If I
follow air dates on IMDb, season 2 of Girls
should technically come later, after The
New Normal – while the The New Normal
premiered in the fall of 2012, Girls’s
second season didn’t start airing until 2013.
That’s the easiest way to order my Andrew Rannells reviews, but in this
instance, I’ll make an exception because I know Rannells filmed these before The New Normal. If you look at his episodes on Girls around this time – the start of
season 2 followed by the last half of season 3 – the New-Normal-shaped gap in the middle is pretty noticeable. So, off we go with more Girls!
(Note: in these reviews, I try to avoid spoilers as
much as possible, but as I go through all six seasons of Girls, it’s not going to be feasible to talk about the episodes
while simultaneously talking around the various relationship shake-ups. So, take this as your official warning. Who’s dating who will be considered fair game
in these reviews, so while I won’t necessarily lead with “OMG, X & Y broke
up!!!”, parts of those plots will be evident in my write-ups.)
Season 2
opens with establishing the new status quo.
Hannah has a new squeeze that she’s deliberately keeping at arm’s length
to avoid another Adam situation, but she’s not exactly keeping Adam at arm’s
length – he’s laid up in his apartment with a broken leg, and Hannah has been
looking after him. After Marnie moved
out of Hannah’s apartment last season, Elijah moved in, and he and Hannah
thoroughly enjoy the honeymoon phase of their new roomies/besties relationship
as they prepare to throw their first party together. If you’ve been paying attention, you know
that parties on Girls are prime
places for drama, and all kinds of relationship craziness goes down.
A solid
season opener, in my opinion. The
Hannah/Adam stuff is messed up, as it always is, and I feel for Hannah trying
to assert some distance even as she feels stuck. Unfortunately, it does minimize time with
Sandy, the new guy Hannah’s seeing, played by none other than Donald
Glover! Before I started watching Girls, I’d heard that Glover had been a
guest star and was excited when I saw him, but this episode definitely
under-uses him.
For other
developments, I’m officially all about Shoshanna, and her being hilarious and
endearingly odd is the main reason I’m coming around to Ray, who entered the
friend group as a buddy of Charlie, Marnie’s ex, but who now maintains his
connection to the circle largely through the little thing he and Shoshanna have
going on. I love the scene of Shoshanna
angrily searching through a stack of purses for her own while Ray awkwardly
tries to talk about his feelings.
But for
real, Elijah is just awesome here. I
like everything about his weirdly-compatible friendship with Hannah. Whether they’re spooning in bed (“I’m sorry I
have a boner – it’s not for you”) or discussing potential themes for future
parties (Elijah’s argument in favor of a French salon night: “I was watching Midnight in Paris, and I thought, I could do that,”) they’re just a
blast together, and I find that I almost always enjoy Hannah best when she has
Elijah to bounce off of.
We also
get a little more of Elijah outside of Hannah, which is good – it helps keep
him from simply being her gay BFF. He’s
anxious to bring George, his older rich boyfriend, to the party to meet his
friends, but when George gets drunk and embarrasses Elijah, it results in a bit
of a meltdown for Elijah. I really love
when, later on, he admits to Marnie that he’s not sure if he could leave George
because George pays for everything, that he didn’t mean for it to happen but
now he doesn’t know what to do. I feel
like the idea of a “kept woman/man” is often framed as someone who seeks out a
rich partner for the perks, or maybe someone with no ambitions of their own
just latching themselves onto a wealthy meal ticket. Not that I think Elijah is particularly ambitious, but he didn’t
set out to get himself a sugar daddy, and I like seeing how unsure he feels
about it. This leads into other
uncertainty/ill-advised actions on his behalf, the latter of which are
inevitably going to come back to bite him.
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