thoughts on Girls, Season Three (spoilers)

When we last left the gang at the end of Season Two, Hannah (Lena Dunham) struggled to finish her eBook as she tried to get by without medicating herself for OCD, which wasn't working out very well for her; Adam (Adam Driver) realized something was wrong and ran to her despite the fact that he was dating Natalia (Shiri Appleby); Marnie (Allison Williams) was back with Charlie (Christopher Abbott) and had determined, with Ray's (Alex Karpovsky's) help that she wanted to be a singer; Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) had dumped Ray; and Jessa (Jemima Kirke) had disappeared.  As we start Season Three, Hannah and Adam are back together and living together; Marnie and Charlie have broken up, Marnie is living with her mother (Rita Wilson) and working at Ray's coffee shop with Hannah; Shoshanna is going through a crazy independent/sleeping around phase; and Jessa is in rehab.

I don't care for these little breaks between seasons.  I think it gives them an easy way to skip over showing or explaining the tough stuff (how did Hannah get her OCD under control?  Why did she and Adam decide to get back together?  Why did Charlie and Marnie split up?  Since when is Jessa a drug addict?) and go right to a more interesting time in the characters' lives.  Don't get me wrong; Season Two was a bleak time for these folks, and I'm glad it's over and most of them are up to new things.  And Marnie and Charlie's break-up, at least, is pretty self-explanatory; they got back together more because neither of them particularly liked being alone, not because they were really in love or wanted to be together, and it didn't work.  I just always find the little time jumps a little disorienting.

Quite a bit happens to Hannah and Marnie in Season Three.  It's becoming clearer and clearer that Jessa is just there to add some crazy spice to their group and Shoshanna is there for comic relief; neither of them are ever given much to do, and Jessa's storylines usually take place mainly apart from the group (her nanny storyline in Season One; her short-lived marriage to Thomas-John (Chris O'Dowd) in Season Two; her time in rehab and subsequent return to coke use in Season Three), leaving me to wonder why she's even on this show.  Meanwhile, Hannah's editor dies, after which she learns that the publishing company no longer plans to publish her eBook but still owns the rights for the next three years, meaning that she can't publish her essays elsewhere; she then gets what seems to me to be a super sweet job writing for the "advertorial" section of GQ but basically decides she's too good for it and gets herself fired; and then gets into the MFA program at the University of Iowa.  Adam gets his first part in a Broadway play, a revival of Major Barbara, which makes Hannah jealous, insecure, and generally pretty awful.  Marnie gets her own apartment, has a little fling with Ray, deals with the fall-out of an embarrassing music video she shot when she was with Charlie, gets a job at a small art gallery, and begins writing music with Desi (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), a musician and actor in Adam's play.

While I continue to enjoy this show and find the characters compelling, Hannah's self-centeredness gets really over the top in this season.  There is a moment when she calls her dad (Peter Scolari) to tell him that she's been offered a book deal, and he delivers the bad news that a lawyer relative has looked into the matter for them, and her original publishing company still owns the rights to her essays.  He also mentions twice during the call that he is at home recovering from a minor procedure.  We never find out what this procedure was, because Hannah jumps right over this news and back to herself.  There is another moment where the gang all goes to hear Marnie and Desi sing, expecting it to be awful; while Marnie has a very nice singing voice, their friend Elijah (Andrew Rannells) fairly accurately characterizes her performance style as, "Papa?  Why don't you love me, Papa?".  However, Desi does a great job getting her to relax and be more natural, and she does great.  Shoshanna turns to Hannah and very seriously asks her how she's going to deal with Adam having a part in a Broadway show and Marnie becoming a pop star.  Like, her other friends are genuinely concerned that she is too self-centered to be happy for her friends' success.  Hannah also gives Adam zero space as he prepares for his first Broadway play and actually tells him that she got into Iowa just moments before he goes onstage for the first time.  When he later asks her why she would do that (he felt it threw his performance off) she is mystified; she thought it was great news.  Sure, it is.  But it affects him and your relationship, so maybe acknowledge that and handle it sensitively instead of just being all, "Hey, I'm moving to Iowa!  See ya!," moments before one of the most important moments of his life.

Meanwhile, I feel like I "get" Marnie more after this season.  In my review of the second season, I stated that the only reason I could think of why she would sleep with Elijah is to spite Hannah.  I think I was mistaken about that.  I think that a big part of Marnie's impending singing career, as well as the people she's chosen to sleep with at times when she's not in a serious relationship (Elijah, Booth Jonathan, Ray) are more about a need for attention and affection than anything else.  She has a somewhat off-putting, uptight personality, so even though she's very pretty, she's not the type who is going to have a ton of success trying to pick up random guys in bars (and I don't think she'd want to do that, anyway).  Therefore, she seeks out this attention and affection from guys she already knows, even though they might be totally wrong for her, and even though sleeping with them might be hurtful to her friends. 

So...why is everyone so dismissive of Ray?  Shoshanna dumped him basically because she felt like he wasn't good enough for her.  Marnie, on one occasion, actually grabs his hand and pulls him down behind a car to avoid running into people they know when they're together.  Are his goals not lofty enough for them?  I like Ray.  He's one of the only people on the show that I can really say I think is a good person.

Aaaand that's all the seasons the public library had available, so it looks like I'm done for awhile.  I'll miss this crew, even though I have problems with them sometimes.