‘Flix Flick: HBO “Girls”: S1 Eps 3: “All Adventurous Women Do”

I’ve been cautiously making my way through Season 1 of the highly provocative, and equally unsettling, HBO series, Girls. This brutally honest, and sometimes clever and humorous, series focuses on Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham) and her three girlfriends, navigating through their early 20s. All four are very different types of young women (on the outside), yet are still, to some degree, girls (on the inside).

Episode 3 brought about a terrific six-minute scene, filled with awkward tension, surrounding a reconnection between what seems to be a perpetually oblivion-induced Hannah and her ex-boyfriend from college, Elijah, played by Andrew Rannels of NBC’s The New Normal. Yet what may have seemed obvious to some or many, but not to her, about Elijah, causes Hannah to have a wonderfully authentic and innocent emotional reaction to what comes up (or out) in conversation. What Dunham does with Hannah is hard to achieve: allow the viewer to feel sad for Hannah, lip quivering; tears falling; shaking her head in disbelief; hands folded on the bar, yet quickly chuckle over what Hannah calls her “inappropriate physical reaction…” (Adult themes.)



After an awful evening, what’s a girl to do? Post on Twitter, listen to the amazing Dancing On My Own by Robyn, and retell the night’s events to your best friend, Marnie (played by Allison Williams, daughter of the news anchor, Brian Williams). For Hannah, sure beats crying on her own. (Adult themes.) BSo