‘Girls’ season 2 finale preview: How should we feel?
On Sunday night, HBO will send off season 2 of “Girls,” which has clearly earned its title of “the most polarizing comedy on TV.” If you talk to any given person on the show, you are sure to get a very different reaction about it. For some, this is a shining light that speaks to a new generation, and one of the fiercest productions out there by a young visionary in Lena Dunham. If you speak to other people, it’s a mess of a show that borrows heavy from other influences, and it takes itself far too seriously in an attempt to look “cool.”
There are devoted “Girls” fans out there who loved the first season and are lukewarm about the second, mostly because they liked the more traditional format featuring all of the main characters (Hannah, Marnie, Shoshanna, and Jessa), and feel as though the tone this year has been a little too depressing. However, we contend that “Girls” season 1 was a little derivative at times of “Sex and the City” meets and indie film meets an 1980s coming-of-age tale, and season 2 has been a spark of magic and creativity that is far and away the better, more pensive product.
Dunham has clearly given a few performances this year that should make her the frontrunner for an acting Emmy right away, from Hannah’s struggles with OCD to the standalone episode with Patrick Wilson, an extremely controversial hour that we contend is the finest episode of any show thus far in 2013 when it comes to how it presented a tiny story packed with subtext and genuine feeling. However, you cannot also ignore the fact that several other actors have also upped their game, most notably Adam Driver as a character you want to love, but end up simultaneously hating for some of the things that he does.
There have been some serious missteps throughout “Girls” season 2, with Hannah doing drugs feeling like a retread and with Jessa’s family visit being close to a bonafide disaster. However, when the show has hit, it has hit big. We prefer series to take big risks and reap big rewards, and he have laughed and felt more this season than with any comedy series since “Community” season 2. We actually find that while sophomore slumps happen often, many comedies tend to have their best years the second go-around: “Scrubs” season 2 was a personal favorite, and for a span of several years we held “The Office” season 2 as the standard for the new millennium in comedic TV.
We’re going to miss “Girls” during its absence. There are no other comedies on TV that fascinate us to the same degree, and nor are there any that give us the feeling that we don’t know quite what is going to happen next. All this is even more magical when you consider that we really didn’t care for the pilot, and there were times during the show’s early days that cheering for this series felt like a tiresome task.
How do you feel about “Girls” moving forward to the season 2 finale? If you want to watch the first preview for the episode, you can do so over at the link here.
Photo: HBO