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Alex Bedder

By Drew Grant and Alex Bedder 3/11 8:00am

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Five Essay Prompts for Girls 2×09: ‘On All Fours’

These questions regard last night’s episode of HBO’s Girls. Please answer the prompts with specific examples from LAST NIGHT’S EPISODE, though supplementary material will be accepted as a secondary source. Please write legibly. No. 2 pencils only. You have an hour to finish this test. See below for questions and sample responses.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Please welcome The New York Observer’s recap illustrator Alex Bedder as tonight’s visiting scholar-in-residence of Girls studies. Alex Bedder comes to us as an associate professor of pop culture from Paper magazine university, and is the author of a New York Times best-selling Tumblr. Catch his Grammy-winning* podcast, “Let’s Talk About It Pod.” Read More

By Drew Grant, Noam Cohen and Alex Bedder 3/04 9:16am

Girls recaps

Illustration via Alex Bedder.

Five Essay Prompts for Girls 2×8: ‘It’s Back’

These questions regard last night’s episode of HBO’s Girls. Please answer the prompts with specific examples from LAST NIGHT’S EPISODE, though supplementary material will be accepted as a secondary source. Please write legibly. No. 2 pencils only. You have an hour to finish this test. See below for questions and sample responses.

1. Even though the episode seems to insist that Hannah’s OCD has been brought on by the stress of writing the book, the first time we see her exhibiting this behavior is when Adam calls her and she instinctively looks behind her–paranoid (but really, not that paranoid) that he might be following her–and then looks seven more times. And she mentions the book to the therapist only after she mentions Adam. Being that at least part of her OCD involves her persisting in behaviors that she originally does accidentally or without thinking (looking behind her, bumping into the guy at the show), how might we read her disorder as a response not to work-related stress but to Adam-related stress? And what does this say about their ongoing, if unacknowledged, relationship?
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By Drew Grant, Noam Cohen and Alex Bedder 2/25 11:22am

girls

Illustration by Alex Bedder.

Five Essay Prompts for Girls 2×7: ‘Video Games’

These questions regard last night’s episode of HBO’s Girls. Please answer the prompts with specific examples from LAST NIGHT’S EPISODE, though supplementary material will be accepted as a secondary source. Please write legibly. No. 2 pencils only. You have an hour to finish this test. See below for questions and sample responses.

1. The celebrity cameos on Girls are starting to seem fraught with significance. Is this an attempt to subtly imply that Petula (played by Rosanna Arquette) is–behind the literally bunny boiler faux-hippy persona–“desperately seeking” a different life? Her flirting with her (maybe) gay son’s (maybe) boyfriend seems to suggest a flipped version of her role in The Executioner’s Song. Read More

By Drew Grant, Noam Cohen and Alex Bedder 2/18 11:54am

Girls recaps

Boys (illustration by Alex Bedder)

Five Essay Prompts for Girls 2×6: ‘Boys’

These questions regard last night’s episode of HBO’s Girls. Please answer the prompts with specific examples from LAST NIGHT’S EPISODE, though supplementary material will be accepted as a secondary source. Please write legibly. No. 2 pencils only. You have an hour to finish this test. See below for questions and sample responses.

1. The title of this episode, “Boys,” is clearly meant to be read as a contrast with the name of the show, and though it spends a lot of time with Hannah and Marnie as well, it certainly gives us a fuller picture of three of Girls’s male characters. Given this theme, what is the implication of the episode’s opening scene, which features John Cameron Mitchell, an artist well known for gender-bending, but here playing a fairly straight role? Read More

By Drew Grant, Noam Cohen and Alex Bedder 2/11 11:53am

Girls recaps

Illustration by Alex Bedder

Five Essay Prompts for Girls: ‘One Man’s Trash’


These questions regard last night’s episode of HBO’s Girls. Please answer the prompts with specific examples from LAST NIGHT’S EPISODE, though supplementary material will be accepted as a secondary source. Please write legibly. No. 2 pencils only. You have an hour to finish this test. See below for questions and sample responses.

1. This is the first “bottle” episode of Girls we’ve seen, as it exists mainly between two characters in essentially one setting. But because this episode involves a new character and an unfamiliar environment, it seems less like an episode of Girls than a self-sustaining parallel universe created outside that of the show. Describe in detail the alternate world or multiverse that Hannah enters. What does it look like, smell like? How is beauty defined in this alternate world? What values are lauded? Who do the residents worship? Read More

By Drew Grant, Noam Cohen and Alex Bedder 2/03 9:00am

Girls Recap

By Alex Bedder

Five Essay Prompts for Girls 2×4: ‘It’s a Shame About Ray’


1. The philosopher Rene Girard developed the concept of “mimetic desire,” the theory that all of our desires are really borrowed from other people–we see someone else in the bath and then we want to get in–and that denying this very normal and natural fact will only lead to conflict and pain. Discuss at least two of the characters in this episode who embody Girard’s theory, and how it might have helped them navigate the sticky social situations they find themselves in. Read More