I learned a few important lessons from the second season of Girls: (1) Inventing an app will not only make a man wealthy but also inexplicably hotter and better at giving head; (2) E-Book editors enjoy quoting Tennessee Williams but hate reading about “Jane Austen type” friendships; (3) And when all of your female friends desert you, you should just wait for fun. to start playing, and a shirtless white knight will sprint through the streets of Brooklyn and break down a door simply for the pleasure of holding you. Female friendships, I’ve learned, are so 2012. Continue reading “Bros Before Hoes”
If all you had to do to get a male New Yorker to commit was ask him to be your boyfriend, NPR wouldn’t have just run a story about the ever increasing number of never-married females populating the five boroughs. Which is to say, I don’t buy Girls’ transformation of Adam from a never-returns-a-text canoe builder to the fantasy boyfriend who professes his loves and wants to cohabitate after three weeks. I dated the canoe builders when I was younger (in my case, it was a potato farmer), and they didn’t magically become commitment enthusiasts after spending a few weeks having sex and listening to my gender studies theories. They transformed into ex-boyfriends.
Adam Driver demonstrates great comedic timing and a unique ability to use his body to delineate character, and I’m glad Dunham is giving him material beyond amateur porn monologues. But where did the douchey, shirtless Adam go? When did he grow a vagina? Why so much plaid? Even though I appreciate the climactic Bushwick scene in which Adam slams Hannah for her self-absorption (after she slams her own nose into the pavement), I don’t believe the show earns their final brawl. Hannah obviously needs to end the season pushing away a man so Dunham can highlight Hannah’s inability to view individuals as more than creative fodder, but she elides the arc of the Hannah/Adam relationship to arrive at this conclusion. So I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it any more than I buy the surprise wedding between Jessa and that guy from Bridesmaids. Continue reading “The Taming of the Douche”
The Internet’s collective consciousness expressed grave concern when Peggy Olson stepped onto the elevator of Sterling Cooper Draper Price for the last time. Would this descent also represent her exit from Mad Men? To which I replied, “no, Internet, no.” This concern was not unfounded because the show has been known to discard or greatly diminish the screen time of seemingly essential characters (e.g., Sal, Paul, even Betty). Nevertheless, I doubted that Peggy would vanish or pop up as a Hari Krishna because she is central to the show’s understanding of mid-century American culture. While Don embodies the American desire for reinvention and illusion, Peggy represents the hyper-ambitious spirit and transitional energy of the late sixties far more than any other character—particularly more than the woman who replaced her for much of this season, Megan.
The Internet also seems fairly certain that the “lady’s cigarette” Peggy is testing will become Virginia Slims with the infamous tagline “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Due to Matthew Weiner’s scrupulous attention to period detail, I doubt the show will actually have Peggy create this campaign because, in real life, it was written by a man. This shouldn’t be surprising, for what workingwoman would have considered 1968 a watershed moment in women’s liberation? You were still fired if you got pregnant and couldn’t charge a husband with rape in most states. You could wear Go-go boots though. Continue reading “Lights Out”
