. What is Marnie and Shoshanna up to? Who knows, but hopefully they'll come back soon.
The episode opens with Hannah becoming worried that there is an intruder. She sends Fran (Jake Lacy) to check, but it turns out to be his psychotic friend. They move in with Elijah (Andrew Rannells), who still has complicated feelings for Hannah and works for Ray (Alex Karpovsky) at his coffee shop location, which is adjacent from another coffee shop called Helvetica - of whom bothers Ray for not putting cups on their coffees and ends up having customers steal from Ray. The payoff is that Ray upsets an androgynous woman by mistaking her gender, forcing him to leave without any catharsis.
Meanwhile, Hannah works at the school still and is confronted for teaching the kids literature from Phillip Roth. This doesn't go over well, but she immediately shrugs it off when her father (Peter Scolari) calls while sounding wounded and weak. It is discovered that he hooked up with a gay man online and lost his wallet. During this time, Hannah receives a call from her mother (Becky Ann Baker) wishing to have a divorce. Hannah calls Elijah for solace, though Elijah shrugs it off for his own endeavors, leaving the Horvath family to muddle in their own problems.
Meanwhile, Adam (Adam Driver) is doing fine while moving on. He visits his sister Caroline (Gaby Hoffman) and her boyfriend Laird (Jon Glaser), who have a child. Laird is all keen on Adam having a child, which upsets him. Adam decides to hang out with Jessa (Jemima Kirke), but the lines become more confusing as the day goes on. Between going to an amusement part and uncomfortably avoiding eye contact while masturbating, they try to make things work - only to discover that maybe it will be hard to remain as platonic as they would like.
Rating: 4 out of 5
And with that, this is how the fifth season kicks into gear. As great as "Wedding Day" was, I usually enjoy episodes that somehow feel like they have more of a driving force to the overall narrative. There's a lot of compelling points to be made throughout this episode. The most of which is Fran, who seems like a nice guy but is inevitably such a secondary figure in this universe that he hasn't exactly clicked with any member of the ongoing cast. At most, Elijah seems to put up with him. While it is important, he is now on his third episode with Girls, and there's not a whole lot of sense as to why we should care about Fran. Maybe plain and boring is the way to go for this character, but you really do want to understand what Hannah saw in him at some point.
Though it is also tragic to note that Hannah has to pretty much be the hero to many people's problems during this episode. The most noteworthy is her father's, whose announcement of being gay last season was an effective shift in the series. However, the slow and depressing fall into a loveless marriage never overshadowed the rest of the series. To have him pretty much turn to Hannah to be the parent is itself tragic and makes you wonder how Hannah is going to do since she is likely to be the parent in these characters' lives, even though she is younger and isn't too far off from being the one who had to be thrown out without rent money a mere four seasons ago. Of course, she is the one who turns to Philip Roth for literature inspiration in a youthful class, but the rest of her seems to be in for an unfortunately bleak season.
Among other things is the strange and ongoing relationship of Adam and Jessa. While there's a sense that Jessa doesn't want to take on the baggage of Adam, there's an ongoing sense that maybe he just needs someone to love. He tried that last season, but things clearly didn't pan out. The last time that these two got together, it didn't exactly end well. Both were arrested and Hannah needed to bail them out. Considering that Adam doesn't even see her this episode, there's a good chance that any of their problems would only be resolved by them working together. So while it isn't a relationship that is likely to work, you'll have to give them credit to just go simple and awkward at home instead of peeing in the street.
If there's one great recurring motif throughout the episode, it is everyone's insistence to push off what they're doing to focus on someone else's problems. Helvetica's customers go to Ray's to solve their lid problem. Hannah drops her job just to help her father. Elijah, who is the least involved, does likewise at the expense of annoying Ray. The level of irresponsibility that comes in the confident moments is staggering and evidence that maybe nobody has really grown up. In honesty, I do hope that there's more to this season besides more silly and characteristically lazy moments. Still, the episode packs on the themes nicely, even nicely reflecting Hannah's attraction to Roth by the novel's Jewish relationship problems. There's a lot of great subtext to unpile here, especially since the intimidation to grow up lingers over most of the episode.
Girls has another solid episode. I will be honest when I say that maybe last season's choice to go away to college was ultimately a detractor. It was much deserved, but it definitely kept the show from doing what it does best, which is showing the complexities of adult life. It is a relief that Hannah does seem capable as an adult, though you'd wish everyone in her life wasn't so intimidating to her in the other direction. I still like the show and feel like of any character, Hannah will be the one to change the most. However, I still want to believe that there will be more to the season than Hannah dealing with her parents' divorce. As rich as it will be to the story, I do think that there's something interesting to be taken away from the time jump and the missing characters. What is Marnie and Shoshanna up to? Who knows, but hopefully they'll come back soon.
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