Like many of you, we waited a grueling few months for when we could welcome HBO's Girls back into our lives again. Much like the 20-somethings it documents, the show itself is flawed but improving and has always inspired in-office debates, ranging from whether Adam's feral outbursts are charming or terrifying, to whether it's realistic (and if it really even matters in the first place) to portray a modern-day urban party where everyone is white. We're publishing a weekly discussion between three of our 20-something editors, Annie, Connie, and Nathan, and hope that you'll join us in hashing things out in the comments. So...season 2, episode 1. Was it good for you?
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Connie: "First off, thanks for doing this, you guys. I hope this works out because, as 20-somethings living in New York City, we’re supposed to be the kinds of people Girls is about."
Nathan: "Although, I read that the biggest demographic of people that watch Girls is supposedly middle-aged men."
Connie: "Because middle-aged men are the ones who have HBO Go accounts, and their 20-something-year-old daughters are using their accounts."
Annie: "For example, me."
Connie: "And me."
Nathan: "I just figured it was because middle-aged men are creepy."
Connie: "I was a huge fan of the first season of Girls, despite all the criticism about lack of diversity on the show, in part because I thought Lena handled the criticism with a lot of thought. She said she was going to address everything in the second season, and this episode felt really deliberate in that."
Nathan: "Like the first shot is of naked Lena’s boobs right in Donald Glover’s face when they’re having sex, and they say 'finally' right before it cuts to the title card, as if to say 'finally a black dude is on the show.'"
Connie: "Like the party scenes actually felt like a real party you would go to in Greenpoint in terms of what types of people were there and what it looked like. The bags on the bed, the red cups, that girl in the headbands, the terrible karaoke machine..."
Annie: "I think we can all agree that karaoke brings out the worst in people."
Nathan: "I like Shoshanna singing Sean Kingston, though."
Annie: "Fair, great pick. Gonna have that song stuck in my head for all of eternity, though."
Nathan: "To be honest, it’s a little weird to watch this show knowing that they’re being so conscious of onscreen diversity, because I can't help but look out for it now. Counting the number of racially diverse extras is a strange thing to be doing while watching a sitcom. It should just be a given."
Annie: "I actually didn’t even remember the controversy until you guys brought it up. Though, I did the same thing with the amount of times Lena was naked."
Connie: "I liked that this first episode felt purposefully full of nudity. Lena Dunham has been the subject of so much body snarking between the end of the first season and now, that I think she’s overdoing it during the first episode to make a point. After people were hating on her red-carpet-shorts look, she said people better get used to seeing her thighs, because she’s going to live to be 100 years old and she’s going to show them off every single day."
Keep reading for more of our discussion.
Photo: Courtesy of Jessica Miglio/HBO
Connie: "First off, thanks for doing this, you guys. I hope this works out because, as 20-somethings living in New York City, we’re supposed to be the kinds of people Girls is about."
Nathan: "Although, I read that the biggest demographic of people that watch Girls is supposedly middle-aged men."
Connie: "Because middle-aged men are the ones who have HBO Go accounts, and their 20-something-year-old daughters are using their accounts."
Annie: "For example, me."
Connie: "And me."
Nathan: "I just figured it was because middle-aged men are creepy."
Connie: "I was a huge fan of the first season of Girls, despite all the criticism about lack of diversity on the show, in part because I thought Lena handled the criticism with a lot of thought. She said she was going to address everything in the second season, and this episode felt really deliberate in that."
Nathan: "Like the first shot is of naked Lena’s boobs right in Donald Glover’s face when they’re having sex, and they say 'finally' right before it cuts to the title card, as if to say 'finally a black dude is on the show.'"
Connie: "Like the party scenes actually felt like a real party you would go to in Greenpoint in terms of what types of people were there and what it looked like. The bags on the bed, the red cups, that girl in the headbands, the terrible karaoke machine..."
Annie: "I think we can all agree that karaoke brings out the worst in people."
Nathan: "I like Shoshanna singing Sean Kingston, though."
Annie: "Fair, great pick. Gonna have that song stuck in my head for all of eternity, though."
Nathan: "To be honest, it’s a little weird to watch this show knowing that they’re being so conscious of onscreen diversity, because I can't help but look out for it now. Counting the number of racially diverse extras is a strange thing to be doing while watching a sitcom. It should just be a given."
Annie: "I actually didn’t even remember the controversy until you guys brought it up. Though, I did the same thing with the amount of times Lena was naked."
Connie: "I liked that this first episode felt purposefully full of nudity. Lena Dunham has been the subject of so much body snarking between the end of the first season and now, that I think she’s overdoing it during the first episode to make a point. After people were hating on her red-carpet-shorts look, she said people better get used to seeing her thighs, because she’s going to live to be 100 years old and she’s going to show them off every single day."
Keep reading for more of our discussion.
Photo: Courtesy of Jessica Miglio/HBO