Been there, seen that. (Hustler)

As for the sex This Ain't Girls XXX:

“I tried to make it as weird as possible,” Calhoun told XBIZ. “I tried to say really weird things and do really weird positions.

“Well, not that weird,” he quickly added.

Haha, what does that even mean? No Cabbage Patch lunchbox sex? No "grey rape?" No dialogue that involves the phrase "You said I made you feel like your whole body was a clit?"

The actor praised writer/director Stuart Canterbury's script, which he said stays true to the tone of the original series, which he called "provocative" and "very well written."

Bros.

How many more Girls parodies can YouTube handle?

At least one more, according to 25-year-old video editor Anthony DiMieri, the creator of  Bros.

Mr. DiMieri's completely unique series follows four bros as they embark on a transformation, from New Jersey frat boys to full-blown Brooklyn hipsters.

"The stuff I was writing about, I sort of based on real-life experience,” he said, completely seriously, to Metro.

“I definitely lived a similar lifestyle with the Pickleback shots and PBR. There is some truth to the stereotypes, but we really went over the top and made it cartoonish.”

Mr. DiMieri is hoping Bros will be his big break. So far, the first episode of the series has been watched more than 20,000 times and the official Twitter handle for Girls even started following him this week.

"That was a big deal because it was like, ‘Ok, the people at HBO are watching this,’” Mr. DiMieri said to Metro. “I think Lena Dunham and I could probably collaborate and write a really hilarious episode, maybe about bringing the girls to a frat party."

Let's hope not.

Spring Break forever...until you stick a Q-tip in your ear. (THR)

We'd actually go see this film. Wouldn't you?

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.

This is perfect. (YouTube)

As one Observer staffer put it, "The way she said 'asshole'...just brilliant."

Good job, everyone involved in this.

Alex Karpovsky at Red Flag screening. (Getty Images)

And his fans aren’t always those you might expect.

Just last week, the Transom was walking through Union Square with Mr. Karpovsky, en route to lunch, when an older man stopped the actor on the street. He just really wanted to say how much he liked the show. Mr. Karpovsky estimates that this happens "a couple times" a day.

And in case we didn’t believe him, cut to Lincoln Center last Friday night, where Mr. Karpovsky was playing host to a double screening of his two most recent directorial efforts and old Russian men made up a sizable chunk of the Karpovosky fan club.

Then again, it was all the way up at Lincoln Center, and the movies--which were picked up by Tribeca Films for distribution--had an earlier screening on Wednesday downtown. That one ended up making it into Page Six, if only to note that his two much more private male co-stars, Adam Driver and Christopher Abbott, were in attendance.

At Lincoln Center, Mr. Karpovsky held court over approximately 50 people, talking about the films, Red Flag and Rubberneck, both of which were made three years ago. In the former, Mr. Karpovsky plays himself as a kind of fatalistic Larry David/Woody Allen sad-sack shmuck on a cross-country roadtrip to promote his (real) faux-documentary, Woodpecker. (With us so far?) In the latter, a psychosexual thriller, he plays a creepy scientist who indulges an unhealthy obsession with a coworker after a one-night stand.

Surprised by Mr. Karpovsky’s output? Don’t be. In the time of B.G. ("Before Girls”), Mr. Karpovsky was a reasonably prolific filmmaker, with other movies like Trust Us, This Is All Made Up, The Whole Story and the aforementioned Woodpecker. He's acted in dozens more.

And if this is Mr. Karpovsky's big moment--his arrival on the scene, as it were--he's not going to let it fly by with false modesty. Though he doesn't read the oceans of commentary, nor the commentary on the commentary, about Girls that's practically inescapable if you read newspapers, magazines or the Internet, he does manage to find out what's being written about himself.

"I just have a Google alert for my name," he said. "Though it's quite porous."

With an inescapable cloud of Girls-fame hanging over him, Mr. Karpovsky did confess that fans often confuse him for Ray, as have recent interviewers. But the truth is that there’s less of Mr. Karpovsky in his most famous character than one may think. Ray is a Greek Orthodox orphan while Mr. Karpovsky comes from a Jewish family in Boston, where his father is a scientist. Ray is sour and prone to screaming matches over stuff like (literal) garbage while Mr. Karpovsky is harder to ruffle.

"They'll just use Ray and Alex interchangeably," he said, referring to journalists and Internet fans alike. "Sometimes I let it go. Other people will say 'That's the most Jewishy-Jewy motherfucker. How is he not Jewish?'" -Drew Grant

Lena Dunham.

Last spring, actor Billy Morrissette was guest starring on Girls and invited me to Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard to watch an episode of the show being filmed. The bad news didn’t come until the day of: due to “tension on set,” Mr. Morrissette had decided it was a bad idea to bring a guest.

And so, rather than meeting Lena Dunham myself, I had to make do with a second-degree connection, along with seemingly everyone else in New York. You see, touting one’s almost-connection to Girls, no matter how tenuous (or even imagined) is de rigueur these days for anyone under 30. Two months ago at a birthday party in Bushwick, for instance, one might have met over the course of the evening—as I did—a blogger whose cousin had been roommates with Ms. Dunham’s sister, a financial analyst from around the corner who remembered seeing Christopher Abbott, the actor who plays Charlie, working at Rockaway Taco and a jewelry designer whose best friend’s boyfriend (aka Mr. Morrissette) is played the boyfriend of Hannah’s ex-boyfriend-cum-gay roommate.

Not only are these almost-connections rampant, but New Yorkers also have a seemingly endless desire to talk about them. The only prompting a stranger usually needs to launch into a detailed description of his or her association with the cast, crew or catering of HBO’s hit show is: “Hi.”

Fame by association is so Hollywood, so what is it about Girls that causes normally celebrity-indifferent New Yorkers to desperately name-drop?

You might say it’s because the show is shot in New York, but so are a lot of shows nobody talks about. When was the last time someone asked you if you saw the latest Damages? Or mused over the dead bodies on Law & Order? Does anyone have a roommate whose sister guest starred on Gossip Girl? Probably. But I’ve never heard anyone talk about it. Louie shoots in New York and is often compared to Girls, since they are both shows whose star is also the producer, writer and director. And yet one rarely hears more about Louie than the requisite “I love it!”

One reason people may feel so comfortable talking about Girls is that many of us think it’s only by a cruel twist of fate—and a whole lot of nepotism—that Lena Dunham created the show and we did not. Knowing someone close to the show is further proof of how close we were/are/could be to having our names in the credits. “What I don’t get is why people act like being bitter toward her isn’t understandable. Why wouldn’t you be bitter toward someone who has everything you want when your life sucks?” said one man who wanted only to be identified as a New York comedian.

This confidence that we could have, should have and eventually would have done what Ms. Dunham did is a delusion, certainly, but it is also a result of the show’s incredibly personal nature. While Girls may be based on Ms. Dunham’s life, the stories are often so familiar that watching them feels like someone else is getting rich off our diary.

Upon seeing the episode where two characters make an ill-fated journey to Staten Island, for instance, Max Barbakow, a 23-year-old filmmaker, exclaimed, “Yeah, I already did that last week,” as though the show owed him money for the story line. Law & Order may be ripped from the headlines, but Girls is ripped from our heads.  

And yet, as much as we may feel that we are part of the story, we aren’t. We may identify with Ms. Dunham’s characters, we may even have a friend who has her email address, but most of us don’t know her and probably never will. It’s like looking at the Manhattan skyline from an apartment in Bushwick. You’re basically there, but out-of-towners still think you live in Jersey.

This not-quite-inclusion is why I can’t watch an episode without pointing out to anyone who will listen that that brownstone couldn’t possibly be in Greenpoint. It’s not that I really care whether Girls takes liberties with the geography of Brooklyn, I just need you to know that I know they’re doing it. We use our Girls connections and insider knowledge to assert ownership over a show that we secretly think we should have been paid for anyway.

Girls Also feels personal because there’s so much it gets right. When so many shows about city-dwelling post-collegiate adults miss the mark (see: CBS’s 2 Broke Girls and FOX’s New Girl), Ms. Dunham’s vehicle is at least a realistic representation of what it’s like to be young in New York in 2013, and that’s because the material is culled from real life.

Or so I’ve been told. (An acquaintance assured me that she had it on good authority that Ms. Dunham doesn’t like to drink, and this is why no one on the show is ever drunk and crying.)

But just as the urbanites of the ’90s didn’t know they hated low-talkers until Seinfeld told them so, we had no way to express how fun and simultaneously idiotic warehouse parties could be until Ms. Dunham nailed it in season one. Which perhaps explains why so many people feel let down by the show’s almost total lack of racial diversity. To see a show get your life so right but not see yourself represented would be maddening. As Ali Davis, a Fort Greene-dwelling fashion editor, told The Observer, “I know the show should have black people, because I’m black and I’m in that world.”

(Ms. Davis also confided that one of her classmates from journalism school used to live with series regular Audrey Gelman.)

Another reason people bring Girls into conversation is that it’s easy. Talking about the show has very few barriers to entry. You don’t have to like it, since disliking Girls is actually a respected contrarian position, whereas disliking Louie is not allowed and would never be admitted to.

One reporter I know, who lives on the Upper East Side, gave up on the show after the first season but still sends around a Facebook pictures of himself and Allison Williams from when they were in college together at Yale. He’d do fine in a Girls conversation, because the show’s plot points are only an entrée into discussion, and talking about Girls quickly turns into talking about racism, nepotism, body image, bad sex, good sex, degrading sex, sexy sex and sexism.

The bonus is that the show’s unflinching depiction of normal-looking people having sex means that a casual conversation about TV can quickly turn into a casual conversation about other people’s sex lives, which is the (usually unrealized) goal of all conversation.

The only time it’s really not a good idea to talk about Girls is when you’re with people who don’t live in New York, since there’s nothing like someone with no Girls almost-connections to make your Girls almost-connections look stupid. The problem is that they act like your experiences of watching the show are equal, as though you’re just a fan instead of someone whose roommate grew up with Audrey Gelman (true story!). Being just “a fan” would mean acknowledging that the relationship between ourselves and Girls is necessarily hierarchical. And while we may watch every episode and spend an inordinate amount of time defending it to strangers, we’re not fans of Girls. We’re more like friends, or at least friends of a friend.

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.