By Drew Grant, Noam Cohen and Alex Bedder 2/25 11:22am

girls

Illustration by Alex Bedder.

Five Essay Prompts for Girls 2×7: ‘Video Games’

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

1. The celebrity cameos on Girls are starting to seem fraught with significance. Is this an attempt to subtly imply that Petula (played by Rosanna Arquette) is–behind the literally bunny boiler faux-hippy persona–“desperately seeking” a different life? Her flirting with her (maybe) gay son’s (maybe) boyfriend seems to suggest a flipped version of her role in The Executioner’s Song. Read More

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

girls

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

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

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

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

By Jim Hanas 1/15 6:57pm

the fifth girl

Audrey Gelman and Lena Dunham last week at Capitale, from Ms. Gelman’s Instagram account.

Meet Audrey Gelman: She’s Like Marnie—Only Successful

Audrey Gelman first appears in season two of Girls—which premiered Sunday night—coming out of the bathroom. She is carrying a tallboy that dwarfs her tiny frame, scolding her clingy boyfriend, Charlie, and looking for some weed. “Hi Audrey,” Marnie Michaels (played by Allison Williams) says, shooting daggers at her rival. Ms. Gelman’s role as Marnie’s Read More

By Drew Grant 1/15 9:06am

girls

Howard Stern Goes Soft for Dunham in Old Age

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

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

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

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

By Drew Grant 1/08 7:39pm

pop culture

Illustration by Kyle T. Webster.

Carrie-ing the Torch: Deep Down, We’re All Still A Little Bit Bradshaw

A few weeks before the premiere of The Carrie Diaries on The CW, The Observer drove to Connecticut to meet the “real Carrie Bradshaw,” who now lives by herself on a small farm with two large poodles.

Candace Bushnell is not an easy woman to find. After several wrong turns on a chilly, overcast Tuesday, we found ourselves driving up a small dirt road in the middle of nowhere (technically, Roxbury, Conn.). A sharp right, and we were in the gravel driveway of what appeared to be a steeply pitched farmhouse. In a puffy blue parka, bomber hat yanked over her ears, the slight blond figure bounded down the steps of the barn, calling away her dogs and exhorting us to park somewhere else so she could get her car out. She seemed so unnerved by our arrival that we weren’t even sure she was the woman behind the cultural juggernaut Sex and the City. Read More