TV Review: Girls (4×02) – “Triggering”

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so bipolar about Hannah in an episode of Girls. Hannah is slowly transitioning to Iowa State and going to writer workshops, but it’s there where Hannah starts to get on my nerves. Her egotistical mind becomes an incoherent flaw, as she seems to understand what literature purely represents. Novels, short stories, poetry, etc. could be interpreted depending on who the reader is. At her writers’ workshop, the others start to heavily criticize her work, but to Hannah it doesn’t faze her. She consistently tries to get a word in edgewise to back up her work, but it only leads to more inner misinterpretation.

Hannah clearly pisses me off as she remains this incompetent self-absorbed “Girl.” I thought this was actually one of the more entertaining episodes of Girls, second to the Cocaine episode. Mid-way Elijah drops in and takes Hannah to a rage. This is where the episode gets fun. Hannah begins to drop it low to the Ying Yang Twins, while Elijah tries to score.

Elijah eventually does, and it’s during that bathroom scene where I got a sizable laugh. He begins to jerk a guy who remarks that he’s not gay, and Elijah retorts with the same; cuts for a second, it comes back, and the guy asks,

“Does this happen at every party?”

Elijah:

“Every party I’m at.”

This is one of the few highlights of the episode. Another is near the end when Hannah wrestles in a pool full of blue paint. Looking back, it fills an empty hole this show dug for itself, and that is the emphasis on fun.

I do appreciate the show’s usage of a “current hot topic” (it’s not): rape culture. Lena’s piece irked me with poorly defined characters and slow action. No spoilers about it from here on.

But…

Besides the fundamentally good aspects of the episode, I’d like to address Lena’s subconscious being. For some reason I felt like the show was being self-aware of its criticism, and in a way I understand such criticisms. The show isn’t primarily story, it’s primarily character. While I do like the creative routes the show takes, I feel like it’s becoming the Lena Dunham show; she expunges other characters just so the audience can feel empty. Hell, I missed Adam’s over-analytical self. That may be the show’s direction, but who am I to be same? I hope for HBO’s sake this show diverges from Lena’s personalized demons and allows us to take a trip down a proper NYC reality.