Sadé Green reviews the first two episodes of Girls season 3…
Finally, the ‘voice of my generation’ is back and it is very welcome!
Hannah, Jessa, Marnie and Shoshanna carried on their early-20’s exploits with hilariously funny consequences. The sometimes unrealistic series opened with a two-parter carrying on a few months from where season 2 left off. Hannah (the brain behind Girls, Lena Dunham) is now on medication for her OCD breakdown (and the self-cut fringe is finally growing out); Jessa (Jemima Kirke) has resurfaced in a rehab centre after her spectacular divorce; Marnie (Alison Williams) is now living with her Mother after a devastating break up with her ‘soul mate’ Charlie and the previously virginal Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) is living it up, down and sideways in her final college days.
The opening two-parter of ‘Females Only’ and ‘Truth or Dare’ was full of self-involved quips and very entertaining run-ins with old exes (cue an amazingly awkward scene with Shiri Appleby’s Natalia and her very protective friend played by Amy Schumer). Adam (Adam Driver) is now living with Hannah and is mortified at the fact that he has to have dinner with her friends that night to celebrate Hannah’s first chapters being published online. It gets extremely uncomfortable when Adam accidentally reveals that he bumped into Charlie a few weeks ago and ends with Marnie in tears, getting relationship advice from a strangely comforting Adam – when did he get so normal? Or are the girls’ crazy shenanigans making him look like the sane one?
Jessa is on top form in rehab, insulting anyone and everything in her droll trans-atlantic accent. She is so hateable but it’s hard not to envy her ballsiness. A great cameo from Richard E. Grant shows him playing an equally as ballsy, chain smoking drug addict who develops a rather odd relationship with Jessa. In Jessa’s self-involved bubble she sees herself as helping the other habitants with their problems, even claiming that she was ‘doing charity’ helping a closet lesbian realise her true sexuality.
With some thoroughly unlikeable characters, it really is a wonder that Girls is as popular and successful as it is. But coming from the point-of-view of a girl in her twenties, it can be so reminiscent of the kind of people that you come across and it is these observations that makes it so funny. Adam’s insistence that he doesn’t need to socialise with Hannah’s friends must ring a few bells to every female out there and having that crazily annoying friend that asks dumbass questions (‘What’s your favourite utensil?’) like Shoshanna is a bug we all have to bear.
Girls is the hilarious version of real-life that we all secretly wish was the way we could actually go about things. Written by Dunham and her collaborator Jennifer Konner, Girls possesses some of the driest humour on television at the moment and the season 3 opener proves that Girls still packs a hilarious punch. But even if you are no longer in your twenties (lucky you, seriously) it is still such an enjoyably fun show to watch. If anything, it will make you happy that your twenties are long behind you.
Sadé Green
Originally published January 25, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
