‘Girls’ season 3, episode 11 review: The Hannah problem continues
We’ve been trying to figure out what it is about season 3 of “Girls” that has turned us off so much, and following tonight’s episode, we feel like we’ve finally figured it out: Hannah no longer feels like a character we can truly root for. Back when we had the season 2 episode featuring Patrick Wilson, we saw her as a young woman who was lost and looking for enlightenment in whatever form she could find it. That episode excelled via its subtlety.
Since that time, however, the show has delved more and more into broad strokes and almost cartoonish behavior. Hannah no longer seems like a woman who is capable of having light and shade; she is instead an over-the-top ne’er-do-well. Let’s make a laundry list of the mean / uncaring things that she did during this episode:
1. Telling off her fellow co-workers before quitting GQ, even though most of them were nice to her.
2. Bringing over a guest to Patti LuPone’s house completely unannounced.
3. Making commentary on how good of a friend she was during Marnie’s performance.
4. Deliberately catching Ray in the act of sleeping with Marnie … in Ray’s own place. She barged into his bedroom when she heard that he was having sex and found the truth.
Do we understand that there is a double standard at times in the way characters are perceived as good and evil? Sure. Sometimes we loathe Hannah Horvath, and yet we cheered for Walter White or Dexter Morgan. Maybe it is a condition of us recognizing good intent at times in the minds of an anti-hero, whereas we see Hannah now as a woman who is becoming harder and harder to relate to. The only thing that we sympathized with her over this time around was her relationship with Adam.
The issue now with “Girls” is that Hannah is the show’s worst character now, and yet she is the one with the most airtime by a wide margin. We’ve found Jessa progressively more interesting as this season has gone on, Shoshanna has been a ghost, and Marnie’s behavior patterns tonight, hooking up with Ray after realizing that she was idealizing her musical partner when he had a boyfriend, were perfectly relatable and proof that you can be layered and interesting without being awful. We’ve already said that we have perpetually found Ray to be one of the show’s best characters.
“Girls” is going the wrong way, and we only hope that the finale starts to turn things around and sets the stage for the future. Grade: C-.
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Photo: HBO