This episode was the most maddening I’ve seen so far.
If you’ll recall, Adam had hand over Hannah during the first season. She’d show up at his apartment and text him and pop in and try to get him to advance their relationship. Last season ended with Adam getting hit by a car during an argument with Hannah. They broke up and now he is pining for her. He sings a song to her via Youtube and randomly shows up to her apartment in the middle of the night. As the creator of the show, Lena Dunham writes her characters however she wants. It seems her hamster took over as she wrote this certain type of 20ish girl fantasy of flipping the script on the aloof bad boy. While watching the Youtube video with her roommate, Hannah says that she used to think that Adam was “murdery in a sexy way, but what if he’s murdery in a murder way.”
Then there is the OWS mentality running deep through this season. This is no surprise since Dunham went political during the Presidential campaign. Hannah’s gay roommate, Jonah, directly confronts Sandy (Donald Glover), Hannah’s black Republican boyfriend, about his political party. It’s a confrontation that doesn’t really ring true because most people with political differences tend to ignore the elephant in the room. When the other characters talk about Sandy’s political beliefs they automatically assume that he believes every platform of the party, or that those specific platforms are the most important aspect of the party. To them, Republicanism is only about being against gay marriage. It is a caricature of what the party stands for.
The anti-capitalism is strong as well. At his recap, The Lion points out that Jessa’s new husband is shown to be a big douchebag. He’s also a big financier. He does, however, give Jessa and Hannah a basket full of puppies which they enjoy in the park. It reminded me of some things I wrote about NYC’s trickle-down culture. Evil finance makes a playground for artists and layabouts. Big finance dickhead gives these two silly girls a couple of puppies and they’re entertained for the day.
Marnie, the best looking of the girls, was fired from her hoity-toity art gallery job and is denied a job at another gallery (the owner character played by Lena Dunham’s mother in real life). She gets a job as a hostess at the Wedgebrook Club making $400 a day. Hannah questions this decision: “Isn’t that just catering to rich, old men. It’s like, I know I only make $40 a day at Grumpy’s, but, like, that’s clean money. I’ve made a choice.” Ideals over survival: how does someone survive in NYC on $40 a day?
Marnie asks which choice that is, and Hannah tells her that she’s chosen “not to cash in on my sexuality” as she stuffs her mouth with cool whip. Dunham certainly doesn’t believe that Hannah has chosen the high road rather than just being forced to it because she’s not attractive, but many young unattractive women like Hannah do believe such nonsense. They’re called feminists.
Another scene does a good job of depicting what looks like a real life exchange between an interracial couple. I like to think that Dunham is writing herself into every scene as if she wasn’t actually a writer. Her character is her real-life self minus 10 IQ points and a well-paying creative outlet.
Hannah has been pestering Sandy about reading her essay. He initially lies and says that he hadn’t had time, but he reveals that he just didn’t like the essay and didn’t want to talk to Hannah about it because it would only end up poorly. Talk turns first to Sandy’s Republicanism, and his supposed opposition to gay marriage. By the way, as we all know, blacks are heavily opposed to gay marriage even though they vote heavily Democratic. Maybe Sandy would have opposed gay marriage even if he weren’t Republican.
She continues, likely channeling Dunham and Michael Bloomberg on this one, “I’m also a little horrified by the fact that people should just be allowed to own guns.” Sandy replies that gun ownership is much more complicated than that. But that particular exchange shows us the parameters of Hannah/Dunham’s liberalism. We now know that they’re the type of liberals that are completely terrified of guns and think that every Republican hates gay people.
Dunham again depicts Hannah engaging in very typical liberal/feminist/progressive behavior: denial of reality. She tells Sandy “I never thought about the fact that you were black once.” Sandy calls her out on her lie. “I don’t live in a world where there are divisions like that,” she platitudes. Sandy points out that Hannah first brought up the fact that two out of three black men were incarcerated as an argument against his ideology. If she didn’t see race she wouldn’t have brought that up. Sandy shuts down the conversation after Hannah says “I didn’t say two out of three guys like you, I said two out of three black men.” Again, we can easily see supposedly tolerant liberals saying something like this when push does come to shove. Basically, liberals avoid conversations on race and then when their so-called racism doesn’t expose itself they take solace in the fact that they aren’t racist. And then they attack non-liberals who acknowledge racial differences from the get-go.
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this show jumped the shark HARD after season 1. virtually unwatchable now. Lena’s sudden fame has skyrocketed to her head and she’s now writing self-indulgent nonsense.
If you assume a five day workweek, $400 a day is $104,000 a year. Do hostesses at NYC’s top clubs really make that much?
i’m sure there are some who can. but it would probably be hard to get that many shifts per week. those positions are in high demand, and it’s probably in the best interest of the club to have fresh faces working the position.
A sense a point of diminishing returns having been reached with that show.
“I’m also a little horrified by the fact that people should just be allowed to own guns.”
—————————————————————
So Israeli citizens, including the jewish “settlers”, should be banned from having guns? Of course the script writer didn’t mean that! What the writer really meant to say was “I’m also a little horrified by the fact that European-Americans should just be allowed to own guns.”
Ethnic tribal motivations hidden behind leftist idealism of peace and non-violence.
Actually, it was Peter from Long Island who pointed that out.
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@moh & cr
yes, they CAN make that much in a day, and more. and no, they dont have to strip, fuck or suck, but a nice smile and a friendly demeanor gets them PAID. plus they get to pick who they DO want to fuck and suck on their own time for their own price… should they choose to go that route.
hostesses are one of the few in the front of the house that get paid a somewhat decent salary (compared to the rest), since technically they dont “usually” get tips. of course its up to management if they get a share in tipouts and if they do, then they probably get a lower salary. this is not a problem in upscale places, as the money flows like wine
that said, for a hoity toity place, you will NEVER EVER EVER see a busted ass hostess. They will ALWAYS be stunning, unless the owner’s real wife is working the door that night.
Hostesses can and DO get greased just for being pretty, or nice or pretty and nice. Men with lots of money, have no problem throwing it around. So for Mr Big, dropping $40, $80, $100 on a hostess to get him “a better table”is nothing to him. Get 3 or 4 mr bigs a night, and you doubled your salary (tax free) and didnt have to get teabagged in the process. Remember in the old days when hostesses were called maitre d’ and were almost exclusively men? Remember the old movies when a man greased another mans palm so he didnt sit next to the bathroom, or got seated faster? Well, now, they grease the girl’s palm, simply because she’s hot.
In the immortal words of some black rapper.. it aint trickin if you got it.
Alan B,
To play off of your comment a bit further, having attractive hostesses is an arms race. Nice restaurants have to have them. IIRC, “American Psycho” was full of this kind of thing. If having attractive hostesses draws in 10 more customers through the course of the evening, and if we assume that they’re dropping $100 on average (low end), then the hostess has easily earned her keep.
There is so much money made off of male lust – either through straight out sex work or through being in the proximity of attractive women. Attractive women = power. Power = attractive women.
“Her character is her real-life self minus 10 IQ points and a well-paying creative outlet.”
That sounds like a really good way of looking at it.
“this show jumped the shark HARD after season 1″
It jumped the shark in season 1. Did anybody believe that whole wedding at the end of the first season.
I actually haven’t watched an episode since about episode 4 of season 1, with the exception of the finale.
—
I didn’t see the episode, but from people’s breakdown of their political beliefs it sounds pretty accurate. This is a common pattern of being an asshole to people around you while being “a good person” to some theoretical strangers in some political context. It’s an old sin that people figured out a long time ago. Some demonic advice via Screwtape:
“Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of Germans if, at the same time, a pernicious habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets in the train. Think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the Will. It is only in so far as they reach the will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us. (I don’t, of course, mean what the patient mistakes for his will, the conscious fume and fret of resolutions and clenched teeth, but the real centre, what the Enemy calls the Heart.) All sorts of virtues painted in the fantasy or approved by the intellect or even, in some measure, loved and admired, will not keep a man from our Father’s house: indeed they may make him more amusing when he gets there,”
the thing that people like about the show and what will drive the show is the way that Dunham captures the small conversations and situations and minor quirks that fit her (my) generation. she’s good at that, i’ll admit. the dialogue is mostly true-to-life and the funny parts aren’t overwhelmingly slapstick funny in the same way that Friends tried to be funny when the show tries to get political or preachy it sucks a fat dick. when it’s two people sorting out personal issues or real-life dilemmas, it is at its strongest.
so it does have shark-jumping qualities when it tries to get too big. the wedding at the end of the season was too bold a move and seemed like a cop out. like they didn’t know what to do with one of the lead characters so they married her off. but i don’t think that alone was enough for it to jump the shark because that character was a secondary lead character. i thought about tweeting that the show had jumped, but i thought about it and realized that the idiom has been overused. the shows characters can still be developed and there are plenty of directions that the show can take. it is up to Dunham to do that, and that will be the true test of her creativity. meanwhile, if she continues with the pedantic liberalism (and she will), the show will merely suck and be obnoxious.
“It’s a confrontation that doesn’t really ring true because most people with political differences tend to ignore the elephant in the room.”
Based on my past experiences with east coast SWPLs in their 20s, that confrontation is only slightly exaggerated. I don’t personally identify as conservative or liberal, but a lot of people in my extended peer group who don’t know me well assume I’m a republican or a libertarian, and I’ve been subtly attacked for this more times than I can count. It’s usually just people verbalizing their distaste for “racism” or whatever kind of “-ism” they feel like accusing republicans of harboring while I’m within earshot.
After the shit Lena Dunham took last year over the “Girls Diversity Crisis,” I think she’s having a little fun with liberal hypersensitivity so far this season. It showed last night in the conversation where Hannah broke up with Sandy. Sandy was the calm and reasonable one, and that’s how he was supposed to come off. Hannah was supposed to be the one who was in the wrong. She’ll probably be apologizing to Sandy over the breakup in a future episode.
Dunham realizes how ridiculous it is to have her character say, “I never thought about the fact that you were black once!” She was making fun of Hannah (and probably herself).
The saying “jumped the shark” is overused. Just say the show was stupid.
@Lara
Which means that that phrase has, ironically, jumped the shark.
” the wedding at the end of the season was too bold a move and seemed like a cop out. like they didn’t know what to do with one of the lead characters so they married her off.”
You made a perceptive point above that Dunham writes and plays Hannah as a version of Dunham with 10 fewer IQ points and without a high-paying creative outlet. Have you considered that the Jessa character is similarly written and played as actress Jemima Kirke, minus the big family money? Kirke is an artist and former hard-partying girl who settled down at age 25, marrying a lawyer, with whom she just had her second kid last year.
Anybody who believes that the female characters portrayed in the American mass-media are in any way representative of how American women actually behave in reality spends far too much time indoors. The fact that American women lead every other demographic world-wide in obesity and comsumption of prescription psychiatric drugs says more about them than anything else. Those, and the fact that they are also predominantly latent bisexuals and overtly anti-male mitigates considerably against their desirability as sexual partners.
C.R:
“Attractive women=power and power=attractive women.”
This is why so-called ‘Patriarchy’ and civilization ar synonomous. Ceding power to women, sexually or otherwise, has been more responsible for sending civilization into the downward spiral it’s been in for many decades now. Denying women that power is the way that men can reclaim their own power.
“Anybody who believes that the female characters portrayed in the American mass-media are in any way representative of how American women actually behave in reality spends far too much time indoors. ”
‘Girls’ is a pretty real slice of mid-20s SWPL east coast female life.
Robert:
Are the women there depicted as the obese, frigid, drug-addicted, thug-chasing narcissists that the majority of 20-ish females actually are? How many characters have visited an abortion mill in the series (as have over half of American women)? How many are ‘heroic single moms’ (like another huge percentage of 20-ish women)?
It’s not quite as realistic as it sounds. Today’s women are garbage.
Eric,
there was an abortion scene last season.
but we’re talking about white chicks that went to college and live in New York and who have parents that are professors and professionals. right there, this is not a “real” depiction of the average American girl. but i think it’s a real depiction of the average New York girl. but that’s an entirely different critique of the show.
“I never thought about the fact that you were black once!”
My grammar pedantry might be getting the best of me, but I want to make sure I’m accurately interpreting this quote: Is she implying that he’s no longer black (i.e., he was “black once”) because he’s now a Republican?
Or does she mean to say, “I never ONCE thought about your being black”?
The saying “jumped the shark” is overused. Just say the show was stupid.
Except “stupid” isn’t what “jumped the shark” means.
“Jumped the shark” might be a cliche at this point, but if it has any useful purpose, it’s in this very situation — signifying a specific phenomenon in episodic television.
“Are the women there depicted as the obese, frigid, drug-addicted, thug-chasing narcissists that the majority of 20-ish females actually are? ”
Girls in New York have their faults (you can watch the show Girls if you want an illustration of those faults) but they’re not fat and meth addicted.
They’re thin alcoholics.
“Then there is the OWS mentality running deep through this season.”
There really isn’t. Lena Dunham is actually too good of an artist to make her show into a hollow piece of progressive propaganda.The gay roommate comes off badly by “confronting” Hannah’s black boyfriend over him being a republican – not the other way around. The confrontation between Hannah and the boyfriend is clearly and obviously Hannah being thin skinned (“like a baby” in the words of the gay roommate) about her writing being criticized.
The financier is a douche bag because he’s a douche bag – not because he’s in finance.
Hannah “questioning” Marnie’s decision to “sell out” is clearly and obviously her knowing that she has no option to “sell out” like that. Yes, some women believe this tripe. Lena Dunham isn’t one of them and is actually mocking women who say stupid things like that. It’s a live action version of the snapshot of the ugly feminist holding up the sign “Women aren’t decoration” next to the Hooter’s waitress.
ThomasD,
I found the sentence strange too. I think she jumbled up the order on purpose to recreate how a regular girl in the heat of an argument would say it.
When I was on the street my “mentor” they assinged me was a dude in his 50s on his third wife. Despite decades of six and seven figure salaries he was broke. Mainly because he got taken to the cleaners in three marraiges. The third one he didn’t even get married, he was just cohabitating and listed her as a dependent on his insurance which apparentely was enough to lose halve his stuff. Watching him was actually part of my inspiriation to leave the street.
So this is not an entirely unrealitistic depiction, but at the same time I would say this is a minority of street types. Most were much more manly and game aware then this dude and they usually were able to retire by 30-35 while managing their women reasonably well. The trick is you want to retire before you settle down. Marraige and working IB aren’t very compatible unless you become one of those nine figure executives or are physically gifted.
Steve Johnson,
You’re forgetting that Dunham actually does hate conservatives in real life. The confrontation of Republicanism is depicted in the show in an extreme manner and the characters espousing it come off badly to us, but the spirit of their words fits the beliefs of the writers of the show and the many liberals watching it. It is a big deal to her that people actually might want to own guns and that most of Death Row is populated by blacks.
I think she jumbled up the order on purpose to recreate how a regular girl in the heat of an argument would say it.
I see. Well, you’ve applauded her knack for dialogue (I’ve never seen the show), so I’ll give her that one, then.
Convincing, realistic dialogue is often the trickiest task for writers, even (maybe especially) good writers, who become acclimated to an inner voice that doesn’t sound much like regular talk. Creating conventional conversation becomes difficult practically by definition.
hiya Chuckster,
Happy MLK day!
Happy MLK day!-
Yes. Marching, Looting Coon Day.
I have to agree with Steve Johnson. The liberal characters come off looking like stupid assholes. Consider also Tessa (?)’s statement that republicans and democrats are exactly the same and that it was actually Bill Clinton who repealled glass-steagall and “Crashed the economy”. Hannah is completely clueless of this fact. Although C.R.’s point that Lena Dunham actually does hate conservatives in real life is also very true, which makes this episode kind of confusing.
The Fonz was not an experienced water skier. But he came down, to Florida, flying falling. There was a moment in the air, he wavered, and maybe for an instant we saw him fall, eaten alive, limb by limb, last of all his head, still smiling.
But he made it; though then the show was over.
As far as the idiom, it will never die. Shark jumping excites the imagination, like flying or rocket craft or dragon riding. The apex, the top, the very best.
Do not let me close off this thread. I have nothing to say about Girls, but Happy Days means something to me; a lot really.
Lena Dunham is definitely doable, no problem, no beer necessary.
“You’re forgetting that Dunham actually does hate conservatives in real life.”
When has Dunham gone on record saying she hates conservatives in general?
she made a video slobbering over Obama. she tweets about the “War on Women”. you don’t do that unless you hate conservatives.
Third Steve Johnson here about Girls portraying liberal characters in unbecoming light. I just disagree with him on Jessa’s husband being portrayed as a douche bag. As I mentioned over at Lion’s blog, he’s portrayed as a loving husband, whose young wife loves him back. The only douchey thing he did in Sunday’s episode was not stick around and listen to Hannah.
“she made a video slobbering over Obama. she tweets about the “War on Women”. you don’t do that unless you hate conservatives.”
If you hate “conservatives”, why make your conservative boyfriend character a smart, calm, mature guy? My guess is Dunham has met real-life, establishment Republicans via her WASP father, and probably makes a distinction between them (not at war with women) and Republican candidates in flyover country who opine about “legitimate rape”. IOW, she’s a lefty who’s knowledgeable enough to know that not everyone right of center fits the left wing caricature.
Eric 01/21/2013 at 8:41 pm
Robert:
Are the women there depicted as the obese, frigid, drug-addicted, thug-chasing narcissists that the majority of 20-ish females actually are? How many characters have visited an abortion mill in the series (as have over half of American women)? How many are ‘heroic single moms’ (like another huge percentage of 20-ish women)?
It’s not quite as realistic as it sounds. Today’s women are garbage.
Well there you go. The classic bitter, sexually inadequate, irrational White male taking comfort in spewing his delusions and resentment toward White women online. Congratulations!
C.R. 01/21/2013 at 9:00 pm
but we’re talking about white chicks that went to college and live in New York and who have parents that are professors and professionals. right there, this is not a “real” depiction of the average American girl. but i think it’s a real depiction of the average New York girl.
The average NY girl isn’t White or middle/upper middle class.
A minute wasted watching this stuff is one of the finite minutes of your life that, once gone, is gone. An hour so wasted is sixty such lost minutes.
I thought the dialog between the two faggots was noteworthy and disturbing. The mismatched pair did not split because of the infidelity, which apparently was never an expectation. The older fag who pays the bills demanded a more exacting, rigid model of man-whore. Not in a physical sense, but rather a firmly-entrenched mental “homosexuality”. There was some line about “not flipping to ‘bi’ when Grandma visits from Kansas”, because that would be conformist (as opposed to being pimped by a sugar daddy). This master-slave arrangement would be completely unacceptable between a man and woman of any ages, according to feminist ideology. But, the old fag becomes an instant afterthought, and the real villain is the black Republican law student.
Monogamy is not really on the table for any of these characters, but for the gays, it’s a laughable impossibility. A modern feminist writer doesn’t even bother to dance around that fact.
Riflegrrrl writes:
“the classic bitter sexually inadequate…blah…blah…blah…blah…white male…blah blah blah spewing his resentment…blah blah blah blah…”
That wouldn’t be…ummm, feminist Shaming Language, now would it? LOL
I suppose that the statistics on obesity, substance abuse, divorce rates, abortion &c. are all figments of the imagination…or, as another White Knight said, ‘Feminism is the result of men’s failings.’
“The average NY girl isn’t white or upper/middle class.”
I doesn’t make any difference what their economic or racial status is. American women hate men as part of their education/upbringing.
To extrapolate: the act of sex is completely unvalued on this show. Intercourse is just an organic subsidiary of the early stages of the courtship process. No interest either upon magnetism or personality compliment – it is as if Lena Dunham just wants to fuck a young effeminate nigger who in imagination happens to study law (and must be exempt from Derbyshire’s AA breakdown), but there are flaws in him, completely separate from reality, that make him unacceptable. Maybe she will find a faggot scarf-wearing hipster to be her eventual “Mr. Big” before her tripe gets cancelled.
Think for a single second about how many black male law students identify with the Republican Party and simultaneously fuck fat white tattooed girls with declared boyfriends. It’s not just fiction, but insidious, disgusting, perverted, subversive, libelous, and/or impossible invention.
I’m not a “prude” in a similar sense that I’m not a “racist” because I have a black friend. A couple of cute, sharp, and VACQS-vetted singles could easily grow into a relationship out of a one-night stand, in my opinion, so long as the “market value” is close enough, but that spark is given more attraction and less shame in a big city rather than a small community.
Part of this particular display from “Girls” is for the showmanship: no one would be irked or piqued if Marnie (btw, do non-jews name their beautiful daughters that now?) had simply made out or got her boobs squeezed or perhaps caught a few finger-thrusts from the Queer-As-Fuck homo. I mean, is she even supposed to count him as a sexual partner if he only got in a few limp strokes? Ugh.
Here’s another little quip:
“Dunham is 10 IQ points smarter than her show’s character – if she was another 10 points higher, she’d lose 30 lbs and be happy and stop making shows”