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By Drew Grant 4/03 2:02pm

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Why Did Girls Downsize, Relocate Writers’ Room?

HBO’s critically acclaimed show Girls is mixing it up for Season 3 … and leaving a few names behind. Don’t start crying yet: it’s not any of the cast members. In an article last month by Joe Pompeo, a source spilled the beans that three of the show’s L.A. writers will not be returning to the already-small writers’ room. But why?

Well, relocation, to start. The eternal struggle between L.A. lifers and chronic New Yorkers: the oldest story in the book. But also, more things! Read More

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 2/25 11:22am

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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 2/01 3:43pm

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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Guys With Kids (NBC)

Girls Gets New Critic: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Thinks a ‘Black Dildo’ Preferable to Donald Glover

Celebrities are really at their best when they get a forum on Huffington Post, don’t you think? Whether it’s the award-winning James Franco, a huffy Alec Baldwin or a proselytizing Jenny McCarthy.

But usually these stars stay on topic: either promoting a personal cause or giving you their armchair analysis from an “expert’s” perspective. (Or just talking about whatever is going on in their lives right now.)

That’s why it was so exciting to see NBA Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar weigh in recently on his feelings about Lena Dunham’s HBO show, in an article called Girls Just Wants to Have (White) Fun.

Yesssss … Read More

By Drew Grant and Noam Cohen 1/28 11:06pm

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Hannah contemplates where the magic happens. (Illustration by Alex Bedder)

Five Essay Prompts for Girls 2×3: ‘Bad Friend’

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 first scene this week has Hannah going to interview for a freelance job writing about drugs and experimental sex for a website called JazzHate, run by a woman named “Jame” (not Jamie). First of all, what the hell does JazzHate even mean, and secondly, which website will have the most convincing blog post claiming credit for the reference: XOJane, Jezebel, or Vice circa 2002? Read More

By Drew Grant 1/25 2:01pm

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Girls: Forever! (HBO)

Girls Gets Renewed for 3rd Season, for a Second Time

Today, HBO announced that Girls has been picked up for a third season, bragging in its press release that the premiere of the second season “already exceeds a gross audience of 3.8 million viewers with only partial data available.”
Good news for Lena Dunham and her crew, right? Well, not exactly, as calling this information “news” is itself a misnomer. Read More

By Drew Grant 1/21 6:43pm

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Reality Show Version of Girls Has Predictably Self-Deprecating Casting Notice

I’m not sure if we have a term in the English language for something like the singularity, except it happens when Craigslist ads for reality shows based on better scripted programs become self-aware, but if we did, the world we lived in would be even sadder. (Presumably because that means this phenomenon happened enough to deserve its own entry in Webster’s.) 

So just be glad that the Emmy-Award winning producers behind this new program about Brooklyn/downtown Manhattan hipsters 20-somethings who are trying to figure it all out can only have the one reference like this:

Read More

By Drew Grant and Noam Cohen 1/21 11:36am

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Will Hannah ever be able to go back? (HBO)

Five Essay Prompts for Girls 2×2: ‘I Get Ideas’

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 episode is full of references to and images of babies: Elijah says Hannah has “thin skin, like a baby,” and Adam shows up in the middle of the night demanding milk. In a show that is certainly always marked by a focus on immaturity, why does this specific episode seem to want to turn its characters into babies? (And how might this relate to the fact that Lena Dunham’s real-life mother shows up in this episode?) Read More

By Drew Grant 1/16 3:51pm

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Lena Dunham Goes on The Howard Stern Show, Buries Hatchet

Calling Lena Dunham a “little fat chick” might have been the smartest move Howard Stern’s made in the last several years. Not only did his remarks get repeated by Ms. Dunham while she was on Letterman on Friday, but his very public apology on Monday gave him some extra leverage to pull the Girls creator and star (and recent two-time Golden Globe winner) onto his program today.

Here’s what went down. Read More

By Drew Grant 1/15 9:06am

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Howard Stern Goes Soft for Dunham in Old Age

Last week, Howard Stern was calling Lena Dunham a “talentless little fat chick” on his Sirius Radio show. Actually, to be more specific, he called her “a little fat girl who kinda looks like Jonah Hill(…)keeps taking her clothes off, and it kind of feels like rape.” Which, honestly, is the sentiment we’d expect from the wordsmith once he began musing on last season’s hot topic issue of Girls/Lena Dunham’s BMI.

He also said a lot of other, nasty things about he could tell Dunham had written the show “because she’s such a camera hog that the other characters barely are on.” He really didn’t sound like the world’s biggest fan.

But that was then, and now is now, and in between Mr. Stern had time to rewatch all the show’s weird sex scenes. In a complete 180 yesterday he left Linda Stassi territory, publicly apologized for his comments, and asked Ms. Dunham for an interview.

Because it turns out that he didn’t meant to call her talentless or fat. He meant super-talented and funny. Read More