Let’s Talk About The Writing On GIRLS

If you’re wondering why HBO’s Girls should even matter so much, then you need to read not only some pieces about Girls, but also the comments on those pieces. Just be aware of where you’re reading these things. Lindy West’s reviews on Jezebel, for instance, will have a ton of people talking about the show itself, whereas most Girls-related things on Gawker will feature a ton of people talking about Lena Dunham. (Gawker’s envious obsession with Dunham — and with most twentysomething creators of things over the years — borders on the psychotic.)

The takeaway is not “why should Girls matter?” but that it does matter. That’s all. It matters to a number of people, in both positive and negative ways, and so we can move past the question of whether Girls is worth talking about.

Another thing we can move past is the body stuff. Girls features, sometimes, naked bodies. Male and female, but mostly female. Mostly Lena Dunham’s. Even the articles and posts and comments defending Dunham’s use of her own nude body tend to reference the fact that it’s not “perfect,” and it’s that — even more than the “she’s gross!” stuff — which leads me to believe we’re an even sicker society than I’d ever thought, because what the fuck is a perfect body? What kind of weird, Spartan world do we still live in where there’s a physical ideal and then there’s everything else? If you believe certain kinds of bodies shouldn’t be shown naked (or, by implication, displayed at the beach, or in anything less than a voluminous canvas duster), then I don’t know what to tell you except don’t watch, don’t go to the beach, don’t look, don’t go outside, don’t be with people. Because you are clearly not interested in participating in LIFE. You just want everything to be a Pinterest board covered in photoshopped Cosmo covers, and probably only certain ones, which really just means there’s something about you you don’t like, and you’re making that everyone else’s problem.

I’m not even going to tell you how I feel about Lena Dunham’s body, because it just shouldn’t matter! And now my fingertips hurt, because I just went full Julia Sugarbaker in that paragraph.

Pause for water.

So there’s a lot that people talk about when they talk about Girls. I have not mentioned all the other stuff, but there’s a lot. Can we, for a few minutes, talk about the writing? Beneath all the external issues, is this even a good show? I think it is. Let’s try and sort this out, shall we?

1. It’s a disservice to call Girls a comedy. When it’s most overtly trying to be a comedy — i.e., through dialogue — it’s less successful than when it just shows its characters in their most awful, human moments and lets the humor happen there. I’ve seen a million versions of the Andrew Rannells character’s ADD/no-filter motormouth honesty, so it’s lost its ability to shock or charm. Adam backing out into the street telling Hannah, “Fuck you! I’m a beautiful fucking mystery,” and getting hit by a car? Horrifying AND hilarious. Girls is great at this kind of thing, and I wish it didn’t think we needed quippy dialogue to fill in the rest.

Similarly: Jessa’s surprise party in the season one finale turning out to be Jessa’s surprise wedding to her former one-night-stand (finance dickhead Thomas-John) was hilarious — in part because of how weird and, yeah, surprising the whole thing was. Meanwhile, Jessa’s put-downs in the rehab group scenes in season three are something you can see every week on Glee, for christ’s sake.

2. Girls doesn’t have any likable characters, and that’s okay. I don’t need likability in characters. I think that’s generally a cop-out, doubly so with female characters. What I doneed from a fictional character is to see enough of who they are to worry about them.

On this front, Girls does the best job with Adam and Ray (when Ray’s involved), because the show dares to show you their vulnerability. There’s a harshness with both that’s obviously false, so we immediately get a sense of what’s being hidden. This works with Jessa and Marnie, too. The scene from the premiere where Jessa’s asleep on Jasper’s bed, because with him she can finally let her guard down, is a killer. All this person has ever needed is a place where she can be her five-year-old self. Her group of friends — you know, the Girls — is actually pretty poisonous, because they need her to fill a role. She’s the crazy one, the one who dances on the quad in her boots and bikini, as Hannah recalls. And they complain about her craziness, but I get the sense they wouldn’t know what to do if she weren’t always living in the extreme.

But in the second episode, we get the punchline to Jessa’s nice moment with Jasper. Here he’s jonesing and manic and says they need to fuck, and that scene’s also a killer. Jessa’s not just repulsed, she’s heartbroken, and we don’t even need to see it on her face, because OUR hearts break for her. And we know this little two-act story’s been repeated all her life, because something in her draws these situations. Wherever she goes, there she is.

That’s how it often is for Marnie, too. Marnie’s the “pretty one,” the friend you know is just biding her time until she gets married to a money guy and moves to Jersey or Westchester. But that’s an easy write-off, and it doesn’t make her any less fragile or susceptible to attack than Jessa. Marnie has no idea who she is or what she wants, and that’s blood in the water for the would-be pickup artists of the world.

I have a complicated relationship with Hannah Horvath. She’s the main character and the hub of all her friends, but she’s also pure poison, a raging narcissist who listens to nothing unless it’s about her. (And then, when it is about her but doesn’t conform to her notions about herself, she discounts it immediately.) People call Hannah on her shit constantly in Girls, but it never gets through. Here’s my problem: all of this could also be describing Kenny Powers from Eastbound and Down or Amy Jellicoe from Enlightened.

The difference there is that we always know the distance between Kenny’s bullshit and the terrified little thing he is inside. (Which is, of course, a male archetype.) And we know the distance between the be-the-change-you-wish-to-see-in-the-world face Amy Jellicoe wears so desperately and the loose-wire rage-monster she is inside.

Hannah Horvath, though, presents her terror and insecurity to the world as her very face — so what’s left? Where can that character go? There’s no there there, no subtext to Hannah Horvath. She’s kind of an inside-out person, which makes it no accident that she’s the nudest one on the show — it’s all on the outside, leaving you to wonder: what’s even in there?

Hannah is crucial to Girls in that she’s the nexus where her friends intersect. But it’s an odd — and bold — move to also make her the center of the show when all her wants and needs are expressed already.

I realize I haven’t mentioned Shoshanna yet. Shoshanna is a 21-year-old person.

3. Girls ends its seasons well. In the midst of a season of Girls, it’s difficult to see where it’s going. There was a sense, among reactions I read, that season two was somehow formless compared to season one, but I don’t think that’s true. I think they’re equally pretty formless, though not thoughtless. Season one was pretty casual until the last third, where Adam revealed his vulnerabilities and Jessa found new ways to create chaos and Marnie finally decided Hannah was toxic. But all this wouldn’t have mattered if we hadn’t had the first two-thirds of the season, and that’s the narrative trick of Girls: it sets up its characters in the premiere. Then it sets everyone adrift for six or seven episodes until it’s ready to pull them back into formation for the final stretch. In the end, season two actually went exactly the same way as season one: desperate searching for the first two-thirds before finding some level of honesty and simplicity in the final act.

If you’re sensing a “but” coming, you’re right.

4. But. Girls is a good show, and I wish it tried harder. I talked just now about the Girls season structure of two parts chaos to one part climax. But those season-enders, as good as they are, tend to feel rushed, pasted-on. So you enjoy them, but then there’s a morning-after feeling of: “Wait a minute…” Something doesn’t quite add up.

At first glance it’s as if the show’s going along for eight episodes before someone looks up and says, “Oh, shit! Only two left, everybody! We gotta–” But that’s not really how TV works, is it? Seasons are planned out in advance. Which means everyone involved with the writing of Girls thinks it’s fine to meander along, as long as you get to some kind of point in the end. If it was surprising to people that Girls would be an Apatow production (Apatow productions, pre-Girls, faced a lot of talk about being guy-exclusive), it shouldn’t have been. That loose structure of setup followed by event/event/event (skipping, a lot of the time, the piling on of stakes and the rising of action) and then a big climax? That’s an Apatow hallmark.

What’s tricky about that from a writing (and viewing) perspective is that it’s equivalent to fucking around all semester and then staying up all night to cram for the final. You may remember the information, but you haven’t learned it. And if your friends have been doing the work all semester, they’re going to resent you whether you get an A or an F.

A season of Girls, like Knocked Up, like This Is 40, fucks around for a long time, has a Big Emotional Payoff at the end, and says, “Ta da! Look at the story we ended up telling! ROLL CREDITS!!!” And that finale is always pretty spectacular. But it’s also kind of dishonest. It stirs emotions, but those emotions are largely — and god help me, I hate this word — unearned.

It’s kind of like if someone you were dating were alternately loving and distant for months and months, sometimes even disappearing for days, but then on your birthday they give you an amazing gift. You’d think: Wow, that’s the perfect gift. Amazing. I didn’t know they had it in them! But then you’d think: Heeeeey, wait a minute. What about all those other months? Does this person think I’m an idiot and all they have to do is give me something nice when it’s time?

But this is where I have to say: This is maybe more me than Girls. There’s no one right way to do things, especially in storytelling. I would simply like Girls to tell its stories exactly the way I like them.

5. I will keep watching Girls every week. And here’s where everyone involved with HBO and the show can give a huge sigh of relief. We didn’t lose him! As conflicted as I ultimately am about Girls, it’s a place I like to be every week. It’s not because I miss sitting in gross apartments, eating ramen with people in their twenties. It’s not for the boobs and butts. It’s not even that I’m waiting, Gawker-like, for Girls to fail, or that I’m hate-watching. There’s something Lena Dunham has made that I genuinely enjoy. I’m just not always sure why.