A few months ago, for my first blog post, I wrote about the Show of the Year in my book, Girls. Lena Dunham's witty, self-deprecating social commentary on upper-middle class post-graduate life debuted on HBO last year and I have to say, it was one of my favorite shows to watch each week. The show was called 'Girls', but felt relatable, even as a male a few years younger than the people on the show. It was funny because Dunham was making fun of us. She pointed out what's wrong with thinking the way we sometimes do - entitled and lazy. Her main character Hannah, an aspiring writer, never actually wrote anything, and her failures were humorous as we saw her try and 'find herself'. The show subtly told us that sitting on our asses complaining wasn't going to bring us to where we want to be, and our problems aren't our parents, or our boyfriend/girlfriend's fault. They're ours and we should deal with them instead of complaining.
Then Lena Dunham got famous.
And then Girls won a bunch of Emmys.
And then the show became everything it was making fun of.
I don't know what happened, really. The first season ended on a fantastic note of self-deprecation. Hannah and her faults are hung out to dry by her boyfriend Adam before he gets hit by a truck. Hannah rides the subway and eats a cupcake at Coney Island in one of the most lovably pathetic pieces of television I've ever seen. But by the time the second season rolls around, Hannah hasn't learned anything. She blames absolutely everything on Adam, or her new boyfriend, or her roommate, or Marnie, or Jessa's dad, or her publishing company, and then, nearing the end of the season, as Hannah runs out of people to blame, slips into a frighteningly awkward relapse of obsessive-compulsive disorder and blames that.
In the first season, as Hannah found causes to blame, there was always somebody there with a witty monologue to keep her and the viewer in check. That person, whether it was Adam or the scintillating, tongue-in-cheek Ray, provided much of the comedy of various episodes. Ray, mostly withdrawn from the love life and day-to-day plot lines of the first season, could always be counted on to show up during a situation and pick it apart, piece by piece. But in the second season, Ray is fully part of the circle, dating Shoshanna. And over the course of the ten episodes, we see him become detached and then ultimately, clingy. No character on any TV series can keep his sympathy if he's a clingy boyfriend. It was just sad by the end. And that sucked. Ray's there-but-not-really-there demeanor during the season left a huge void that was just crammed with Hannah's complaining. Or Jessa being ridiculous.
Jessa. Now there's a character. We see her impromptu marriage fall apart, as expected. But Lena Dunham won't let the character just learn from it. Instead, the viewer is taken away from Brooklyn for the second time during the season as we meet Jessa's dad. Oh, there's a surprise! Crappy parenting! I guess we can all forgive Jessa for throwing everybody in her life under the bus, acting selfishly, and not caring about the well-being of literally anybody but herself because her dad "isn't coming back. He never does."
Yes, Girls is a TV show. The actions of the characters shouldn't be taken so strongly, because it's just a show and doesn't actually affect anybody. And normally, the moral compass of a character does not affect my judgement. The Lannisters are my favorite house in Game of Thrones. Don Draper is one of the greatest television characters of all time. But I think this situation is different because Girls is hailed as 'real'. And its influence comes from the belief that life is portrayed accurately by the show. It's considered a 'phenomenon' because it's just so brutally honest. But once Lena Dunham became aware of her success, she just turned the show into a mouthpiece for how it's all everybody else's fault, delivering a season with more black people (1) than quality episodes.
I don't know if I'm going to watch Season Three. I may, in hope that the show turns itself back around, or maybe out of the belief that Dunham can put together ten episodes with half of the wit of the truly fantastic first season. But Season Two is five hours I'll never be able to get back and unfortunately, I don't hold my hopes too highly for TV in the near future if this is the best we can do. I guess all that's left is watching re-runs of Enlightened.
That was indeed a subtle hint to watch that show, because I'd really like somebody else to talk about it with.
