Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		4.5
Overall		4.5

Girls: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Nothing Respectable; Not So Delectable

Reviewed by Michael Reuben August 9, 2013

(Spoiler alert: The following assumes that the reader is familiar with Season One of Girls. If you haven't seen Season One, proceed at your own risk. A review of the Season One Blu-ray set can be found here.)

The second season of HBO's controversial Girls was as divisive as its first, but the controversy was more interesting. The initial season sparked debate between fans who immediately embraced the show and those who condemned it as self-indulgent garbage. However, as one actor observes in the Season Two extras, a lot of people who hated Girls kept watching it, because people who complained to him about the show seemed to know details from even the latest episode. In the second season, though, it was the fans who complained loudest. Expectations for the second season of a hit show are usually pitched at such an impossibly high level that disappointment is inevitable, but Season 2 of Girls divided its fan base. The split became so extreme that Entertainment Weekly, in its March 8, 2013 issue, ran a "Love It"/"Loathe It" debate between two staff members under the title "The agony and the ecstasy of 'Girls'". The "Loathe It" writer complained: "The friendships of last season, once fraught and fun, are now practically nonexistent."

"Practically nonexistent" is an overstatement, but there's no question that the four main characters in Girls interact less in Season Two, as each one finds herself traveling a separate and often lonely path. That development should come as no surprise, though, to anyone who was paying attention in Season One, by the end of which each of the four main characters had taken off in her own direction. The season concluded with the surprise "impulse" wedding between Jessa and the straight-laced rich guy played by Chris O'Dowd, who barely knew each other (they met when O'Dowd's character clumsily tried to inveigle Jessa and Marnie into a threesome, without success). By that point, Hannah and Marnie had angrily parted as roommates, and Shoshanna had finally lost her virginity and belatedly begun to explore "sex and the city" as a participant rather than a voyeur. If the girls of Girls were ever a close-knit group (which is doubtful), it was certainly clear that they no longer were.

Admittedly, Season Two did introduce new elements. The pregnancy of actress Jemima Kirke forced revisions in both storylines and shooting schedules; her character, Jessa, barely appears in the season opener, and then in only five more episodes. Producers Lena Dunham and Judd Apatow managed to smuggle Jessa into the season finale, which they co-wrote, but she's just a voice on the phone. The humor in Season Two turned darker and sadder, with even more emphasis on embarrassment (Apatow's favorite subject) and unrelieved discomfort (borrowing a leaf from the book of the late Andy Kaufman, whose life-size image is the most prized possession of the ill-humored Ray Ploshansky). And the voices of the series grew more diverse, as Dunham worked with a larger writing staff and relinquished more of the directing duties to other hands.

In Season One, people complained that Girls was too insular. Then, in Season Two, they complained that it ranged too far. As one is so often tempted to say to Dunham's character, Hannah Horvath, there's no pleasing some people.

Season Two picks up at some undisclosed time after the wedding of Jessa (Kirk) and Thomas-John (O'Dowd), who are still out of town on their honeymoon, which has presumably been lengthy. Hannah (Dunham) is now sharing her apartment with the former college boyfriend, Elijah (Andrew Rannells), who turned out to be gay, but she is also helping to care for ex-boyfriend Adam (Adam Driver), who is immobilized while recovering from injuries sustained at the end of Season One in a freak traffic accident. Hannah makes it clear that their relationship is over, but Adam feels differently. As soon as the cast comes off Adam's leg, things get ugly between the former lovers.

Where Hannah's life in Season One was dominated by a lack of funds after her parents refused to continue supporting her as a writer, in Season Two she has almost the opposite problem. Every time she has a chance to earn money as a writer, she blows it. A trendy online magazine offers her a freelance position, and it becomes an excuse for a coke-fueled train wreck of relationship crackups. Then an eccentric e-book publisher (John Cameron Mitchell, Hedwig and the Angry Inch) gives her a sizeable advance, and the result is writer's block and the return of anxiety-induced symptoms that Hannah thought she'd banished in high school. She insists, however, to a mild-mannered shrink (Bob Balaban)—who just happens to be a successful author himself—that she's really fine.

While alternately missing and fearing Adam, Hannah tries to find someone else, with little success. Her relationship with a genuinely nice guy, Sandy (Community's Donald Glover), falters over his political views. In the controversial episode 5, Hannah glimpses herself momentarily through the eyes of someone much older and differently situated, when she spends the weekend with a doctor Joshua (Patrick Wilson), who has just separated from his wife. Being Hannah, she cannot help but turn what for most people would be a casual fling into a tearful psychodrama. It says a lot about Hannah that the most devastatingly accurate assessment of her is delivered in the season finale by her neighbor Laird (Jon Glaser)—who happens to be a recovering drug addict.

Marnie (Allison Williams) finds herself failing to rebound from the on again/off again breakup with Charlie (Christopher Abbott) that lasted for most of Season One. Worse, she loses her art gallery job and find herself stuck in a "pretty girl" position as a hostess at a fancy club, where her primary function is to be polite and get ogled. Perhaps the worst blow to Marnie's ego is a relationship with the famous artist Booth Jonathan (Jorma Taccone), who propositioned her at a reception in Season One—or at least Marnie thinks it's a relationship. Booth Jonathan views it differently. Having mapped out her entire life with the precision of a wedding planner, Marnie can't understand why nothing is working out as she anticipated, because until now it always has. Meanwhile, her old boyfriend Charlie is unexpectedly on an upswing, having started an internet company that is a raging success.

Jessa and Thomas-John return from their honeymoon on a high, but shortly come bumping back to earth as they face married life together. A dinner with Thomas-John's parents (a hilarious Griffin Dunne and Deborah Rush), who are meeting Jessa for the first time, goes from bad to worse. In episode 7, Hannah accompanies Jessa to a remote country town upstate to visit her absentee father, Salvatore (Ben Mendelsohn, who played industrialist Daggett in The Dark Knight Rises and was the spooky gangster Cody in Animal Kingdom), and Salvatore's current wife, Petula (Rosanna Arquette). It's the first peek ever granted both Hannah and the viewers behind Jessa's blase exterior, and it shows sides of her character one never imagined.

Shoshanna's (Zosia Mamet) story in Season Two is dominated by her excitement at no longer being a virgin and her conflicted feelings for Ray (Alex Karpovsky), the man who finally got her over that hurdle. As they struggle to define the terms of a relationship that, at first, neither of them even admits, their incompatibilities become more obvious. Because of their twelve-year age difference, Alex and Shoshanna are at radically different stages in life, and they want different things (though one of Shoshanna's problems with Alex is that he doesn't seem to "want" anything at all). By the end of the season, these issues reach critical mass.

An important subplot that parallels Hannah's attempt to date a nice guy is Adam's effort to date a normal girl. Her name is Natalia (Shiri Appleby), and she's the daughter of a well-meaning but pushy attendee from an AA meeting (a cameo by comedy stalwart Carol Kane). Natalia is a sweet, good-natured person who, like her mother, instantly takes control of a situation. But she soon discovers that, when it comes to matters of sex and emotion, Adam isn't easy to control.

Girls: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The image on HBO's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-rays for Season Two of Girls is comparable to that of Season One, which is to say that it shares the same smooth, detailed look provided by digital photography, and provides the same excellent black levels and contrast. A similarly muted color palette is on display, although occasional scenes require more saturated hues, such as the greens of upstate New York during Jessa's journey (with Hannah) to visit her father. I watched this season of Girls during its initial broadcast, and the image on Blu-ray is noticeably superior to the HDTV picture on Time Warner Cable, with better detail, less noise and superior stability overall.

Girls: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with Season One, the lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 delivers a nice sense of ambiance, especially in a distinctive environment like the Staten Island Ferry. In venues with more enveloping sound, like Charlie's office party, the surround presence is more immersive, but Girls continues not to offer obvious occasions for discrete rear effects or pans. It does, however, have some specific and precise sound effects, such as the one that opens episode 10, when Hannah is recovering from an ear injury, that the crisp lossless track reproduces with perfect fidelity. The dialogue remains clear, and Michael Penn's underscoring continues to provide one of the series' crucial sonic components. Penn's instrumentals for the season finale are a particularly fine example of how music can enhance the emotion of scenes without being manipulative or corny.

Girls: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentaries: All of the commentaries are interesting, but it's the solo commentaries by the directors (Peretz and especially Shepard) that provide the most insight into the creative process behind each episode. Shepard's discussion of Episode 5, which was junked and rewritten at the last minute and is radically different from any other episode of Girls to date, is particularly illuminating.
• Episode 1, with Allison Williams (Marnie) and Andrew Rannells (Elijah).
• Episode 3, with Director Jesse Peretz.
• Episode 4, with Zosia Mamet (Shoshanna), Alex Karpovsky (Ray) and Director Jesse Peretz.
• Episode 5, with Director Richard Shepard.
• Episode 7, with Director Richard Shepard.
• Episode 9, with Creator/Executive Producer Lena Dunham (Hannah) and Executive Producer Jenni Konner.
• Episode 10, with Creator/Executive Producer Lena Dunham (Hannah) and Executive Producer Judd Apatow.



• Deleted and Extended Scenes: Most of these scenes were obviously cut for pacing and running time. Some are discussed in the accompanying commentaries.
• Disc 1 (1080p; 1.78:1; 29:51)
• Episode 1
• Original Intro
• Work the Door
• Episode 2
• Video Message
• Gallery Interview
• Wedgebrook Interview
• Guys Who Like You
• Tough Day at Work
• Episode 3
• Laird's Lair
• Laird in the Chamber
• Episode 4
• The Harvard of Ohio
• Life is But a Dream
• Episode 5
• Freestyle Tap
• Kitchen Physical
• Disc 2 (1080p; 1.78:1; 26:26)
• Episode 6
• Dog Muzzle
• Episode 8
• Teach for America
• AA
• Party Entrance
• Dinner
• Dessert
• Therapy
• Episode 9
• Splinter Call
• Q-Tips
• Dress Shopping
• Hospital Check-In
• Episode 10
• Both Directions
• Adam Buys an iPhone
• Laird's Help
• Haircut
• Ending



• Inside the Episodes: Each episode is accompanied by a brief interview with Dunham discussing its place in the overall arc of the season. These featurettes can be accessed from the "Features" menu of each disc, which includes a "play all" function, or individually from the episode menus.
• Disc 1 (1080i; 1.78:1; 15:55)
• Disc 2 (1080i; 1.78:1; 15:54)



• Episode 5 Table Read (disc 1) (1080p; 1.78:1; 23:08): This is not the entire table read of episode 5, but picks up at the point where Hannah first encounters Joshua outside his brownstone. What makes it noteworthy is that Dunham and guest star Patrick Wilson read the entire shooting script, including both material included as deleted scenes and other material that was cut and, according to director Richard Shepard's commentary, will never be seen.



• Charlie Rose Interview with Lena Dunham (disc 1) (1080i; 1.78:1; 28:54): This is one of Charlie Rose's better interviews, in large part because Dunham talks so fast that Rose can't easily interrupt her. The interview was taped shortly before the premiere of Season Two.



• The New Yorker Festival 2012: Emily Nussbaum Interviews Lena Dunham (disc 1) (480i; 1.78:1; 1:25:53): This interview was conducted before a live audience between the airings of Seasons 1 and 2. The interviewer is a columnist for The New Yorker who had profiled Dunham and written about the series. The interview is uninhibited and ranges broadly across many of the issues raised by Girls, both intentionally (sexual frankness) and unintentionally (racial diversity or "the voice of a generation" exchange in the pilot episode). The last twelve minutes, when the audience asks questions, are fascinating.



• Guys on Girls (disc 2) (1080p; 1.78:1; 18:21): This roundtable discussion hosted by Dunham gives the recurring male co-stars an opportunity to talk about their characters and the show. The participants are Christopher Abbott (Charlie), Adam Driver (Adam), Alex Karpovsky (Alex) and Andrew Rannells (Elijah).



• The Making of Girls (1080p; 1.78:1; 15:03): Without too many spoilers, this short feature provides an overview of the process of designing the story arcs and developing the scripts for Season 2. It includes excerpts from table reads other than the longer episode 5 read included as a separate extra, plus footage from the set and brief interviews with Dunham and Apatow, who is a major participant in the planning stage.



• Gag Reel (disc 2) (1080p; 1.78:1): Adam's mock "PSAs" are some of the best moments.
• Part 1 (5:43)
• Part 2 (4:20)



• Music (disc 2): Judy Collins appears in episode 8 ("It's Back"), and Daniel Johnston's song "Life in Vain" is heard at the end of episode 9 ("On All Fours").
• Judy Collins," Song for Judith (Open the Door)" (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:58)
• Judy Collins, "Someday Soon" (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:21)
• The Swell Season (with special guest Daniel Johnston)—"Life in Vain"—Austin City Limits, 2008) (1080i; 1.78:1; 4:37)

Girls: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Anyone who still insists on identifying Lena Dunham with the character she plays should take note that, when Hannah is handed a golden opportunity to shine as a writer in Season Two, she crumbles under the pressure. Dunham, by contrast, rose to the challenge when HBO came calling. She has continued writing, producing, directing and starring in Girls for millions of people to watch and react to, even as many of those reactions have been sharply critical and often brutally personal. Hannah may be Dunham's nightmare version of herself (as I suspect Apatow's loser comic heroes frequently are for him), but that doesn't mean anything beyond the usual observation that writers typically start from something personal.

Both Dunham and Apatow like to keep people guessing, and by the conclusion of Season Two, Girls had veered sharply from the season's relentlessly downbeat tone into something else entirely. It's something that won't last, but it brought the season's dramatic arc and its larger world into a kind of focus, if only for a moment. In Season Three, things will get messy again, and the viewer complaints will start anew. Highly recommended.