The third season of “Girls” premiered this past Sunday with two episodes. The previous season closed on the main character, Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham, “Tiny Furniture”), experiencing a crippling OCD episode that her ex-boyfriend, Adam Sackler (Adam Driver, “Frances Ha”), managed to pull her out of. The new season opens with a blissful Horvath and Sackler while Jessa Johansson (Jemima Kirke, “Tiny Furniture”) is in a rehab facility for heroine, Shoshanna Shapiro (Zosia Mamet, “The Kids are All Right”) is found waking up in the top section of someone else’s dorm bunkbed and Marnie Michaels (Allison Williams, “The Mindy Project”) is sleeping on her mother’s couch with no other place to go. The girls are back, but they each face more issues, internal and external, this season than ever before.
Early into the episode, Horvath and Sackler are rapidly wrenched out of their honeymoon phase when a previous lover of Sackler’s approaches the couple in a coffeeshop. He had previously forced Natalia (Shiri Appleby, “Roswell”) to act like a dog during intercourse. Horvath stands by her man throughout the encounter, despite the vile raining down on them both. Sadly, though the couple seems happy in the moment, their relationship appears too immature to provide much support for each other. There are already slight problems in these episodes—Sackler seems to struggle with Horvath’s reliance on friends, proclaiming he does not care about them or want to hang out with them.
Johansson continues to be her flighty self as she undergoes help for her drug addiction—but she seems to have more problems than that, as she repeatedly causes a ruckus among the other addicts in the center to the point to where she is kicked out. Horvath, the always reliant friend to the ever unreliant Johansson, proceeds to take a roadtrip to pick her up from the center. Sackler and Shapiro are in tow—Sackler because he is the only one old enough to rent a car and Shapiro merely along for the ride.
Not that much time is spent on Michaels or Shapiro throughout; both act as crutches to the plot for the first two episodes. This is not an unusual occurrence though, as the main characters of the episodes periodically change during the season. Both Michaels and Shapiro have previously unresolved issues with their ex-boyfriends that will most likely play out in the coming episodes. Shapiro and Ray Ploshansky’s (Alex Karpovsky, “Inside Llewyn Davis”) relationship ended badly and both struggle with their feelings. Michaels and her ex-boyfriend Charlie Dattalo (Christopher Abbot, “Martha Marcy May Marlene”) will probably no longer try to reconcile after their weeks and weeks of separation, but Michaels needs to learn to re-find herself in a life post-Dattalo.
Though some of their problems may seem menial to today’s society, their stories are very important to be shown on screen. The four girls have all faced a rash of problems, some of them dealing with very real-life trauma that is typically never portrayed in media. The constant fear of finding a job in a lessening economy, obsessive compulsive disorder and moving back in with a parent are never glamorous stories, but they are all parts of the mid-20’s generation. Additionally, this is one of the few shows on national television today with a starring cast of only women; the only shows similarly cast are “Orange is the New Black” and the third cycle of “American Horror Story”. With not many shows on screen allowing an equal amount of screen-time for men and women, the true importance of this show can be recognized with its unblinking realism and actual application to society.
Though the outlook does not seem so dismal for the girls right now, only time will tell. Their stories almost mirror the real life of collegiate students and college graduates: Shapiro, for example, is coming up on graduation from college, a scary prospect she seems to be taking a little too well. Sadly, these new episodes, “Females Only” and “Truth or Dare,” are not the best the audience has seen. Dunham, who has proved to be a great showrunner, will hopefully come back with some truly excellent episodes in the coming weeks.
