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

Girls recaps

Boys (illustration by Alex Bedder)

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

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

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

By Drew Grant 2/14 4:17pm

Life Imitating Girls

Lena Dunham Jamming on The Observer’s Girls Recaps

Lena Dunham is a fan of The Observer … or at least our artwork. The creator of our favorite HBO show took to Instagram yesterday to post the artwork that accompanied our “Five Essay Prompts” (created by the talented Alex Bedder) with the caption “Illustration from the NY Observer inspired by Girls episode 205.” Then she went on to “inadvertently” recreate the image with her boyfriend, Fun. bassist Jack Antonoff. Read More

By Rafi Kohan 2/12 6:29pm

The Transom

Amy Schumer.

Chasing Amy: Schumer Tunes Up for New Comedy Series

Outside of Joe’s Pub last Wednesday night, a line stood dozens deep as savvy comedy fans and plaid-shirted beardos waited to see if they’d make the cut. Inside, black-clad waitresses tended to the booths and tables. Stagehands hustled to prepare the room. And somewhere in the wings, Amy Schumer waited to take the stage, possibly Read More

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

Girls recaps

Illustration by Alex Bedder

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


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

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

By Drew Grant 2/06 12:26pm

Overheard

This, basically. (HBO)

Overheard on the F Train: A Little Misinformation Goes a Long Way

Scene: Downtown F train, 9:30 Tuesday night. Crowded car. Two white men in suits, approximately in their late 30s, are holding a discussion with a late-20s white man. The youth is wearing all black with a giant backpack, dreads and a giant bicycle taking up half a row and slamming into our leg every time the train lurches.

Man 1: …See, they call Muslims terrorists, but that’s what the NYPD is, a terrorist organization. That’s why they exist, to terrorize.

Man 2: Well, they are not terrorist terrorists.

Bike Guy: No, they are. They just harass people in order to terrorize New Yorkers. I once got arrested for riding my bike!

Man 2: On the sidewalk? Read More

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

Girls Recap

By Alex Bedder

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


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

By Drew Grant 2/01 3:43pm

girls

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Guys With Kids (NBC)

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

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

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

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

Yesssss … Read More

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

girls

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

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

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

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

By Drew Grant 1/28 10:50pm

GIRLS GIFS

Video

picasion.com_9d3d0eab0ba73b32f441626d99e5af58

Charlie Dugan, the Voice of the Non-Girls Generation

Last week, Jesse David Fox and Sarah Frank of Vulture slapped a camera on and ventured all the way out to Greenpoint. Why? Because the customers of Cafe Grumpy aren’t going to interview themselves about Girls! (False.)

But in between depressing responses from baristas–”I had a customer come down from Canada, and he visited Grumpy’s because he saw the cafe on Girls“– and obnoxious responses from hipster residents–”We don’t think of it as this cool neighborhood…well, it is a cool neighborhood, but we don’t think of it as like, this like, entity. It’s just Brooklyn”– there was a moment of pure, undiluted honesty. One man, just one, was brave enough to speak his real feelings about Lena Dunham’s program. That man was Charlie Dugan. Read More

By Drew Grant 1/25 2:01pm

girls

Girls: Forever! (HBO)

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

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