Illustration by Alex Bedder

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.

First off, can we talk about the other things that Hannah Googles? Why on earth would anyone who grew up using Google type questions that are complete sentences into the search box? Not a very efficient way of searching; this isn't Ask Jeeves. Sure, Hannah has some weird technological weirdnesses, but this seemed way off. It was the first of many scenes in this episode that rang completely false in that "this is something that is happening because it looks good on television but is actually stupid" kind of way, which is particularly dispiriting for a show that is often touted for how it reflects real life. Despite its impressionistic quality, then, "Normal Tongue" actually makes much more sense than her other queries.

From the first page of hits (results may vary): "Training in Beckman Oral Motor Protocol." Almost every other hit was about what a normal tongue color/size/coating is, which is likely what Hannah was searching for, but what self-respecting hypochondriac could resist the lure of "abnormal tongue patterns" like "Exaggerated tongue protrusion: The tongue shows extension (forward movement) beyond the border of the lips which is non-forceful. The movement is a rhythmical extension-retraction pattern. It is similar to a suckle pattern, but is mildly abnormal."

2. There are a lot of symptoms that are co-morbid with OCD, though being self-centered isn't one of them. This show did a great job tackling the frustration of people who find themselves in the uncomfortable situation of being manipulated by someone who might actually be ill, or might be playing up their illness to garner sympathy. If looked at on a spectrum (you tell me what kind), where do Laird, Hannah's father, Marnie and Adam lie in their sympathy to Hannah's obsessive-compulsive tendencies?

There seems to be an inverse relation between how much each character knows about what Hannah is going through and how much sympathy they have for her. It is not clear that Marnie has any idea how bad it is getting, but she appears in her doorway seemingly eager not to boast about her own newfound happiness but simply to pay it forward. Hannah's dad, on the other hand, has heard her cry poor wolf too many times; now that she is actually suffering a mental breakdown that money could alleviate, he is having none of it. Hannah may not actually be manipulating him now, but being that she is a manipulative person, it almost doesn't matter.

Yet again the massive gulf between Hannah's self-image and her actual self makes itself known: she manipulates Laird without even thinking, and even when he calls her on it, she continues (successfully) to do so. And perhaps the rousing music cue in the final scene wants us to believe that Adam is being heroic, but isn't Hannah just playing damsel in distress to a man who has clearly and repeatedly made his desire to be a hero known? "Accidentally" FaceTiming Adam and then openly displaying your tics is like waving catnip in front of a sabertooth tiger.

In the end, of course, this actually is about OCD, but in a very insidious way. OCD is all about control, and Hannah has lost hers. Her self-centeredness may not be an aspect of her illness, but her manipulation certainly is. She can't accept Marnie's help--she literally hides from it--because is was freely given, and thus not under her control: she didn't expect Marnie to show up, because she hadn't manipulated her into coming. But she can assume a position of surrender with both Laird and Adam, because they are acting out the roles she lays out for them. In the end, Adam is just an enabler to a very very sick person.

3. Second Louisa May Alcott reference this season. It's finally time to ask: Are we watching Little Women or Little Men, and why?

I have to go with Little Men. Both novels are about how individuals find their identity, through work and through others, which is what I think this season is getting at with these references. But Little Women concentrates on family, while Little Men is about the families we build for ourselves. The best moment of this episode is Hannah's phone message for Jessa, which really brings home just how important the social unit she has built for herself is to Hannah, even if she can't find a way to admit it and does her best to drive everyone else away.

Louisa's father Bronson was an advocate of teaching students to write from their own experience, and to learn about themselves through such literary self-analysis. And of course her close relationships with her friends from college is what Hannah's book is about, we see in the one line she has written. The suggestion is that she is beginning to understand her writer's block has everything to do with the disappearance of one best friend and near-estrangement from the other, which is certainly more compelling than procrastination and sloth, at least.

4. Let's get back to last week: Marnie's singing of Kanye West's "Stronger." It's been called "literally the worst thing that's ever happened on TV ever," and the idea of that she was spiraling down this year was confirmed by Marnie herself in this week's episode. But getting back together with Charlie (especially with that gross-cute little smile after he said that he had a lot of money) seems like backsliding. I liked where Marnie was going with that more free, less in control version of herself. If we return to Marnie Prime, is that really an improvement over putting herself out there and singing "You should be honored by my lateness/That I would even show up to this fake shit?"


The scene itself (until the gross and completely narratively unnecessary money comment) was touching, but it was all just so unearned. I mostly came away thinking, "Well, guess the writers decided that they had to stop brutalizing Marnie." If her spiral this season was some kind of punishment for her thoughtless behavior last season, or even if it was just a way to have her learn something about herself, this resolution was more than just backsliding, it was a complete about-face. I didn't like singing Marnie, I found her embarrassing and off-putting, but she was worlds better than smug Marnie.

On the other hand, as mentioned previously, Marnie doesn't seem to be calling on Hannah to be annoyingly happy all up in Hannah's face, which is certainly what she would have done last season. She seems legitimately concerned, and maybe even realizes that her own depression/desperation/self-exploration has left her friend somewhat high and dry. And if that is the case, maybe this won't be so bad.

Either way, though, it seemed like another example of the writers wanting to have things fall out a certain way, without much regard to character development, pacing, or a great deal of what went before. Why would Charlie take her back, especially now that she is making yet another public scene of idiocy? "Because he loves her" simply isn't a compelling reason at this late stage of the game. Also, dude is going to owe like hundreds of thousands of dollars via Avoid. Though I guess that just goes right back in his pocket, so whatever.

5. Several people in my apartment decided that this episode was disappointing, because it was "tied up too neatly, unnecessarily so." The one saving grace, said one participant, is that you know that their happiness can't last: they're too fickle and self-centered to actually have a happy ending. "They don't know who they are and what they don't want, and even if what they wanted was happening to them, they wouldn't even notice until it was too late."

So my question is: Should Girls ever be viewed through the beer goggles of St. Paddy's Day? Does this message ring true, and we just don't want to see these characters happy (except for Ray and Shoshanna, who end the season by breaking up)? Do we feel that they don't deserve happiness, and thus Marnie and Charlie and Adam and Hannah are only temporarily fixed? Have the scales fallen from our eyes regarding Girls, or is the show just subverting our expectations with a faux-happy ending?

Being a crotchety Jewish misanthrope who would rather perform oral surgery on himself than drink in public on St. Paddy's day, I am stone-cold sober at the moment. And I agree that the ending was disappointing and too neat. For me, in terms of character development, this had everything to do with these resolutions (as I noted about Marnie above) being unearned. This show has always centered on its characters' search for themselves, their creation of an identity for themselves, and these resolutions offer them too-easy ways out. Adam is running headfirst from a relationship that could almost be functional back into the arms of a completely screwed up one. Hannah is grasping at whatever straw she can find and pulling out all the stops to get him to take care of her. Why is this rousing music playing while he runs down the street in a fairly unnecessary fashion? There is nothing inspiring going on here, is there? And even Shosh and Ray's breakup seems unearned: she clearly has no idea why she doesn't want to date him anymore, so she makes up a cute speech instead.

It's not that I don't want these characters to be happy. Even though I don't particularly like them as people, I still want them to be happy. But as television characters, I want their arcs to be satisfying. I want them to earn their happiness, not have it imposed on them ham-handedly by writers trying to negotiate the fact that it is the end of a season and things need to come to some kind of a conclusion. I didn't appreciate the end of last season when it aired, but right now I'd be stoked if someone was just eating cake on a beach, instead of declaring their love over brunch or running sweatily through Greenpoint to kick down a door.

illustrations by Alex Bedder.

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."

1. This episode seems to be following last week's spiraling dark tone of the show. I never thought I'd say this, but I long for the days when Marnie making out with Jessa was the worst thing that could happen in a Girls episode. If you were comparing the two seasons together, which of these analogies make you want gnaw your wrists open the most, and why?

A) Picking splinters from your ass is the new eating cupcakes in a bath.

B) Black Swanning your ear drum is the new overdoing it on the eyebrow pencil.

C) Falling off the wagon and practically date raping your new girlfriend is the new accidentally smoking crack and massaging Ray's penis.

D) Charlie's "Let's fuck in the middle of my office party" is the new "Let's fuck and pretend you are a child with a Cabbage Patch lunchpail."

E) Shoshana is the new Marnie.

F) Marnie is the new character that we secretly adore because she just puts herself out there and is so cute with her cover songs.

Tonight’s dark-sided episode was a buffet of cringe-worthy moments, and there were several that made me get up and sit behind the couch for a second, a method of handling discomfort I perfected as a child by not being able to watch that scene in Titanic where the ships crew assumes Jack assaulted Rose.

All of the analogies make me miss those simpler times of confronting your gay ex-boyfriend about contracting HPV so much that it's almost too hard to choose! Because I did not secretly adore Marnie's Karmin-esque cover of "Stronger" (that could just be attributed to a personal fear of impromptu musical performances), and even though the concept that Shoshanna is the new Marnie is almost as bad as finding out a new character is BOB on Twin Peaks, it really comes down to Hannah's self harm via Q-tip and Adam's sex scene as the analogies that made me want to gnaw at my arm like I was in 127 Hours.

Adam's boozed up, watch-it-with-one-eye-open self-destruct with Carol Kane's daughter from Roswell seemed to be just looming from their vanilla post-Sandra Bullock movie-night hookup. Comparing Natalia learning that Adam may not be out of place in his "dark" apartment to Ray discovering just how quirky and engaging Shosh is while she was tweaking out of her mind was is a pretty devastating thought. However, I'd have to go with just misuse of the Q-tip as the worst bite-your-wrist moment, because it makes me miss when the worst thing Hannah used to do to herself was not being able to say no to people who'd make her look like Bon Qui Qui.

2. Two out of three of Hannah's health care specialists (save last week's therapist) have been Indian-American and kind of mean. Does this count as diversity or stereotyping? You may answer the question culling from Dunham's real-life experiences as we know them, save for that shit going down at Oberlin right now, which has nothing to do with Girls; seriously, are you people insane?

You could read it as stereotypical that both of these characters are Indian-American, which is more in line with the arguments from the first episode regarding the Asian girl who knows Photoshop and the appearance of an African-American homeless man. If a minority is cast in these contained, one-off sort of roles, does it appear as very stereotypical? Did we raise the same question (diversity or stereotyping) with Donald Glover's Sandy the Republican or last week's Radika, "the wealthiest Hindi that Shosh knows"? It could be that these smaller roles make us more unsure of which end of the spectrum these characters fall into, while a character with however much more to do is easier to make a call on.

In regard to them both being seemingly rude to Hannah, I think that has more to do with her presenting them with a juvenile and awkward situation. The doctor in this episode was dealing with an unhinged 20-something who had lodged a Q-tip in her ear canal, and in her first season visit to the clinic she basically told the health care professional who was about to test her for STDs that she wanted AIDS. In my experience if you do or say something incredibly stupid regarding your health, a health care professional sets you straight.

3. What throwaway comment best reflect 2013's New York/Brooklyn douchebag scene thus far?
1) "Sandra Bullock or whatever is really charming. I only wish the best for her."
2) "Restaurants are my passion. Going out to dinner is just part of who I am."
3) "Marnie told us about the AMUs. We are both exceedingly happy for you! Oh my god, twenty thousand? That's like, insane.
4) None of the above/choose your own.

Things to consider: The feasibility of Oscar-winning actress Sandra Bullock starring in a rom-com this year (or anyone outside of Ryan Reynolds saying they "wish the best for her"); the pronunciation of M-U-A as AMUs; foodies being the most despicable breed of self-describers on the planet.

...Bonus 3.5. Sorry, just remembered three more lines that were so dead-on in capturing the actual voice of this generation: "I dabble in the Macintosh Arts"; "How pissed are you for missing the game?"; "Except Mother Teresa never blew my cousin. But seriously, we love this girl!"

I haven't been actively rooting for Sandra Bullock since While You Were Sleeping, so I would almost go with Adam's newfound appreciation for her. But really, can you get more douchey than asking why your significant other is catering to you by referring to their adorably neurotic behavior as "geisha shit"?

4. John Cameron Mitchell has some great lines this week as her e-book agent (publisher?). "I can't wait to not read those." "Where's the sexual failure, where's the pudgy faced slicked semen and sadness?" "I just had an epiphany, if you aren't getting fucked, make it up. Can you make it a novel?" Not to mention an Anaïs Nin/Jane Austen literary scolding from a guy whose morning read consists of "Kardashian Splashin'" and wants to name Hannah's book "Life on My Back." Though Hannah took it to an extreme, the desire to "empty out" after such a foray into the post-Frey publishing world would be natural. What would you suggest for purging those bad feelings?
4. Nothing quite as toxic and icky as watching John Cameron Mitchell's publisher ordering his twinkish assistant to stop working out before prompting you to dish about your awful sex with a teenager. Legal or not? Who knows! Who cares! That's what people want to hear! Lindsay Lohan in The Canyons is going to be great!

There's many ways that Hannah could relieve the negative feelings she is harboring after that meeting that don't involve jamming a foreign object into her ear. Compared to that, even getting hammered before five is a healthier option. Obviously talking to a friend, or that therapist from Waiting for Guffman, would also be an excellent purging option, but since she's avoiding her issues, also very unlikely. I know the responsible answer would be exercise, or meditation, or volunteering, or shopping, but for Hannah I'd recommend she just get a piece of cake, fall asleep on the F, and eat on the beach for a bit.


5. Marnie's trajectory this episode can be read as either "flailing" (by Charlie and Shoshanna), or a positive life choice (as seen by Marnie and Ray). Like objectively? She's definitely doing better than Hannah or fucking Adam's impression of a Williamsburg boyfriend on a very special episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Is she really being delusional about her singing career--a fucking bassoon? Kanye?--and if so, does it matter if it makes her happy? Basically, how should we read her statement to Charlie: "I'm really good, actually. And sometimes being good all the time feels really bad."

There's been some discomfort about Marnie pursing a singing career, mostly because you know Allison Williams can actually sing from when she put lyrics to the Mad Men theme. I've been steadily wondering if this will be some out-of-nowhere redeeming arc after breaking down Marnie for so long, or if this whole being a singer is just the final dive before a dangerous mental breakdown. You almost can't tell if she's completely delusional yet--is the room's response to her cover an indicator that she's just, as Charlie puts it, not that bad, "but not good," or that she should just stick to Norah Jones or a good Corinne Bailey Rae tune?

In the end, it does not really matter, because she's just happy doing something she wants to do. And not "just happy" in the way that she's let go of her ambitiousness and become more aware and complacent. Taking up performing has only made her more self-involved. (She did hijack the party that was celebrating the success of ex-boyfriend's app that was created to avoid her. The ENTIRE night was about her, in multiple layers.) But now instead of being driven and self-concerned in relationship to something that she thought she needed to do, it's toward something she enjoys doing. She's totally comfortable with commandeering the party, and it maybe not going over so well. Being kind of a mess makes her feel good, while while being "good" and put together all the time can be exhausting and disappointing.

*Web edition

Illustration via Alex Bedder.

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?

FIRST OF ALL, can we just stop for a moment and acknowledge how hard we were emotionally toyed with by HBO's DEF (Delusionally Empowered Female) programming last night? I actually spent 20 minutes trying to find dictionaries that would agree that "delusionally" was a word, just to avoid thinking about the panic induced by watching Girls and Enlightened back to back. My compulsion when stressed is to reinspect losing scratch-off Bingo cards over and over, so I actually missed most of the visuals this week. Was Shosh's hookup black or Hispanic? (Either way, can't wait for the racial Donnybrook that encounter will cost us.)

But if I have to get into it: both Hannah's trigger and her compulsions are related to sex. See also: the masturbation issue, which was alluded to last season in a throwaway line by Marnie, "You've been crazy since middle school, when you had to masturbate eight times a night to stave off diseases of the mind and body"; her ambivalence about Adam; her ambivalence about Adam regarding sex; her ambivalence about sex in general post-Joshua.

I mean, yes, the looming e-book deadline would be intolerably stressful, especially for someone like Hannah, who definitely does not have it together. With her anxiety, she couldn't even power through it on no sleep and Adderall, the way most of America's 20-somethings deal with looming workloads. Poor Hannah.

I'd say whatever the main or original trigger for Hannah's relapse--whether it's the book or Adam or her parents coming to town-- it isn't something you can deduce from the show, nor is it useful to think about. It's all of the things. Six of one, half dozen of the other, and 8-16 climaxes in one night, Jesus Christ.

2. The chorus of the song Judy Collins sings, "Open the Door," goes:

Open the door and come on in
I'm so glad to see you my friend
You're like a rainbow comin’ around the bend
And when I see you smilin’
Well, it sets my heart free
I'd like to be as good a friend to you
As you are to me

How would each of the characters understand these lyrics in relation to what happens to him or her in this episode?

Marnie: Why can't Charlie and Hannah be as good of friends to me as I am to them?

Ray: If Marnie starts singing Judy Collins right now I am just going to lose it.

Shoshannah: I don't even remember the last time I saw a rainbow. Ray is the opposite of a rainbow. He's just like ... rain.

Hannah: You are fine and good, you are fine and good, you are fine and good, you are fine and good, you are fine and good, you are fine and good, you are fine and good, you are fine and good. You are good and fine, you are good and fine, you are good and fine, you are good and fine, you are good and fine, you are good and fine, you are good and fine, you are good and fine.

Adam: This song is just so fucking real right now. I don't care how corny it sounds, no one should ever apologize for Living. I am just looking at this girl's smile and I am thinking 'Hol-y shit, yes.' Yes! You know? Fuuuuuckin' ... You just got to keep that door open.

Charlie: "That's right, Marnie. You get out what you put in. I'll be just a good of friend to you as you were to me." Unless ... maybe I should call her? No. She's not worth even 10 of my dollars. She means nothing to me. Thanks, Forbid. (Texts Marnie.)

3. Some shortsighted people suggested a few weeks ago that Patrick Wilson's character was not real but existed only as a figment of Hannah's imagination. While nothing in that episode remotely hinted at that, several elements of this one (not least the brilliant casting of the oddly vatic Carol Kane as her mother) seem to imply that all is not right, or not real, about Natalia. Is it possible that Adam has projected a fantasy woman, and if so, why is she a detective's assistant?

No, Natalia is not a projection. Adam's decision to go to AA instead of continuing to accidentally drink from the urine jar showed him taking action towards improving his mental state, which is more than we can say for the rest of this truly messed-up bunch. (It's like thanks Girls, I actually just saw Silver Linings Playbook. I don't need to watch all of you dissolve in some heretofore unknown, DSM-IV criteria-meeting chemical imbalance too.)

There is a catch to Natalia, though. Firstly because nobody's perfect, not even girls with the best jobs ever. But mostly because Natalia's independent identity may be perfect ... as a foil to Hannah's needy, messy train wreck of emotions.

4. Ray tells Marnie to decide what she wants to do "before the clay hardens." To a certain extent, Girls has consistently portrayed its female protagonists in a more unformed state, a early 20-something period of trying on different selves or different lives to see what they want to be. Given this premise, is Ray simply projecting his own fears of being too old and set in his ways onto Marnie, or is the show suggesting that unless these characters make up their minds soon, this prolonged adolescence will end in them being stuck? (Things to consider: Shoshanna realizing she doesn't really like parties, Hannah not realizing she still needs her parents, the fact that rollerblades can now be called "vintage.")

Neither. Girls would never suggest that this period of time for the characters is in any way an outlier to normal behavior, because that would essentially be telling viewers who identify with the show that their feelings are abnormal, instead of communal. Plus, it's just not true: you are not set in stone (or hardened clay) with the decisions you make in your early-to-mid 20s. Or ever, really.

And Ray isn't projecting, he's doing what he does best ... pushing someone into action. It's easy to see Ray's needling of Marnie (And woof, have they been co-habitating in Shosh's studio loft all this time? Or is it a one-bedroom? I cannot believe these living conditions have been left unexplored till now) as him somehow yelling at himself to get his shit together, but he's not. First of all, he's not dressed like a magician's assistant. But more importantly, he definitely has an answer to his own quickfire challenge, and it's the paradox du Ray: he doesn't want to be anything.  If he could do anything he wanted, he would do nothing.

So mainly this scene was to provide audiences with the experience of hearing an advance version of Allison Williams's debut album.

5. Imagine you are a psychologist who writes children's books involving a bionic dog. Create a plausible plot for such a book that you might use to illustrate the pathology behind one or more of the following: Marnie budgeting six years for her boyfriend to be a mess after she breaks up with him; Ray insisting that coming to a college party with his girlfriend is creepy because he is too old, but seeing no issue with sleeping with a college girl in the first place; Adam falling for Hannah because she acted like a helpless child around him; Shosh obsessing over getting more practice for when people are going to need her too much.

Billy the bionic beagle was a very special dog. He had a heart that would live forever. But even though Billy was a very loyal and very good dog, he was sad. He was sad because his friend Brian was no longer a young boy for him to play with. Brian was an old man now. He no longer wanted to throw the ball, or play fetch or take Billy to the dog park. But Billy the bionic beagle was still a puppy, and would never grow old. Or at least it felt that way, you know?

One day Billy went to the foot of the bed, where he and Brian had started so many adventures.

"Let's go play in the dog park!" Cried Billy.

"I can not, for I am too old to play," said Brian. "Plus, it is really creepy to see a very old guy hanging out at the dog park."

"I am sorry, Billy," said the old man to whom Billy had served many long, faithful nights.

Billy was one sad beagle, but he set his tail up straight, and snuffled his way over to the park on 62nd. Billy had not been to the park in a long time. He could find no new doggie friends to play with, because it had been so long since Brian had taken him for a visit.

Billy's bionic beagle heart felt like it was going to break. But it wasn't, as  it was made out of titanium and plastic and nanobots. Still. It didn't feel great. Billy was sad about Brian and about all the time he missed out on at the park while taking care of his owner. But he was also angry at Brian, who was too busy dying to be a very good friend.

It was time to move on. Billy had to find someone new to have adventures with, to love and nurture and watch old episodes of Ally McBeal.

"Bye, Brian," Billy barked. "Bye."

Billy the bionic dog had an aunt he owed a visit.

Bye, Billy. Bye.

Illustration by Alex Bedder.

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.

And let's not forget daddy dearest: Ben Mendelsohn, the Australian answer to Gary Oldman, who is probably best known for his role as the corporate snake trying to undermine Wayne Enterprises in The Dark Knight Rises:

Or Russell, the tweaked-out heroin addict in the recent Brad Pitt film Killing Them Softly (based on Cogan's Trade, about low-level mobsters who fuck up their big heist and then have to skip town.) Or the sleazy boyfriend in the Florence + The Machine single "Lover To Lover."

Florence and the Machine: Lover to Lover on Nowness.com.

What is Girls trying to tell us--if anything--with the recent cameos that seem to reference something outside of the world of the show (i.e., John Cameron Mitchell, Patrick Wilson, Donald Glover, Rita Wilson)?

When Donald Glover first showed up, I thought Girls was engaging in some regular old stunt casting, which does exactly what you are talking about--tries to pull some residue from an actor's other work into the present show (have you noticed that there is this stable of sci-fi actors, mostly from Firefly and BSG, who show up as guest stars whenever any show wants to give itself some geek cred?). But then his character didn't seem to have much to do with Troy, and was a Republican. And Rita Wilson was somehow perfect as Marnie's mom (oh does that mean Chet Haze is somehow Marnie's pseudo-sister, because please, yes), but again, not the nurturing figure we were expecting. It is almost as if Girls is poking fun at our tendency to typecast actors, and using the huge stable of actors who want to be on the "It" show to be able to do so. John Cameron Mitchell was the most obvious example of this for me, playing a fairly stably gendered and non-sexual (except for his comment that pistachios look like little penises) character.

But perhaps the pendulum has swung back the other way, as Patrick Wilson's character seemed more like classic typecasting, and Patricia Arquette's full-on stunt casting: playing the weird hippy-dippy character with a darkness at her center has been her stock in trade for decades now. Whatever the intention behind it, they could hardly have cast the part better. She was pitch perfect, as was Mendelsohn. (And their extremely strong performances in turn brought out better than usual performances from Lena Dunham and Jemima Kirke, making this one of the strongest episodes yet of the show.)

2. Pretend that you are an officer from D.A.R.E. program and are giving a lecture to kids about the dangers of doing drugs. Describe Hannah's relationship with narcotics, starting with the opium tea and progressing to cocaine and whippets. Bonus if you can work in Elijah's diss that snorting coke wasn't going to be like "driving around in your mom's Volvo with a bottle of cough syrup and a box of cold McNuggets."

At some point in the late ’90s, mainstream TV started to shift away from dealing with drugs in that after-school special/Jessie Spano kind of way, when D.A.R.E. officers could use a "very special episode" of any given show to illustrate the twin dangers of drugs and peer pressure. But even though drugs are no longer presented as the ultimate evil, they're still always just a metaphor, usually a stupid one that just makes everybody act more like themselves. At least Girls has the guts to make drugs, like sex (see question 5) as weird and complicated as they are. But they're still dumb metaphors (roughly: opium = painful truth, coke = false friendship, whippets = the stupidity of youth). So, you know, don't do drugs.

3. The name of this week's episode was "Video Games," which meant I was waiting for the other trashy Lana Del Rey shoe to drop for the entire episode. But it's in fact a reference to Petula's belief that life is a video game, a simulation like The Matrix or that one Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode. Create a video game for Petula: is it an old Nintendo game, or a really choppy version of the original Doom, or Grand Theft Auto? Is it the Holodeck from Star Trek? Farmville? What is the objective of the video game that Petula calls life, and what are the glitches/obstacles she has come across? Bonus: Describe the Game Genie cheats for Petula's life.

Petula's whole life is a series of Game Genie cheats for the video game she calls existence. There is no game here, there is only the shirking of responsibility that comes with thinking life is not real. Everyone is the main character of her own story, but if you think of the world not as a book but as a video game, not only are you the main character, you exist in a world that, for all its threats and pitfalls, was designed specifically for you. Hannah isn't just a minor character in Petula's story, she "manifests" her as a "cushion" for her relationship with Jessa.

On this level beyond self-centeredness, there is nothing but destruction: "If you're not with me, you're against me, so get out of my way." Like Amy Jellicoe on that other amazing female-centered HBO show, Enlightened, Petula is a destroyer who believes she is a benevolent healer. She raises bunnies and then kills them for food, and seemingly remains unaware that she is basically starving her son in the process. She can do nothing but destroy. She may think she is in some nurturing Sim Earth-type game, but her language is all first-person shooter. And the enemies, of course, are other women: Jessa, Jessa's dad's former girlfriend, her daughter who may or may not still be named Lemon, etc.

4. For two seasons now, we've been hearing about Jessa's mom (and Shosh's oft-referred-to aunt) as a sort of insane, absentee parent. But meanwhile her father has been living upstate, and there's been a history of her not showing up when she had plans to visit. Then her dad leaves her at a supermarket, right after their cathartic breakthrough. ("You think I can rely on you? "You shouldn't have to! I'm the child! I'm the child!"--the most heart-wrenchingly sad thing to happen on Girls, ever.) Does this excuse her behavior at the end of the episode, or make it even less excusable? Haha, just kidding, Jessa is always the worst. Feel free to make up the phone call between Shosh and her aunt regarding her first live-in boyfriend, if that's preferable.

There is not and never will be an excuse for Jessa acting the way she does. But even though this episode didn't redeem her as a person, I think it went a long way toward redeeming her as a character. That is to say, there has always been something cartoonish about Jessa, something stupider-than-life that made her hard to believe, when everyone else, for all their character flaws, seemed like real people.

But the truth is I know plenty of people in the real world who seemed that way when I met them too. You know when, usually in college, you meet someone's parents for the first time, and you're like, oh, of course! That person makes total sense now. Sort of like that.

Or a commentary on that, because the most telling thing about her dad wasn't the lateness or the unreliability or the immaturity or the paranoia, but him saying to Jessa, "You know we're not like other people." Underscored by that fantastic Aimee Mann song "How Am I Different," it really drove home the essence of a parenting style that could create a character so obnoxiously removed from reality.

5. Urinary tract infections are the WORST. But they're often caused by an imbalance of microorganisms that colonize the vagina, also called the "vaginal flora." With her HPV and now being de-flora'd, there's definitely a trend of sex = bad, painful things. If you think about it, Sex on Girls is never just a casual encounter, or one that is portrayed as having positive consequences. So far we've seen intercourse lead to a) Marriage; b) Being forced to stare at a doll while being starfished; c) Completely speeding up the normal process of a relationship and making it untenable; d) Ruining a perfectly good Ping-Pong table and e) causing gay couples to break up and friendships to be ruined. Is Girls actually sending out a pro-abstinence message? Or does Hannah just need to drink more water and cranberry juice?

It's not just the consequences of sex, but the sex itself that is often bad on Girls, and whatever else people will say about the show in coming years, one thing is clear: no show to date has shown so much bad sex and shown so much of what can be bad about sex, and that is an important thing for TV. Not only does Girls not look away from bad sex, it also doesn't make it into a tragedy, or a dealbreaker. After Marnie gets starfished, she cracks up, and then happily calls Hannah. It's depressing, but it is also realistic and necessary. Sex, and specifically female bodies in relation to sex, are so inflated and elevated on TV that they become impossible to really talk about. If sex isn't simply tiptoed around, it is treated as a metaphor, something people are either having or not having. For better or worse, Girls is willing to look at real sex, like it is willing to look at real women's bodies, and say, this is a significant thing, but it is also a part of life, and like everything else, it is flawed and can be weird and ugly and uncomfortable and stupid. And when it is weird/ugly/uncomfortable/stupid, we still get to say, "I want to keep doing this/I don't want to keep doing this/Here's how we can make this better" and so on. If all you ever see is sex treated as a holy sacrament, it's a lot harder to say these things, or even know that you can.

Boys (Illustration by Alex Bedder)

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?

I also loved the Hedwig cameo! Though I don't think it had any subversive meaning in relation to the show's title. Much like all the cameos this season (Rita Wilson, Patrick Wilson, AndrewAndrew, Donald Glover) Mitchell's appearance was a tad haphazard. Almost random. Apparently every older person in the world wants to be on Girls, so it's hard to read too much into these guest appearances. Strangely, we haven't seen anyone playing themselves--outside AndrewAndrew, who didn't have any lines--in that corny Saturday Night Live trope, or even in that less corny Curb Your Enthusiasm fashion. Maybe if David Mitchell comes along playing Jessa's dad, but as David Mitchell, we could transcend into some meta-commentary. But I'm pretty sure from next week's previews that's not happening.

2. Based on what you know about Ray, Shosh and their relationship, why does she ask him whether the character in Little Women his godmother compared him to was Marmie or Amy (the mother and the youngest daughter), rather than, say, Jo? And why does Hannah suggest he is the father who dies of influenza, rather than Beth, who dies of scarlet fever?

Well obviously, Ray would be Jo, the hot-tempered one. But the fact that both Hannah and Shosh see Ray as a parental figure is a pretty big clue: not only do they still view him as the "responsible adult" (despite his cries to the contrary, which I guess we'll just ignore, like Ray ignored Hannah's quitting in last week episode), but as a provider as well. The funny subtext here is that Robert March is a lot like Ray: he was a scholar, there was an implication of debt and the impression that he was mooching off his friends' charity. So ... if the shoe fits!

Hannah's comment is meant derisively: "First of all, you're not a Marmie. You're probably the dad, who died of influenza at the war." She's trying to drop some gangsta Louisa May Alcott knowledge on him. Like "You're the dad, not the mom, idiot!" The reason Beth isn't brought up is because she's not an older, parochial character. For someone who is supposed to think outside the box (or, uh, her comfort zone), Hannah stubbornly refuses to cast aside gender roles when assigning her friends characters from a book. Hope she does better with her own! Oh God, do you think her ebook will be called Girls?!

3. Why does Ray shout, "I live in Brooklyn!" as his parting shot in his fight with the Staten Island girl? In his interpretation of Staten Island as a metaphor, Ray calls it an island full of people looking longingly at Manhattan but unable to get there; couldn't the same thing be said of Brooklyn? What does Brooklyn represent for Ray?

I noticed that too, re: Ray's Staten Island metaphor being applicable to Brooklyn. But in Ray's mind, I think, Manhattan is too corporate and soulless (have we ever seen him in the city?), and he has a lot of Brooklyn pride for being anti-establishment and full of people with "meaty ideas" like Adam and himself.

His parting shot was in response to that amazing woman's line, "Go back to Yogurt Town, kike!" which is based on his shirt, which does read "Yogurt Town." What's striking isn't that he corrected her on the nonsensical apparel-based diss, but that he immediately jumped on the Jewish slur, and responded not by being offended that she used such a horrible word, but by explaining that he's not Jewish. ("I'm Greek Orthodox!")

That being said, I am going to start referring to Williamsburg as Yogurt Town from now on. Though, hmmm ... Manhattan has a lot more of those Red Mangos and Tasti D-Lites and other bullshit fro-yo places than BK. Maybe that's why Ray needs to counter her attack with Brooklyn pride.

4. Adam says that Hannah is a good person, she just has her own ideas of right and wrong. Can there be said to be such a thing as a moral foundation in Girls, or do the characters make it up as they go along? Moral quandaries to consider: stealing a dog because its owner seemed to be treating it badly and it licked your face; firing your assistant because she tasted your ice cream; asking the naked girl in your bed to back you up on the moral rightness of this firing; doing so without telling said naked girl that you have had (or possibly are still having) sex with the assistant too.

Hoooooold up there. I don't think a moral foundation on the show can be proved or disproved by the house of cards that is Booth Jonathan's huffiness. (Although I did have a long debate with myself about the ice cream issue: like, if you were someone's cleaning person, would it be acceptable to take a bite out of newly bought rosewater ice cream? No, right? But personal assistant is such a malleable line ... it's an intimate enough position that your boss can have sex with you and give you orders while lying naked in bed, but it's unacceptable for you to have a nosh at his place? On the other, other hand, I think I'd be a little grossed out if I opened my groceries and there were chunks taken out of my food. Especially because that girl was also pretty heinous about the scenario. She could have just said "Yeah, I guess that is weird, sorry!" but instead acted self-righteous enough to quit over it. She must really love Carly Rae Jepsen.)

As for the characters' "morality?" I think they abide by more of a philosophy of interpersonal ethics. Hence, stealing a dog isn't wrong, until a friend (or acquaintance) yells at you and makes you feel bad about it. Like how Elijah and Marnie's sexcapades wasn't "wrong" to them for the normal reasons--he's gay! He's dating someone!--but is considered bad only in how it affects their relationship with Hannah. More to the point: only feeling bad when you "get caught" is a warning sign for sociopaths and narcissists, of which Girls has many.

5. Imagine for a moment that you are Mikey the dog, but you can understand every word that is said in front of you. With whom do you end up identifying more closely, Ray or Adam? What does your doggy mind think their argument is really about?

"Bacon? Are they fighting over bacon? Is 'Hannah' a code word for bacon? It has to be. Why else would these two men-boys yelling at each other over bitches? There are enough bitches in the world. This is definitely not about bitches or bacon ... but damn, I really hope I didn't give Adam my rabies. Or does he always act like that? What are 'graffiti cut-offs'?

You know what? I couldn't really care less about these ridiculous humans and their white people problems. I'm not even a person. This argument does not reflect the barks of my generation at all."

(Illustration by Alex Bedder, who has a podcast.)

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?

JazzHate is one of those names that some guy at a startup who was "really getting into branding" comes up with, and then convinces them to adopt it by talking about how "evocative" it is, without ever having to suggest what it is that it evokes. Which, basically, is bad feelings and music that most people secretly don't like or understand. Of course, websites with stupid names seem to work, because people will go there just to find out what the hell it is. (Wasn't Marnie sort of doing that with Booth's house?) But there better be something there worth reading, and the scene certainly leaves one with the impression that this particular site is all elusive phrases and enigmatic platitudes with little to back it up. Kind of like Jessa, who, notably, is in only one throwaway moment in this episode. Once you dig beneath the hard-to-pin-down surface, it is all trite inspirational posters like the "where the magic happens" "joke."

2. This episode was all about boxes: Whether it's the box of your comfort zone (outside of which you can find where the magic happens), the literal TV box installation where Booth Jonathan locks Marnie, or the way Hannah compartmentalizes the people in her lives by putting them into ill-fitting boxes (Elijah in his gay box, Laird in his junkie box, Marnie in her bad friend box). Please find three other examples of the kinds of other boxes on Girls. And yes, I just handed you that first one.

Now that you've got me thinking about it, it seems that this idea of putting people in boxes is central to the whole show. More this season than last, but from the very start, with Shoshanna trying to fit everyone into their Sex in the City slots, the characters' clashes with each other have involved "category mistakes" rather than simple misunderstandings or conflicts. Hannah in particular is prone to this, and thus has now made two different housemates move out--and presumably they have to pack boxes when they do so--because they don't fit the narrow interpretation she demands of them. Meanwhile Thomas John and Jessa are headed for disaster because they have such deeply incompatible ideas of which of each other's boxes they fit in, neatly symbolized by the puppies in a box in the previous episode. I mean, really, who puts living things in a covered box like that? In short, eery time you see a physical box on Girls, look for characters to start shouting at each other.

3. Of his pet turtle, Hannah's downstairs junkie neighbor Laird (comedian Jon Glaser) declares with equal parts bitterness and resignation, "I'll never not have him." (Presumably because turtles have longer lifespans than heroin addicts.) But is it actually Laird who is Hannah's turtle? Or is Hannah's everyone turtle? What does it mean to be the turtle versus the turtle owner? Food for thought: The symbolism of turtles in Eastern mythology; the meaning behind the phrase "Turtles all the way down"; the co-creator of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Peter Laird.

4. It's hard to tell if Hannah is becoming more selfish and unlikeable as the season progresses, or if her grievances actually justify her behavior. Mansplain who "won" the evening's fights at Booth Jonathan's house of terror: Hannah, Marnie, or Elijah?

Hannah started the series from a place of such utter unlikeability (she stole money from a poor person!) that it was really all uphill from there. I find this Hannah something of an improvement. At least now she is telling her friends exactly what she feels and why she feels it--she is jealous of Marnie and Elijah because "I was meant to be your last woman"--even if those reasons are selfish and gross. And considering the fact that she has zero legs to stand on in this argument (because Elijah is right, this is not about her), it is pretty amazing how thoroughly she wins both fights.

Booth Jonathan's house is meant to be a sort of distorting-mirror funhouse. Marnie reacts to being locked in a box surrounded by stomach-turning images and one of the worst songs of the ’90s by getting turned on instead of nauseated, and she reacts to her best friend being offensive and irrational by getting nauseated and guilty instead of mad. But let's face it: Hannah beat Marnie the moment she showed up to interrupt her freaky doll-sex semi-date all coked up and wearing that shirt. She gave Marnie a thorough verbal lashing, but really all she had to say was, "I'm here and I'm wearing a yellow mesh top. I win."

5. In Hannah's voice, please write one paragraph from her JazzHate article about the night she tried cocaine OR give five (5) plausible DSM-IV diagnoses that could be used by Booth Jonathan's lawyers for an insanity plea when he inevitably kills a toddler "for art."

I am an excellent dancer, but people often don't realize this about me. It is probably because of my weird shoulders, or how concerned I am in that moment that my shoulders are looking weird. But not tonight. Maybe it was the music, or my amazing outfit, or how I knew there was nowhere else I was supposed to be just then, but it was certainly also the cocaine and, really, nothing but the cocaine. But I was dancing. I was writhing and spinning and glowing and suddenly I'd been dancing with this one guy, with a ponytail and some old-school ’90s moves, for what seemed like forever. He was wearing a yellow mesh tank top and I wanted to be wearing it, but before I could open my mouth, he said, "You want to switch shirts?" It was that kind of night.

Our feelings exactly (HBO)

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.

1. Um, holy shit. What?

I know, right?? I totally didn't see Marnie making out with Bobby Moynihan's "awkward rabbi" character. As well as those other b-a-n-a-n-a-s plot developments. Actually, all of the finale. What was up with that?? Look, I made a GIF of the reaction shots for you! (Spoilers ahead...obviously.)


2. Compare and contrast the wedding of Jessa and TJ with the famous pairing of Hedda Gabler and Jørgen Tesman. How are they alike, or different?

Whoa, very good question! A++ question, and I mean that. I guess the biggest difference is that in Henrik Ibsen's late 19th century play, it is revealed over the course of several acts that Hedda only married Jørgen because she was bored by her own life. In GIRLS, it's immediately clear that Jessa's only doing this because of the advice Katharine gave her on last week's episode that 'adult' Jessa will be happier, if not cooler. (This is why you never listen to wisdom from grownups!)

The whole marriage stunt felt totally random and forced as a plot device, and I question the show's decision in bringing back a character who we've only seen as an abusive, pathetic prick as a serious love interest. Even if Jessa's looking for something new and exciting to speed her along the road toward to the actualization of adulthood, nothing in her character suggests that she'd delude herself into falling for JT, of all people. How will she ever cope with his "mash-ins"?

We're supposed to view this as Jessa's poor judgement, but it's the show's acumen I'm worried about. I know GIRLS loves taking its one-off cameos and bringing those characters back to demonstrate that people are multifaceted, layered little snowflakes; each filled with unique quirks that weren't automatically apparent, like a subtle parfait of personhood. And that works when we're dealing with Hannah's parents, or Elijah. But as much as I loved Chris O'Dowd in Bridesmaids, JT was a one-dimensional loser whose vitriolic diatribe about bourgeois hipsters doesn't jibe with a sudden desire to spend the rest of his life with a girl he last referred to as "Mary Poppins."

3. Ray tells Shoshanna that she “[vibrates] on a very strange frequency.” Calculate the frequency response function in MHz for Shosh. Find the magnitude and phase. Show your work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7qrcwLOQkg
This is Shoshanna's frequency: 3.39 MHZ during a hurricane. Didn't Ray claim several episodes ago not to be a "JAP daycare"? Oh, how the tables have turned. I predict Shoshanna next season actually sticking to her "most non-virginy virgin ever" credo and totally rebuffing Ray, who will be totally smitten for her.

At first the pairing of these two seemed arbitrary and unnecessary as well, like the writers' were just tying up the loose end of Shoshanna's virginity by calling back the chemistry of her and Ray in the Crackcident. But from what we know of his character, it's clear he'll probably become attracted to Shoshanna's ability to live in the real world and not some artistic la-la-land. Shoshanna goes to school. She takes kickboxing classes. She's trying to put her foot down about letting people just randomly crash at her off-campus housing. Her tolerance for the "girls'" B.S. has significantly lowered over the course of the season, which puts her disdain right about at Ray's level.

Plus, now Ray gets to finally have sex with someone who ostensibly could be related to him. (If you subscribe to the idea that all Jews descended from the same 13 tribes.)

4. After a dramatic argument with Hannah, Adam is injured by a hit-and-run driver and taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Tally the injuries that have occurred on season one of GIRLS. What is wrong with these people?

Actually, I saw the car coming, which is more than you can say for poor Adam (who obviously doesn't understand the laws of television foreshadowing). He almost got hit by a car two episodes ago and had a major rage session...add the death of Tally Schifrin's boyfriend in a vintage automobile from last episode, and you'll get a fatalistic streak on the show as apparent as the one that predicted Lane Pryce's suicide Mad Men. Hannah even screams at Adam to get out of the street when he's almost sideswiped during the fight!

With all the craziness in this episode, I thought this might actually kill Adam, so I'm glad it's just a broken arm. As for the amount of injuries on the show, you have:

1. Hannah OD'ing on opium tea.
2. Jeff getting the crap kicked out of him by crusties.
3. Ray getting hit in the junk by a cracked-out Shoshanna.
4. Marnie slamming her head while having sex with Charlie.
5. Hannah falling off Adam's bike.
6. Adam getting hit by a car.
7. Possibly the death of Tally's boyfriend. (Though that one may not count since it's off-screen, and we never meet him.)
8. Hannah's dad knocking himself unconscious during shower sex.
9. Elijah chopping Marnie in the face after she says he was a terrible singer.

With the exception of numbers 2, 7, and 8, all of these accidents can be chalked up to Mark O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion. Meaning that they essentially have no physical repercussions, and the acts of violence to the characters are treated as a comedic punchlines instead of potentially painful mishaps. Related: Do any of our heroines have health insurance? Perhaps under Obamacare...

I've said before, but GIRLS sometimes takes the position that young people are as invincible as they think they are...although Adam's injuries are a nice reminder that Lena Dunham is a less frivolous writer than Hannah.

5. The season ends with Hannah waking on an F train as it pulls into Coney Island. Spying a group of partiers on a rooftop, she asks where she is and is told she’s in Heaven. Then, she walks on the beach. How does this scene evoke the famous religious poem, “Footsteps.” Has God abandoned Hannah Horvath, or is he carrying her?  

The first one. D'uh. I mean, have you ever fallen asleep on the F train? Or had your purse stolen on the subway, rendering you helpless in a society that forces one to rely entirely on their cell phone, wallet, and metro card? I'm surprised Hannah doesn't flip the EFFFF out. Instead, she reanacts the iconic moment from Stranger Than Paradise, but with a nod towards Sloane Crosley's debut collection of personal essays. Which, of course, would be on the top of Hannah's reading list.

How very clever, Ms. Dunham. You win this round, though I wouldn't exactly mind it if season two opened with Hannah, Ray, and Shoshanna finding out that JT, Jessa, and Marnie died in a tragic Mexican standoff. Or wait...is that racist?

"Your boyfriend should die. You deserve that." (HBO)

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.

1. Michael Imperioli, best known for his role as Sopranos capo Christopher Moltisanti, plays Hannah’s former college writing professor. Compare and contrast the New York literary scene with the Italian crime syndicate, La Cosa Nostra.

Oh that's who that guy was? I thought he looked Indian. Either way, I think this episode proves exactly how crime syndicates are like literary circles: you're not made until someone dies.

2. Following Jessa’s awkwardness with Jeff, his wife Catherine begs her to return to her nanny job, admitting, “I need you and my girls need you.” How does Jessa exemplify the ways in which nannies, governesses and other maternal surrogates have often been perceived as threatening to the family unit? (Please include a reference to Mr. Belvedere in your answer.)

Much like Tony Danza on Who's the Boss, or Mr. Belvedere, or Mary Poppins, maternal surrogates are often frightening because they are only necessary when a mother is absent...or too absent to take care of her children. Much more revealing is Catherine's dream, where she devours Jessa and then poops her out. So is Jessa a lesbian now?

3. At the coffee shop, Ray berates Hannah about her writing, suggesting that intimacy is a trivial subject compared to death and various societal woes. A similar accusation has often been lodged at GIRLS itself. Is Lena Dunham embracing this critique, or subtly answering her antagonists by collectively lampooning them as a douchebag barrista?

Well, it's an interesting critique coming from Ray, who has mentioned that both his parents are dead, and who never receives any financial help himself. So he's actually coming from a place where he's allowed to lob that criticism at Hannah and her world. Or at least he's better situated to make those complaints, whether they are right or wrong. Ironically, the actor who plays Ray, Alex Karpovsky, makes a lot of feature-length documentaries about non-trivial subject matter (like birds, and improv comedy,) and has expressed that GIRLS is the only acting he plans on doing. So like, there's that. I'm not sure if that undermines or underscores Ray's feelings about Hannah's writing, but it's something to think about.

4. Examine Marnie and Hannah’s dispute about who is more of “a wound” in light of the crucifiction of Jesus Christ. Who is the bigger martyr? How does Lena Dunham herself resemble the Son of God? How do they differ?

Oh god, those two going at it. The whole season was kind of building up to this, and yet I found it so unwatchable. Maybe it's just because I hate how girls fights? Like girls never fight about whatever ostensible subject is at hand...they fight about everything, and the longer they fight, the deeper they have to mine each other's personal histories for ammo. So by the end you don't even know what they are yelling about, but for some reason it has to deal with Hannah's inability to have any friends from pre-school?

Who still has friends from pre-school???

Anyway, those two both need to get down off their crosses because we need the wood...to build this totally awesome chuppah in the backyard and perform non denominational dog ceremonies.

5. The episode begins at a book party for Lena’s former writing classmate, Tally Schifferin, whose new book explores the death of a boyfriend. Imagine you are Tally. In her voice, write a chapter of her book.  

James Dean. Jimi Hendrix. Amy Winehouse. I used to idolize all those rock stars who died young and left only their legacies behind, until my boyfriend committed suicide by crashing his vintage car while on Percocet. That's when I realized that it wasn't just legacies that got left behind when a legend died...sometimes, it was girlfriends too.

Don't steal Chris O'Dowd's sunshine (HBO)

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.

1. This episode of GIRLS is characterized by an ambient soundtrack of jangly acoustic guitar. How does the background music reflect Hanna Horvath’s inner emotional state?

I didn't notice this, as I was too busy rocking out to that rad "Steal My Love/monkeys laughing hysterically" mash-up. Oh my god, and what about "Field-Nice": that "Steal My Sunshine"/"children laughing" track? Can I buy that on iTunes?

This episode did make my boyfriend realize that he should never say to total strangers, "My one regret in life is that I never learned to DJ," which I think we can all count as a positive.

2. Hannah attends a tech rehearsal for Adam’s play. His costar breaks out some dubious hip hop slang, enraging him. Discuss the history of minstrelsy in America. When is it acceptable for whites to employ African American vernacular for comic effect?

First off: was Adam's monologue supposed to be good? I was confused. I know Adam Driver is a good stage actor, but was he (the actor, not the character) intentionally trying to do a kind shitty performance, to show how ridiculous monologues in memoir plays are? It was like one of those Fred Armisen parodies of one-man shows:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcyJW-GeMDc
And why hasn't Adam figured out the rest of his monologue...the play is opening in two weeks!
Gavin definitely needed to cut it down to only one "yo," but it's funny, I haven't heard someone say the word "wigger" since 1999. Another race issue that Girls is just diving headfirst in? I don't know. I don't think Josh was mocking African-American culture so much as trying to make a statement on white people who co-opt that culture in an effort to remain hip, which ironically backfires, since Gavin doesn't have enough confidence in his own abilities that he has to pull out that stereotype (of a wigger) for laughs.

Actually, if you go back and listen to what Gavin says during that scene --"Yo yo yo, I love boy scout camp, who says we be getting too old for this shit? (Makes record scratching noises)"--it kind of makes you want to know more about that play! Adam hasn't been on that river in a long time, but they are in boy scout camp? Which, to be fair, would place them around 9-13 years old...exactly when white kids are most likely to start emulating hip hop artists and other black entertainers because they seem cool. So maybe Gavin was tapping into something real there.

Also Gavin, in an effort to be funny, was playing up the character of a white guy who thinks he's black which is totally different than a white comic that does impressions of black people, or makes racial slurs. OR IS IT? Discuss.

It's sterile

3. Adam joins Hannah in the shower and urinates on her. Discuss the infantile pleasure of micturition in light of Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents.

I'd rather discuss Adam's rage issues and anti-authority idealism in light of Civilization and Its Discontents, but fiiiine.

Freud had this idea that when someone feels "an oceanic feeling of wholeness," (something that arises during the first stages of love, say) they can regress back into a stage of pre-ego infantilism where the identity between the person and the object is blurred. Pleasure principle and so forth.

So while it is totally gross, Adam peeing on Hannah can either be seen as a sign that he is truly opening himself up and falling for her...or that he's just a big weirdo that wants to incorporate water sports into their sex play. I assumed the latter.

4. After Marnie and Jessa pick up a venture capitalist in a bar, their possible menage a trois is cut short with the defilement of his shag carpet. How does this scene crystallize the class conflict inherent in the late capitalist project?

What a weird scene. The first time I saw it, I thought, "This is the first wrong note the show has played all year." Because yeah, Girls is not especially adroit at keeping their "adults" three dimensional, but when that venture capitalist flips out, it's almost too emotional. It was an uncomfortable scene, and it was trying to play for both laughs and for drama, and that guy from Bridesmaids had to revert to using some sort of weird caveman speech impediment so his accent wouldn't come out.

Though I did love his "mash-ins", especially the part where it's just kids screeching over Len?

The second time though, I thought that this scene was so uncomfortable precisely because it was so well-written. This is why you don't let strange corporate guys take you home, especially if they live in one of those creepy high-rises in Williamsburg that I thought literally no one lived in. He has this nice-guy act that complete falls away when he realizes he's being "excluded" from the sex games, and even though he pouts that he wants to "balls deep in something...I don't even care what it is," it's actually coming from this non-sexual place of wanting to be part of the group. Despite the fact that he has money and this expensive rug (and is a total goober), why is this guy so furious?

He's mad because he considers them to be over-privileged hipster shits whose parents pay for anything, who look down on him because he's not "cool." He is not wrong: if there's one thing show has taught us, it's that working hard for something if it isn't relationship-based isn't worth the effort.
That being said, this guy would actually be a perfect boyfriend for Marnie; as they are both so tightly-wound yuppies trying who would be happier just accepting that they are fundamentally mainstream and middle-class. They shouldn't have to hide their resentment towards parasitic friends who don't have any cash.

Oh, and is Jessa a lesbian now?

5. Is Roxy Music the most amazing band ever?

Kind of, but it loses points for being my dad's favorite band. Or at least I think it is because he loves Velvet Goldmine so much. You tell me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVeEBMJt8vs

Crack is whack (HBO)

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.

1. The episode begins at a warehouse party. Describe the scene in light of Bakhtin’s Theory of the Carnivalesque. How are characters altered and the relationships upended by this event, when the established societal rules are briefly suspended (i.e., “tits out for Christmas”)?

Bakhtin’s's theory of carnival was actually published in a later version of his essays, Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics, and the term "carnival" was used to explain what he considered the Russian author's ""polyphony": the ability of many voices to speak at once, interact with each other, and most importantly, strengthen individual arguments while finally being heard by one another.

While so far the show has focused on the four girls, with their male counterparts existing as comic relief or foils, this episode turns that around. Did anyone notice this was the first time Adam had been shown outside of his apartment? (Let alone with his shirt on?) We learn Adam is a much more complex character than just "Hannah's jerk of a sex-buddy"; he's a recovering alcoholic, an avid reader, and is building a barge to flow down the Hudson on the 4th of July! Also, he, like most characters, thinks Hannah is a narcissist for essentially using him for sex and for her "writing."

If you go back and watch the previous episodes, especially the ones leading up to this one, Hannah's relationship with Adam completely takes on another tenor. When he says "Relationships have an expiration date...you're not having fun anymore," Adam is actually hurting from Hannah's "rejection." She told everyone else he was her boyfriend, but she never expressed it to him. So when she came to his door and gave him that non-ultimatum ultimatum (He even prompts her, "So what are you asking?" to which she responds, "I'm not asking anything,") we now know the altered subtext: Adam is waiting to hear what Hannah wants out of the relationship besides a fuck-buddy, and she never let him believe that he was boyfriend material, because she's not the kind of girl who wants to go to brunch, or something.

Then there's that reversal of Charlie and Marnie's relationship: in classic Rachel/Ross fashion where the one character who has been keeping the other at arm's distance only realizes how much they "need" their partner when they see them with someone else. Although whoa, Charlie must be some kind of pussyhound to find a new girlfriend in two weeks. Are we supposed to believe he had been cheating on Marnie? Is that where her disbelief stems from?

And even Elijah, Hannah's gay ex-boyfriend, comes back from a one-note character to become a more fully fleshed-out character. His interaction with Marnie is priceless: I spent the entire episode trying to think which two characters make out in Rent. Was Marnie supposed to be Mimi and Elijah played Roger? I mean, I know this show gets criticized for being white-washed but come on. Plus, Elijah provides some insight into Marnie's own egoism: she's narcissistic about being necessary. Her world basically collapses when she realizes that every one of her friends (and her boyfriend) can live their lives as a semi-functional human being without being spoon-fed her sage wisdom from her 24 years on Earth.

Also, we learn that Ray is kind of into girls that hit him in the nuts. So he finally has something in common with Adam. We learn nothing new about Jeff, except that he can be a total asshole in addition to a creepy dad.

2. At the party, Shoshonnah smokes “a glass cigarette,” i.e., crack cocaine, resulting in a frenzied slapstick race with Ray. How does this scene shed light on the crack epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s, the thousands of lives lost and ruined, and the unfair sentencing guidelines that resulted in long prison terms for many minority offenders?

For me, this scene is less about crack and more about the fact that if a girl runs down the street screaming "rape" in Bushwick, apparently no one comes to her aid. Where are the crusties when you need them?

3. Use the phrase “a tiny Navajo” in a sentence. Compare and contrast Hannah’s bike ride with Adam to the “Long Walk” of 1864 and the exploitation of native peoples by the American Government.

"My favorite book growing up was The Indian in the Cupboard, which was about a tiny Navajo who came to life." As for Hannah's unfortunate-ending bike accident as a metaphor for the ethnic cleansing of the Native American people....I'm not touching that with a ten-foot pole. That's like saying the whole episode can be compared to the Schindler's List because a bunch of Jewish characters spend time in the ghetto before being herded into a small warehouse.

That being said, I think "dropping a pin" on your iPhone so your friend can pick you up in a taxi after you get into a fight with a guy is exactly like Kit Carson's "scorched earth" campaign. Also, I loved how the ending shot was basically the opposite of The Graduate's, with Hannah between Adam and Marnie in the taxi, trying to look forlorn and lost, but not being able to quite hide the smile of victory and sheer glee from spreading across her face.

4. There are several physical injuries in this episode (Jeff is beaten, Hannah is propelled from Adam’s bicycle handle bars, Shoshonnah mistakenly ingests cocaine). How do such incidents highlight the frailty of the body as well as its resilience?

You are forgetting Ray getting hit in the balls! Actually, this episode did have slapstick-y quality that didn't quite work for me. The only repercussions you see from any of these injuries is Jeff's bloody nose, and even that seems light for a guy who was basically American History X-style curb stomped after getting punched in the face. If you fly off the handlebars of a fast-moving bike, I don't care if you are wearing a backpack on your tummy, your face is going to look like hotdog. And there is no way Ray is condition to compete physically with a toned, kickboxing Type-A 20-year-old who happens to be on CRACK. And then he gets hit in the balls and solar plexus? That guy needs a little more than a crotch-massage...at the very least his body would probably go into shock or he'd pass out from lack of oxygen.

This episode weirdly reinforces the idea that 20-somethings are as invisible as they think they are, while adults actually suffer after being grievously injured.

5. After Jessa invites pathetic Gen-X daddy Jeff to the party and then blithely induces two partygoers to kick the shit out of him, he asks her to sleep with him, and she declines. Aren’t there any other kids in Manhattan she could babysit?

Wait, what's the question here? That Jessa, after giving so many "go-ahead" signs to Jeff, should have slept with him and found a new job? Or that if she knew she didn't want to sleep with him, she should have found a new family to babysit for? The epiphany Jessa reaches in this episode is that while sleeping with guys like Jeff is usually what she does...in fact, she's been leading up to it all season...in the harsh, fluorescent lights of that hospital, she realized she could do better for herself.

And sure, there are other kids in Manhattan, but does Jessa really want to babysit them? Does Jessa even like babysitting? Was she also an au pair, because she was around that apartment an awful lot.

EXTRA CREDIT: Did you really want me to come to your birthday party last night, and if so, why did you whisper the invite in a crowded newsroom at 6:12 p.m. on a Friday before a major federal holiday? 

Didn't you get my text? It said "BEST PARTY EVER" and had the address of a crackden in Bushwick. I was looking for you all night!

And I have no control whether my birthday falls on a federal holiday weekend or not. You'll have to take that up with my mom.