Shoshona and Ray have some awkward moments on Girls
Photo Credit: HBO
A review of Girls’ season finale (and a few thoughts on the
season as a whole) as soon as I feel out the gender of my unborn child…
Oh bittersweet melancholy…
Girls (one of my absolute favorite shows on television)
wrapped up its third season to more and more of the bittersweetnes that the
series knows all too well. “Two Plane Rides” was another perfectly toned finale
that, even better than in past years managed to wrap the season’s themes into a
nice bow of beauty and sadness. Better yet it made Season 3, unlike its predecessor,
to feel better than the sum of its parts, managing to better balance its
strange ideas, character beats, and plot better than it managed in, say the end
of last season.
The place we leave Hannah in this season is interesting.
Most of this season seems to be tied to how Hannah has begun to grow up in some
ways and stay in the same place in others. On one hand we see her get some
professional direction with her acceptance to grad school in Iowa (and the best
writing school in America none the less), but at the same time personally, and
especially here with Adam, seems to be going close to nowhere. She still needs
that moment of being special, and thus despite knowing better than anyone Adam’s
negative reaction, decides to tell him about Iowa right before he goes on opening
night. The scene where she does tell him is beautifully uncomfortable in that
way that only Girls can manage to make it, providing that wonderful reaction of
“why would she do this?” while still keeping it with in the territory of something
that Hannah Horvath would actually do.
Of course it leaves Adam and Hannah’s relationship on the
rocks, which for the most part is nothing new for the show. The way that it
does leave it on the rocks though is a fascinating new place providing numerous
different options of where this could go as the series moves on. The final shot
of the finale that shows Hannah hugging the Iowa acceptance letter suggesting
that we could go off into strange new territory, one that could potentially be
an interesting departure for the series as a whole. It also allows us to ponder
just how stable this relationship between Adam and Hanna is, and whether Hanna’s
attempt to feel special, instead of waiting on breaking the news, has cost her
the relationship.
Relationship drama doesn’t end with Hannah, in the ball goes
quite firmly into Shoshana’s court as well. Shosh finds herself in quite the
situation in this finale, being three credits short of being able to graduate
university, and having Ray flat out reject her as he feels potentially “better
off” without her. The scene in which Shoshana painfully proclaims her desperate
love for Ray while he coldly rejects her is one of the most painful scenes this
season and easily the best work that Zosia Mamott has done so far on the show.
The dramatic angle that this season has brought the character is very suiting
and has made Shoshana a much more satisfying character as the season has
progressed.
If I had a problem with the way the finale wrapped up it
would be that the show still has very little idea of how to handle Jess and her
messiness. Even this season with two episodes to work with her arc still seems
incomplete and rushed in so many ways. It’s way too quick for Beadie to want to
commit suicide and then go against it by wanting to call 911 immediately
afterwards, it seems like that whole arc needed a few more episodes to develop and
give us an idea of where Jessa has gone as this season has progressed.
Some other musings:
- Marnie is playing man stealer as this episode goes along. She really brings out the desperateness in Shoshana when she talks about sleeping with Ray right to her without real remorse. Then she goes and steals a few kisses from Desi, and awkwardly confronts his girlfriend (in a similar dress none the less) in the bathroom a little later in the episode.
- Ray has yet to learn how to dress to Elijah’s standards for a formal event.
- Those textbooks really can break windows!
That’s it for Girls this season! Another really good one
indeed! We’ll have to wait and see whether we will be spending a ton of time in
Iowa I guess…
That’s just me folks. What did everyone else think?
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