What’s happening, Girls watchers? Welcome back for another installment of GIRLS: SEASON 3 RECAP & REVIEW! (Catchy title, am I right, folks?)
Rhea and I would like to thank everyone who dropped by to share in the fun last week! If you had half as much fun reading it as we had writing it, well… it was a lot of fun, is what I’m saying.
(I’m going to stop using the word “fun” now.)
This week: Hanna gets older, Marnie double middle fingers her way into all of our hearts, and we finally find out what it takes to kill Adam’s hard-ons! Remember, guys: this is supposed to be a conversation. Not just between Rhea and me, but between all of us. Please, share your thoughts and feelings in our comments section, on the Cinapse Facebook page, or on Twitter. We want to hear your voice!
Rhea: Hannah may have been the Birthday Bitch last night, but this episode was all about Caroline, played brilliantly by former child star Gaby Hoffmann. Hannah and Adam are as in love as we’ve ever seen them, replete with homemade haircuts, Adam dancing with her parents, and doing that endearing hunched-over hug that reminds us just how pronounced their height difference is.
Enter Caroline, Adam’s crazy, cockblocking sister that we never knew he had. When we first got a glimpse of her, my immediate thought was, “Oh my gosh, they’re really doing Blerta!” but no, to parody a parody is one too many rabbit holes of comedy for this show. Caroline just has bushy eyebrows (and, as we find out later, the sheets match the drapes) and dresses in vaguely “ethnic” prints. Other things you should know about Caroline: she speaks like a character from Little Women, she’s too crazy even for Ray to be into, and she hates old stinky teachers. Basically, all you’ve ever wanted from Adam’s kin.
So, what’s up with Marnie? Oh, I don’t know, only trying to get the MOST AMAZING MUSIC VIDEO EVER taken down from YouTube. I’m pretty sure that’s the set from “I’m Fucking Ben Affleck”, and the use of vocoder/autotune on Marnie’s pageanty voice is priceless. I had to go back and watch it again, immediately. In this show of ironic “cringe-worthy” humor, this was a rare laugh out loud moment.
Soon enough, we’re at the birthday party, which is very typically both Brooklyn (the mandolin and drum kit band!) and planned by Marnie (structured and awkward). I get anxious every time Hannah’s parents are around, because they so clearly want her to be someone she’s not, and she allows this gaze into who she is by continuing to take their money, which gives them say into how she lives her life. This is why you only take money from your parents in emergencies, 20-somethings. Otherwise, they’ll show up to your birthday party, and give you shit later for how many whiskey gingers your friends drank. All in all, I shouldn’t have bitten my cuticles up at their presence — they end up dancing endearingly with Hannah and Adam, and only getting in one jab about Hannah’s appearance, in that backwards-compliment way mothers have practiced since the dawn of time.
The best part of the party, for me, is seeing Laird again. In perfect comedic timing, the girls eschew his birthday gift, which we can add to our running mystery questions of the season, “What’s in the box?!” (Quaaludes? A rabbit? HIS FOOT?) Anyway, back to Caroline, who is given several little nods of recognition throughout the episode. Did you catch that the neck tattoo that Hannah puts on Adam is of Eloise and her dog? In case you’re not up on your 1950s children’s books, Eloise is a lovable brat who lives in the Plaza Hotel. Gaby Hoffman, who plays Caroline, also grew up in a hotel (albeit, the Chelsea) and published a children’s book called Gaby at the Chelsea, which was a take on the Eloise books.
The party unfolds as it should, with a rousing fight between Ray and Hannah’s eBook editor, who Ray fittingly calls “the Poor Man’s Anderson Cooper” (I love that he plays that game from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang too!), and centers around musical choices, hilariously pitting the younger Ray as the crochety grunge dude against the older guy who wants to hear LMFAO and get his Grindr swerve on. So ends Hannah’s birthday bash, which is admittedly better than 90% of her previous birthdays.
Finally, at home, just as Hannah and Adam are about to have a bit of Birthday Sex (cue the Jeremih song), we find out at last the one thing that will put Adam off sex: finding his sister in the bathroom, full frontal (okay, she has a macramé top on) with a mighty minge, breaking a glass with her bare hand. Yeah, that’ll do it.
And, as the sneak peek shows, she’ll be back next week! As will we.
Victor:Birthdays! Smashing Pumpkins! Smashing drinking glasses! This week finds Girls continuing it’s seeming retreat from the darkness of season two and chasing pure hilarity, though (as in all things twentysomething), drama is always right around the corner…
Hannah turns 25, and celebrates her birthday the way we all wish we could at that age: in a faux dive bar, surrounded by friends, her parents, and one night stands (Welcome back Laird, how we’ve missed you!) Of course, an unexpected guest or two always turns up at these sorts of things, and this shindig is no exception. Adam’s sister shows up having been fired and dumped (with that most douchey of kiss-off lines, “I’m saving you from me.”) and asking to crash there for a few days. Despite Hannah’s empathy, Adam convinces her they should steer clear, leading Hannah to invent a visiting friend named ‘Carroty’ as an excuse.
(LENA DUNHAM STRUCTURAL IRONY WATCH: At the beginning Hannah rejects Adam’s boob grabbing advance after reluctantly agreeing to let Caroline stay for the evening; and at the end, Adam will reject Hannah’s “Do you still want to have sex?” when subsequent events force them to change their position…)
The humanization of Adam continues, as we a glimpse into what his family life is like. While I always liked to assume that Adam sprung, fully formed from the head of Art School Zeus, I suppose it’s inevitable that he have a family; and probably just as inevitable that Gaby Hoffmann is it (that really is pretty perfect casting; they actually felt like family).
As sister Caroline, Hoffmann makes an immediate impression as the sort of trainwreck that has just enough self-awareness to be dangerous. You can see how and why she gets under Adam’s skin, just as you can see how Hannah would relate to her and be moved to help her. (And oddly enough, despite her distinctly unique manner of speaking and general hippie-ish vibe, the person she reminded me most of… was Hannah herself. Hmm….)
So there’s all sorts of family fun, and of course there’s drama at the party, but never quite the drama you’re expecting. Yes, Marnie ambushes Hannah with a karaoke duet. But it doesn’t play nearly as cringeworthily as the last time Marnie got behind a mic at a party (A scene I literally could not bring myself to watch). Yes, Adam meets Hannahs’ parents, but it doesn’t go nearly as horrifically as one would predict. He’s awkward, but not alienating. It’s kind of cute, actually… Yes, Caroline is at the party, dancing in that way that walking, talking red flags always dance to inherently undanceable music, and offers up the deathless pickup line “I leave my body during sex. It’s called disassociation and my therapist says it’s brought on by anxiety” to Ray, who doesn’t bite. And then, Caroline does. But past putting teeth marks in Ray’s noodly bicep, she hardly makes the catastrophic public spectacle of herself that Adam warned Hannah about. Yes, Shoshanna appears to wear two medium sized leather belts as an evening ensemble. Which has nothing to do with anything, but I thought it worth mentioning.
Yes, Hannah’s editor David crashes the party, reminds us that he’d look better than Marnie in her own shit, borrows a phone to temporarily download Grindr (fucking baller, yo), and gets into a fight with Ray over LMFAO (which, to be fair, is a cause worth fighting against). But there’s no negative consequences for Hannah or anything like that. In fact, it seemed to be the most fun our beloved David has all evening.
Yes, yes, yes yes.
Hell, even card carrying hellion Jessa is on her best behavior this week. In fact, I’m giving her ‘Funniest Person Of The Week’ based solely on her wordless reactions to Marnie’s ‘Rent’ ambush. (The “thumbs up” was absolutely priceless…) So, yeah… fairly uneventful, unless you’re Ray. Oh, Ray, what are we going to do with you…?
After complaining about the lack of Alex Karpovsky in the first two episodes, everybody’s favorite coffee boss makes the scene this week in a big way: Ray has a heart to heart with Colin Quinn, rocking a Smashing Pumpkins Tee, which is not something I would expect from Colin Quinn. Is their friendship the warmest and most touching of anyone’s on the show? My vote is yes.
– At the party, Ray runs into a Drake-looking dude that hooked up with Shoshanna. (And just who are these crazy friends of hers pulling dudes into taxis?) But it doesn’t lead to a fight or anything.
– Ray sees Shoshanna for the first time since they split up. But a conversation that seems to start up by Ray trying to prove he’s not the nihilistic slacker she wrote him off as turns into an admittance that he doesn’t want to play this particular game anymore.
– And perhaps most importantly, Ray fights a morally righteous battle to determine whether Smashing Pumpkins’ “Today” is a better song than LMFAO’s “Sexy And I Know It”, as if that’s something that even needs to be argued. Sadly, the laws of deejaying are not the same as the laws of common sense, and Ray once again finds himself a Don Quixote tilting at the windmills of an ass-shaking modern society.
Other than the Ray stuff, there’s not a whole hell of a lot that happens here, at least until the end, when Caroline shows up in their bathroom, ranting, breaking glasses in her hand, and rocking what could politely be referred to as an unmowed Field of Dreams, earning her an extended stay at the ‘Casa De Horvath’.
And thus, in the end, as Adam so distinctly puts it, “She won.” Because family is nothing if not a game…
Next Week: Caroline and Jessa go camping! (fingers crossed)
P.S.- If you’re wondering why I haven’t mentioned Marnie’s music video, it’s because that is ALL I want to talk about until the end of time. In the interest of having this be an actual recap and review instead of me just typing “GUHHHHHH!” over and over again like a less articulate version of The Shining, I chose to save it for the end: YES, it is the best thing ever, and even if you hate the show and everything about it, you owe it to yourself to watch it over and over and over, until the end of time.
Here it is one more time, just in case you foolishly didn’t click on the link earlier in the article… and even if you did, because you KNOW you want to watch it again…
QUESTIONS FOR VICTOR
1. Can child stars (like Gaby Hoffmann) ever turn out normal/sane?
She was raised by Viva. VIVA! That poor girl never had a chance. But when it comes to surviving being a child star, it’s just like in War Games: the only way to win is not to play.
2. Would you want your parents to come to your 25th birthday party? Or, God forbid, PAY for it?
I don’t do birthday parties. But if I did, I would not let any of my family anywhere near it. I live in eternal fear that they might someday meet and approve of my friends, and then where would I be? Also, you didn’t ask, but no: under no circumstances would I allow my most Marnie-like friend to plan my party.
3. Were you getting a little bit of a gay vibe off of Ray this episode?
Yeah! I was pretty sure the night was going to wind up with Ray hooking up with David or the Drake-looking dude. Foreshadowing, mayhaps?
4. Ohmygosh WHAT is the rest of Adam’s family like?!
If I had to guess, I’d say super normal. In my experience, severe dysfunction like that breeds almost exclusively in the most average of households. But I’m kind of hoping we never find out. I worry about them explaining away Adam the Beautiful Mystery™…
5. Come on, what was it like watching this episode on your birthday, celebrating along with Hannah? You wore a Birthday Bitch trucker hat, right?
It was a pretty excellent surprise, until they hit me with the cold, hard reality that I’m a full nine years older than Hanna and nobody’s handing me a damn e-book contract… also, that hat? Sheer perfection.
QUESTIONS FOR RHEA
1: Again: you are my portal into girl world. Please explain to me what is happening to Marnie?
Marnie is an Alpha Female, who only feels comfortable when she knows where she stands in her social “pack”. Last season, when she was with Charlie, she felt confident that she was the most beautiful, most “together” of her friends, but now Hannah has Adam and is writing a book, Shoshanna has lost her virgin status, and Jessa is back to unseat her as the sexiest girl in her friend group. So, Marnie is assuming the role of “Mama” to her fellow GIRLS, trying to assert some order and power over them, like when she tells Hannah “you could look like this every day if you wanted” or tries to get her to sing that corny-ass song from Rent. It won’t last — Marnie’s spiral, glorious as it is, has only just begun.
2. Have you ever in your life gotten a birthday present as romantic as a tooth on some string?
Okay, maybe I’m outing myself as a total sappy hipster girl, but I loved that gift. I thought it was so indicative of their relationship, that he would give her a handmade tooth necklace! I think you’ll see girls on the streets of Williamsburg wearing them, as soon as tomorrow. But no, I’ve never received genetic material as jewelry, so maybe I’ve never known true twisted romance?
3. How long does your BFF stay your BFF if she ambushes you with ‘Rent’ karaoke?
There’s no way I would have gotten up on that stage, but RENT was one of the white-girl-coming-of-age rituals that I never partook in. Musicals are not my jam.
4.Have you ever had that conversation that Ray and Shosh had outside the bar? And which were you?
5. What do you make of Shoshanna’s reaction to Ray’s admission?
Shosh is intrigued. I predict that once she finishes her “sexual walkabout”, she’ll give Ray another shot. He may have moved on to Drake impersonators by then though.
That’s it for this week! Thanks for reading, everybody! We cherish you all on an interpersonal level!
-Rhea and Victor
