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Girls recaps

Girls recaps

Illustration by Alex Bedder

Five Essay Prompts for Girls 2×10: ‘Together’


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. When Googling “Normal Tongue,” what is your favorite hit? Please quote from the source text, and if there are images, definitely include them, because this is something I am actually wondering about now. Read More

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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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

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

Girls recaps

girlshannah

GIRLS: Five Essay Prompts (Episode 8: ‘Bad In Bed’)

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. #2 pencils only. You have an hour to finish this test. See below for questions and example responses. Read More