The premiere of Girls was one of the most hyped in recent TV history. It had rave reviews from the start and I was instantly intrigued.
However, before the pilot, I gave myself a Lena Dunham crash course and watched Tiny Furniture, the triple-threat writer/director/producer/star’s first film which had been released in 2011.
It was fantastic movie, at times difficult to watch because of how true it felt. I had had some exact conversations with my friends, had some of the exact fights with my mom. And the conversations and fights weren’t things that I liked to talk about. They were mean, they were embarrassing. But they happened. I knew I liked Lena as soon as Tiny Furniture ended, and I knew I would like Girls.
Tiny Furniture was not a laugh-out-loud funny movie, and I was not expecting Girls to be funny, truly funny, when I began watching. Between the pregnancy scares, fights, break-ups, and bad sex, there were genuine laughs. Girls deals with a lot of issues that twenty-somethings are going through in an unabashed, unflinching way. But it also manages to produce sweet, heartfelt scenes, which is how, and why, it captivated fans and evoked strong responses in its first season.
Girls has been recognized at awards shows recently. The second season premiered last night, as the series took home two awards at the Golden Globes—one to Lena for Best Actress in a Television Show-Comedy, and for Best Television Show-Comedy.
Not everyone is so in love with Lena Dunham and her confidence. Over the summer, when the first season of Girls had ended, Lena had an essay published in The New Yorker. I was excited to see her name. Dunham’s voice is just as strong in her essays as it is on screen.
My family took a trip to visit my grandmother about a week after the essay came out. I noticed a copy of the magazine on my grandma’s table and asked if she had read it yet, hoping to possibly connect with her. She replied that she had, but that it was going to be her last copy, as she was cancelling her subscription. She had read a vile essay about a selfish and rude girl losing her virginity, and if The New Yorker was going to allow these vulgar pieces to be published, she did not want to support it anymore. Before I could say anything in response, my mom clutched my hand and shook her head. Dunham’s honesty can be divisive.
So while critics from Gawker all the way to my grandmother lined up to pick apart the second season of Girls, I waited to see if the show could continue to be so raw and yet still endearing.
The second season began as the first did, with Hannah Horvath in bed with her roommate—no longer her best friend Marnie, instead her now out of the closet ex-boyfriend, Elijah. We are introduced to Hannah’s new love interest, Sandy, played by Donald Glover. The first episode is mostly exposition, as to be expected, but the characters remain strong, flawed, and sincere. Shoshana declares that she “may be deflowered but [is] not devalued!” Marnie, arguably the show’s most together “girl,” is derailed when she is a victim of downsizing and loses her job. Hannah is busy untangling her love life. And Jessa is trying to figure out where her new husband lives. Their lives are messy, but they’re working on “almost getting it kind of together.”
Girls is on HBO Sundays at 9PM EST.