Hannah isn’t handling the new arrangement in her relationship well and it’s made even worse by Adam’s wavering on how long it’s going to last. It’s both her insecurity and her self-centeredness that isn’t allowing her to understand why Adam needs this time away from her. He now has two roles that are new to him – literally as a character on Broadway and also as someone with a passion and career that he really cares about. He’s taking both very seriously in a way that we, Hannah included, haven’t seen before. She’s coming to terms with the fact that Adam doesn’t need her in the way that he used to and that his Hannah-focused life that we’ve come to know for the majority of this season has altered. He now has something else that fills him up and despite how little Adam’s need for solitude has to do with her specifically, him leaving the apartment they have shared so quickly post-orgasm makes it’s hard for Hannah not to take it personally. She shows up at Ray’s in a state of panic, “I feel like you're leaving me but only in such slow motion I'm not even going to notice until it's done,” she tells him, being among those who are very good at articulating themselves mid-panic attack. He meets her halfway by getting in a cab with her back to their apartment but leaving her alone on the doorstep, “You're going to have something major going on and understand why I needed this time for myself right now." It’s Adam being supportive, sounding so sure that Hannah will have something major going on, but hurtful to her because at this point she believes that she’s had a handful of something majors and has needed him by her side for each and every one.

One of those something majors was her job at GQ, which has seemed to be on the decline from the minute that she left that snack room on her very first day. A second interview session with Patti LuPone in an attempt to grab just one quote for the bone density advert only further encourages Hannah’s fear of a changing relationship with Adam, catching a glimpse at what could be as she learns that Patti’s writer-turned-professor husband’s artistic dreams had to take a back seat once his partner’s career soared. All of Hannah’s anxieties surface during a brainstorming session at work. “I just expect more from life,” she tells her colleagues as she word vomits philosophy all over a conference table. She’s terrified that she’s wasting her life and creativity away coming up with bullshit puns for menswear in a corporate office with other artists who are turning into former-artists right before her eyes. Her outburst gets her fired and she later convinces herself that she got herself fired only to collect unemployment, which she awkwardly declares while meeting Adam’s Broadway co-workers as she positions herself as the obnoxious and egotistical girlfriend with no boundaries who can’t stand for the conversation to not be about her.

Jessa is still coping with being sober by attempting to rid herself of her crazy energy in a rage dance session in the middle of Shoshanna’s apartment. It’s somewhat encouraging to see how quickly she is able to pull herself together, going from collapsed in a heap on the floor to landing a job in a matter of minutes with street photographer Beattie at SooJin’s gallery, being better at Marnie’s job than Marnie and managing to burst into her world and make a connection with someone Marnie admires after she herself had been trying to do so for days. It’s also sad because this is the cycle of Jessa. Complete and utter desperation to hope and optimism and right back around again. The previews for next week’s finale show Jessa asking Beattie if she only hired her because she knew that Jessa would be able to get her drugs, hinting at a continuation of this cycle and also painting a stark picture of how the vulnerability of Jessa allows for vultures to enter her life knowing exactly what they’re doing. 

Marnie’s still pretty aggressively pining for some sort of relationship with Desi and tells him this just as the two of them are about to go on stage during an open mic night. But he still has a girlfriend and he’s still not going to cheat on her. Marnie and Desi go on to perform what Lena Dunham describes as “the worst best folk song ever” (written by Dunham’s boyfriend, Jack Antonoff). The open mic’s a success and it’s all seeming to come together for Marnie here, prompting Shoshanna to look over at Hannah during the song to ask if she’s going to be OK standing by and watching both Adam and Marnie do so well creatively, telling her, “You're supposed to be the famous artist in this group.” The high of the performance is only deterred by later meeting Clementine, the beautiful love of Desi’s life, who exudes a sexy confidence and is not at all threatened by Marnie, who seems so childlike in comparison. It makes sense then that Marnie immediately runs to Ray hoping to restore some of that confidence and Ray, who has tried and failed to maintain some of his own boundaries with Marnie, earlier declaring to Adam that he’s not going to compromise when it comes to getting what he wants out of a relationship, gives in once she’s naked in his bedroom.

The sequence is complete when upon returning to the apartment with Adam Hannah takes it upon herself to investigate the moans coming from Ray’s bedroom. It’s completely none of Hannah’s business and she has never shown any semblance of interest in Ray’s life before which only makes me think that she knew the moans belonged to Marnie and that’s why she was so confident in her decision to find out. Marnie is an asshole and says, “He made me,” as she’s hiding behind the bed in a scene that’s reminiscent of when Marnie showed up unexpectedly at Hannah’s apartment last season, only the roles have been reversed and this time it is Marnie who is ashamed about where she’s at. “You will never judge me again,” Hannah tells Marnie before shutting the door, perhaps half disgusted and half elated to finally have this big thing to hold over Marnie’s head.

There’s just one episode left and as our characters have grown more intricate and challenging with each episode this season, I’m anxious to see where we stand with them next week.  

Guest Post: Elaine Paddock is a writer in Boston.

For a lot of us, your 20s are when you first learn how to form relationships that extend far beyond matters of convenience. For the first time you’re able to create your own community and make your picks based on more than who happens to live on your street, take your bus, or has nearly the same first semester schedule as you. You figure out which personalities mesh with yours, which don’t, and how much of this matters when choosing whom you spend your quickly dwindling free time with. In “Beach House” our four girls are faced with the realization that their friendships may only still exist because they have for so long 

Marnie has put together a Long Island retreat and you can tell that she believes that this is her true self. She’s placing nametags on beds, arranging flowers in the kitchen, and staring longingly out at the ocean – and doing it all so well – before picking up Hannah and her ill-fitting onesie from the jitney. It’s clear from the beginning that Hannah and Marnie’s relationship is not the same – there has been a shift that they’ve never recovered from. You can see the uneasiness on Hannah’s face as she tries to convince both Marnie and herself that this is going to be the great weekend that they all needed. The fact that Hannah even showed up shows that she’s trying and that she hasn’t given up on salvaging this friendship. It’s Marnie’s insistence that she and her friends “have a lot of healing to do” that is disconcerting because she seems to be the only one interested in this and the only one who has even the slightest idea as to why this would be something that matters.

When Hannah runs into Elijah (as she’s living my absolute anxiety nightmare of being nearly naked and asked to leave a store), she’s initially miserable about having to abruptly confront Elijah with no warning and embarrassed because she’s traipsing around North Fork in bare feet and a bikini and has just learned that this is unacceptable. It’s Elijah who almost immediately apologizes, telling Hannah that he thinks about her all the time and that he misses her. Hannah accepts his apology just as quickly and invites him and his friends (and his new boyfriend who isn’t particularly nice to him but who we later learn is probably the best in this whole crew at being honest about what he wants in a relationship) back to the beach house hoping to ease some of the quickly mounting tension and avoid a group hair braiding and prayer session.

A mix of alcohol and pure grief fuels the next few hours and is so completely reminiscent of my own frenzied nights in my early 20s that I feel as though I can anticipate exactly what happens next and yet I’m still never prepared for it. Marnie isn’t thrilled with Hannah’s guests, still feeling awkward around Elijah and also desperately trying to hang onto the picture perfect weekend that she’s crafted, which includes dinner for four and not eight. Her and Hannah seem to make amends in a tipsy bed chat session and she lets go enough to briefly enjoy herself and let her semblance of a relationship with Ray slip to Elijah. We’re also privy to the rest of the grilled pizza story and it ends with Charlie telling Marnie that he doesn’t love her and he never did. This reveal tells us more about Marnie’s rather manic desire to be in control and to keep things as close to perfect as she possibly can. She doesn’t know what she did, or if she did anything at all, and her life was disrupted in such a traumatic way without her being able to understand why. It’s confusing for us too because this is such a far cry from the overly eager to please Charlie we first were introduced to two years ago.

Shoshanna has become a terribly rude drunk and is directing her tirade at Hannah and Marnie and their inability to be good friends to her. It’s funny in the same way it was funny to hear Ray and Marnie call each other out on their shit last week, but sad because Shoshanna is hurt by her friends’ lack of interest in her life and lashing out in such a way that hurts the most when it’s done by someone you care about and whom you think cares about you because it’s so personal. She calls Hannah a narcissist and tells Marnie that she’s “tortured by self doubt and fear.” This briefly pits Hannah and Marnie against Shoshanna instead of against each other while Jessa attempts to play peace maker. Shoshanna’s spilling her truth and for Hannah and Marnie it seems that the accusations are not as unanticipated as the source, which was precisely Shoshanna’s point. It’s not a shocking scene between four girlfriends but it put the pit in my stomach all the same.

I’m a firm believer that one of the best things that you can do for yourself as an adult is let go of relationships that don’t make you feel good. This may seem like a supremely simple and even childish way to go about life, but you have to trust me on this. The truth of the matter is: most of us have work to do all the time. The problems arise when we don’t accept this and don’t make any attempts at change because we refuse to realize that we need to. All of these girls have work to do both as individuals and as friends and I think that they could resolve their issues, but not before they first take some time to deal with what they actually are. My worry with fights like these is that it’s easier to simply wake up the next morning, chalk it all up to white wine and champagne showers, and agree to move on, leaving the legitimate issue festering at the root.

In the end Jessa emerges as the stable sober one who upon waking goes to pick up the pieces in the kitchen. It would be interesting to observe Jessa attempting to mend the relationships of her friends, but can you imagine her sticking around long enough to do that?

Hannah has a new writing job and before she even hears about the free snacks perks she, not unlike so many of us when we got our first adult job, has the glimmer of hope in her eye, the buoyancy of someone who sees nothing but great things in her future, and the belief that things are really about to turn around after the disappointment of her e-book. The ever-so-intuitive Ray senses Hannah’s optimism and anticipates her coffee shop resignation, immediately belittling her new position in advertorial at GQ. Like a bitter ex-boyfriend, he tells her that she’ll be back.

  There are times when I appreciate Ray’s increasingly acrimonious front that can act as a swift kick back to reality for some of the characters on this show, but Ray’s feelings of inadequacy are so obviously the catalyst for this and seeing him quickly pounce on Hannah’s excitement is a gross display of Ray's rudeness. Interestingly enough I thoroughly enjoy Ray’s brand of rude with Marnie, which I’ll get to later. 

  We’re now well into season three and, for the first time, are witnessing Hannah as a real working adult with a job that’s viewed more as a career than simply something that allows her to pay her rent and supplement her romper budget. It seems as if it could catapult her into a career that’s satisfying and doesn’t make her dread getting out of bed in the morning, going through the entire day in emotional and physical pain over an unfulfilled life that she feels she doesn’t deserve. As we get older we learn that what we deserve, what we need, and what we ultimately get is never as simple as we would like it to be. It’s a lesson that can be entirely demoralizing and painful. Throughout “Free Snacks” we see the Girls’ protagonists struggle with this – except for Jessa who is selling black christening gowns to yoga moms because of course she is.

  Shoshanna’s mere presence makes me sad. She believes that she has let herself get out of control and is now making a concerted effort to regain some of that. She’s still keeping tabs on Ray, watching him play basketball but refusing to respond to his head nod of acknowledgment, and walking around with a write-up of his new coffee shop that she’s committed to memory. On paper Ray is doing well, which triggers Shoshanna’s own insecurities and leads her to focus most of her effort on finding a relationship with someone else. She’s not so particular about who this someone else is and settles on a dumdum of a jump off after essentially interviewing him for the position in the school library. She continues to exert her control, later setting relationship ground rules as he’s literally inside of her. Half of me wants Shoshanna to get her shit together and for her and Ray to somehow make amends, but the other half of me will not allow this to happen because sweet baby Jesus am I loving Ray and Marnie together.

  These two are absolutely ridiculous. It should not work. And yet somehow this is the most fascinating and captivating relationship we have seen in the entirety of Girls. When Ray makes his awkward phone call to Marnie I initially assumed that he’s checking in to see if she’s told anyone about their hook-up, Shoshanna in particular, but when he shows up at her apartment bearing vegan muffins and an offer to watch trashy reality television with her it becomes clear that Ray is just lonely – and so is Marnie. These two lonely assholes have found their matching pieces. They are sleeping together, going out for Chinese food, and fighting like a miserable married couple in the span of five minutes. They’re hilariously rude to one another, calling each other out for nearly every personality flaw that the audience has already yelled profusely about, and it is absurd in the best way possible. They are dating and I don’t want this sexual healing to end despite how not-sexy that sex scene was.

It's also interesting that Shoshanna and Ray are dealing with their separation in a very similar manner. They’re both searching for ways to fill the void left by the other and are desperately scrambling to do so, but while Ray acknowledges what Marnie’s place is in his life, looking her plainly in the face and saying that he doesn’t have anyone, Shoshanna’s lack of self-awareness prohibits her from seeing that she’s cracking and this new dude isn’t going to put her back together.

  Adam’s incredibly supportive of Hannah’s new opportunity and is using her time away to go on auditions of his own but he sees the entire process as bullshit, telling Hannah that the only reason he shows up is because he likes “reading emotional cues from strangers in a high-pressure situation.” But he’d rather be selling his weird shit on Etsy than doing the dance-monkey-dance for casting directors. His inability to give a shit, or rather his inability to let anyone know that he gives all of the shits, lands him a callback and he’s surprisingly excited for someone who’s bored by the whole thing. While Adam celebrates his own success and wants to share this with Hannah she’s evaluating how to create her own, shocked by the realization that being a writer doesn’t necessarily mean being the writer that she envisions.

  It’s humbling to witness the quick rise and fall of Hannah at GQ. She immediately finds a confidante in fellow advertorial writer Joe and she thrives in a meeting like the smart kid you hate but secretly want to be on the first day of school. Hannah pitches the best ideas and is so good that she develops a rival in the brooding poet Kevin who simply tells her that he doesn’t like her face. The other members of the team offer support and suggest that she could take over the boss’ job if she wanted to. But she doesn’t want to. And Hannah’s realization that this new job may not be the starting off point that she thought it was sends her crying to the bathroom. It’s the realization that so many writers face and it’s a scene that made me sympathy panic. You write because you have to, because it’s in you like a nervous tic, because you would die if you couldn’t and you swear that you’re not being hyperbolic. But you also have to keep yourself alive and writing what you want to write so often doesn’t do that. Hannah’s meager attempt at standing her ground and quitting scares her a bit because no one cares; she is easily replaceable. Now she needs to just dedicate her nights and weekends to writing things that she cares about because you guys, Hannah Horvath is just like us. 

It’s David’s funeral and for just a second we think that Hannah has managed to step outside herself and be present as a mourning funeral guest and not as a writer mourning about her forgotten e-book deal. Before we can even blink that passes when we see that Hannah is more concerned with breathing the same air as the likes of Zadie Smith and Michiko Kakutani than she is with the loss of someone she cared about – maybe. We’re all thrown for a loop as we meet David’s wife Annalise, played by one of my favorites, Jennifer Westfeldt, who mistakes Hannah for another one of David’s memoirists, one who has overcome obesity and tourrets. It’s a mistake that Hannah can’t let go because, as we all know, she is only chubby. It’s a confusing few moments and Annalise later understands Hannah’s confusion, as a lot of people thought that Annalise’s late husband was gay, but she also shares that David was gay “sometimes.”

While still at the funeral, Hannah learns from Annalise that Millstreet has dropped all of David’s projects, which sends Hannah into a panic. I don’t have a PhD in etiquette and I often make vulgar jokes when I’m uncomfortable (most likely because I want to force everyone else to also feel as uncomfortable), but my gut tells me that how Hannah handled this is generally considered inappropriate. Hannah could have swallowed this information and then reached out to Millstreet, or possibly even Annalise, had enough time passed. She could have done the networking dance and searched for another publisher. Instead, she asked David’s grieving wife if she could offer up a name that might now be willing to help Hannah out. Annalise, however, does respond to Hannah’s insensitivity appropriately by telling her to simply get the fuck out.

Either Hannah couldn’t tell when she had overstayed her welcome or she did know but wasn’t willing to let that knowledge overpower her desire to get her book published. This seemed to set the tone to “Only Child” – people staying too long and lacking the skills to get the fuck out.

Jessa has started to take up too much space in the small apartment she and Shoshanna have been sharing since Jessa’s return from rehab. She’s become a burden to Shoshanna, which seems to be the case with so many of Jessa’s relationships, and Shoshanna wants Jessa to shut up and let her study. Shoshanna has a fifteen-year plan that involves an MBA and a business lady skirt suit and has started to realize that her recent turn up lifestyle has set her back a bit. It’s clear that Jessa views Shoshanna’s plans as boring, but she doesn’t have any at all for herself and is starting to realize that this no longer makes her interesting. She embarks on a mission to improve herself by smoking e-cigarettes and making a snap decision to apply to work at a children’s shop. While I want to be optimistic that Jessa is sincere, I’m already preparing myself for her to enter another toxic relationship and fuck up someone’s universe within the next half hour.

Caroline has, as Adam predicted, brought chaos upon the Horvath-Sackler household and it’s starting to wear on Hannah, who attempts to Jeff VanVonderen the situation at the kitchen table. Adam describes Caroline as someone with “no drive, no real goals, but somehow tons of opinions,” and Hannah responds by telling Adam that that actually sounds a lot like him. I’m offended on Adam’s behalf because I don’t think that it’s true, even though I kind of, okay totally, think that it’s true. When it’s set out so simply like this is seems as if the problems between Caroline and Adam stem from them being so much alike. We don’t really know what Adam wants outside of his relationship with Hannah and we don’t know what Caroline wants either. All we really know about her is that she has a tendency to enter into damaging relationships with men – and that she’s maybe a little psychotic. The conversation ends after Caroline throws out an accusation of Adam having a regressed sexual attraction to her, taking it back only seconds later. These two make each other crazy and they make me a little crazy too, but I somehow don’t want Caroline to leave.

Hannah manages to land a meeting with a new publisher and Lena & Co. also manages to cast a black woman in a role that isn’t a stereotypical black lady trope! It’s a meeting that’s uncomfortable because Hannah puts on an interview personality and throws out awkward one-liners while the publisher and her assistant Mo (whom I love) laugh a little too loud and a little too long. Her writing lands her an actual book deal and it’s all giggles and ice cream cones until Hannah learns that Millstreet owns the rights to her work for three years post-signing date. Caroline tries to soften the blow by telling Hannah that now she knows that she’s capable of writing great work and that she just needs to write some more. It’s a rational response, but also one that would send crippling anxiety and panic pulsing through a writer like Hannah who has placed so much weight on this one success. Hannah kicks Caroline out, thinking that she did the right thing for both her and Adam, only to learn later that night that Adam loves his sister probably more than any of us realized and now he’s worried that he’s failed at his responsibility to take care of her.

Like Hannah, Marnie initially exhibits what we believe is a slice of sincerity when she shows up at Ray’s apartment and very matter-of-factly asks him to tell her what’s wrong with her. I was impressed with this version of Marnie and with her willingness to take responsibility for herself and accept that maybe she’s the reason why she’s so unhappy. And I also admired her willingness to trust in Ray’s often-ruthless truthfulness. It’s in this moment, when Ray obliges Marnie and describes her as “a huge fat fucking phony” that I realize that Ray, and this episode’s writer Murray Miller, has essentially packaged my distaste for Marnie and tied it up with a neat little bow.

I wrote “OMG ARE THEY GOING TO FUCK?” in my notes of the episode as soon as Ray opened his apartment door so I wasn’t entirely surprised when they did, but a little surprised at how it happened. It was Ray’s sincerity that got Marnie all hot and bothered – maybe she just needed someone who wasn’t afraid of her to tell her what’s what. He’s the lacrosse team to her Regina George and to be honest, I think that Ray and Marnie could work if they could both knock themselves down a notch. There’s a balance between these two that would make for an equal partnership, but I’m worried about how the already high stress and vulnerable Shoshanna is going to handle the news. And I wish that Marnie would stop fucking her friend’s exes. That’s just like, the rules of feminism.

Guest Post: Elaine Paddock is a writer in Boston.

  “Dead Inside” opens with the abrupt death of Hannah’s editor David who was found face down in the Hudson. More concerned with the state of her e-book than anything else and also while harboring a self-absorbed focus on other people’s reactions to her reaction, Hannah spends the episode mourning in an appropriate for Hannah way – which is not at all, really. While Hannah self-consciously wonders how she’s supposed to react, the people in her life face their own realities of death and loss and nearly everyone has more substance to add to the conversation than she does.

Boring Marnie has morphed more and more into a Whole Foods mom who city runs and air punches and makes smoothies while listening to self-help podcasts. She continues to deal with the loss of Charlie and her dreams of posting Instagram selfies with Taylor Swift at the Grammys and is forced to confront that she’s serving up lattes right alongside the peasants. Marnie has a “Gretchen Wieners had cracked” moment after finding Ray and Hermie watching her YouTube fail in the manager’s office. She screams about all of the fancy people who she could be working with if she wasn’t so generously donating her time to Grumpy’s and quits. Or Ray, who appears to be reaching his breaking point with exasperating self-important twenty-something white girls, fires her. None of us are really sure.

Jessa’s back and I’m initially annoyed with her provisional philosophy response to Hannah relaying the David news, but quickly realize that this is just how these two communicate. Jessa thinks that she’s got it all figured out and is far more knowledgeable than her coming-of-age-tale friends and Hannah may be the only one who still actually believes this. In a discussion about death with Shoshanna it at first seems that Jessa is at least attempting to be a real person with empathy and the ability to carry on a mutual conversation, but that too is insincere. She learns that a friend whom she thought was dead is not, but instead living in a brownstone with a man with an impeccable afro and a cute ass baby —she faked her death in part to get Jessa out of her life. Jessa’s anger at the reveal seems less about the magnitude of the lie and more about the realization that people like her have figured it out, that people grow up, and that maybe she should too.

In a scene that is almost too real Adam patronizes Hannah for getting updates on David’s death from Gawker and calls the site’s writers “judgmental creeps,” which Hannah defends as a “web portal that celebrates the written word” and its sister site, Jezebel, “a place feminists can go to support one another, which we need in this modern world full of slut shaming,” confirming what I have always suspected: Hannah Horvath has a Tumblr and I have blocked Hannah Horvath on Tumblr but still check up on her every week because it makes me feel full and satisfied to partake and judge on my own time. I love and hate this argument because I am completely in it with Adam. Hannah’s knee jerk reaction to rely on Gawker comments for information in the wake of her friend’s death is bizarre and feels empty when shoved in our faces like this, but I admittedly read Gawker daily and I fucking enjoy it and I would do the same thing. This scene is a social experiment in self-reflection and god damn you, Lena Dunham.

Later Adam admits that Hannah’s cold and selfish response to David’s death scares him and forces him to wonder how Hannah would respond if “something real” happened to them. Her telling Adam that she would be “extremely sad” if he died doesn’t suffice and he counters with how he would react, which is in a way that shows that while the two of them are both deep feelers they are full of emotion in two completely different ways. Hannah is wordy, and yet often manages to still say nothing at all. Adam says four words and you are kicked in the gut with how particular and raw he is with his feelings, especially for someone whom we haven’t been entirely sure cares about much at all. Adam expresses himself in the way that so many writers are told to do – be precise, get to the point, don’t use superfluous words or phrases. And he does this with such ease that you can’t help but wonder if Hannah is a little envious of his ability to do so.

In an impromptu frolic through a cemetery with Caroline and Laird, a duo of weirdos I hope to see more of, Hannah sits near a gravestone as Caroline tells a story about her and Adam’s sick twelve year-old cousin whose dying wish was to go to a high school dance. It was sad and poignant and sweet and brings Laird to tears. And it was completely false, a test to see if Hannah’s emotions extend beyond her own nose and one that upsets Hannah and again forces her to wonder if she really is as merciless as everyone is suggesting.

And so when she is faced with knowing that she doesn’t quite have it in her to care in the way that she’s supposed to and is feeling as though she owes Adam some sort of explanation for her behavior, instead of being honest with this man whom she loves and telling him that maybe there is no one appropriate way in which to mourn, she does what David urged her to do last season when she was facing writer’s block – she made it up.

Guest Post: Elaine Paddock is a writer in Boston.

Lena Dunham has a talent for melding comedy and tragedy in a way that forces you to laugh to keep from crying. I laughed somewhat maniacally at the end of "She Said OK" but quickly felt a pit in my stomach that I realized was really about confronting the intricate relationships we have with the ones we love. Last night’s episode of Girls was about making a conscious decision to accept that those people are who they are and you can’t change them, and choosing how much of them you are willing to allow in your life. 

Adam’s sister is in town and makes her entrance in such a manic and aggressive way that you immediately understand Adam’s hesitation about allowing this woman in his and Hannah’s home for even a matter of minutes. He’s not polite about it either, telling his crying sister, “you can wipe your nose with some toilet paper and then you can fucking get lost,” showing us that Adam believes that his best approach is to throw the mania and aggression right back at her. Hannah can’t seem to shake her tendency to be on the receiving end of manipulative relationships and also may be particularly sympathetic to Caroline’s situation after being not so far removed from making it out of her own mental health hell that she attempts to reason with Adam and makes an argument for allowing her to say. But Adam’s persistent and insists that giving in and letting her stay would be a terrible idea. Hannah, always the people pleaser, feels terrible and invites Caroline to her 25th birthday party in the hopes of the invitation making up for their lack of hospitality.

Marnie’s got YouTube troubles and is unable to get an embarrassingly hilarious performance of an Edie Brickell cover removed from the site. Charlie apparently made her do it and posted it on his YouTube account and without his password, on YouTube it will stay. Which is great for us because that shot of her up against a brick wall – was that…twerking? – is wonderful. She won’t take Shoshanna’s suggestion of just calling him and asking for the password, but she will look her best for Hannah’s party, which she selfishly planned more with herself in mind than Hannah, and take a ton of Instagram selfies because Charlie like, totally checks it. And yes, Hannah’s party is about Marnie and her half childlike, half sociopathic need to have people acknowledge her. She continuously takes credit for the party despite the fact that Hannah’s parents are paying for everything and while everyone is telling Hannah how great she looks (and she does! Hannah looks great!) Marnie just can’t help herself from negging her friend at her own damn birthday party, “I keep telling her she could look like this everyday if she wanted.” This bitch.

At the party we see further examples of Caroline’s lack of boundaries as she mouth kisses Hannah’s father and later serenades Ray and bites him on the arm after he dismisses her persistent invitations to dance. Ray seeks solace at the bar and thinks he meets a new buddy but soon realizes that his new buddy is also Shoshanna’s new sex buddy. Poor Ray has spent the last few months becoming the man he thinks that Shoshanna wants him to be, but as he’s explaining his new responsible Mr. Manager life to her he realizes that he can’t do it and abruptly tells her that he doesn’t even want a friendship with her. Shoshanna isn’t the girl he fell in love with and he’s not who he used to be either, but I can’t tell who Ray is really angry with – Shoshanna for changing or himself for thinking a change was all that he needed to make her love him.

An appearance by Hannah’s belligerent, horned up editor David, who just wants to check Grindr in between LMFAO sound tracked solo dance parties, leads to a fight with belligerent, sad Ray and Hannah’s party comes to a close, but not before Marnie drags a reluctant Hannah up on stage to sing a song from Rent and relive a nostalgic college moment, but really because one can never practice too much for their big American Idol audition. I’m upset that this moment came soon after a super cute dance scene between Hannah and Adam looking so disgustingly loving and happy because it so clearly shows the juxtaposition between her and Adam’s equal partnership and her immediate readiness to give in to her often demanding and selfish friends who were completely absent when she was losing her god damn mind just a few months ago. I honestly don’t know where this protectiveness of Hannah is coming from, but I really like her now and I hate that her otherwise happy life is dominated by the personal tragedies of her friends who never put this much effort into her when she needed it. But this is a decision that she has made. She knows who they are and her willingness to accept their behavior has only shown them that it’s acceptable in their relationship.

On the walk home Adam presents Hannah with a necklace made out of his tooth (or Caroline’s, he can’t be sure) and it’s sweet in a very Adam way and really, how the hell did this dude become the most rational, selfless, caring human on the show? Tooth necklace puts Hannah in panties off mode and as she makes a quick trip to the bathroom (protect yourself from UTIs, ladies!) she’s surprised by Caroline, wearing only a t-shirt and a full bush as she crushes a glass in her hand, proving Adam absolutely right in his insistence that her mere presence is destructive and also that Gaby Hoffmann does this kind of crazy so, so well. Afterwards, Adam sits on the edge of their bed, defeated, declaring that she’s won. There’s a fine line between doing what’s best for you and being a dick when establishing boundaries with someone who is toxic, and it seems as though Adam and Caroline have walked this line for some time now. This time she has forced herself back into a part of his life that he had been so successful at keeping her out of. She’s now in Hannah’s life too, and this will undoubtedly have an effect on both Hannah’s relationship with Adam and her own road to an OCD meltdown-free life. 

Guest Post: Elaine Paddock is a writer in Boston.

Season 2 of Girls was a lot. It veered more into drama than comedy and watching Hannah deal with her OCD and anxiety for a chunk of the second half of the season was intense. We were left with Adam running all over Brooklyn shirtless and sweaty to rescue Hannah as she ritual ticked under her covers, but wondering whether or not that was enough to help her pull herself together—or even what she needed at all. In Females Only and Truth or Dare, the first two episodes of the show’s third season, we learn that in the time we last saw her, something has clicked. She’s moving forward professionally, is in good graces with her editor, and appears to be in a grown up and healthy live-in relationship with Adam who administers her morning meds in a way that manages to appear far more endearing than controlling. Now her girls are the ones struggling.

Females Only opens with an encounter with Natalia at Grumpy’s that I’m already calling as my favorite scene from this season. As he’s standing right next to Hannah, Natalia reluctantly confronts Adam about his abrupt end to their relationship while her friend Angie does most of the talking. Amy Schumer’s Angie is the epitome of the friend whose brash and loud behavior sometimes embarrasses you, but whom you’re really glad to have in a situation like this. I want more Angie this season. The confrontation is both funny and a little sad, as Natalia delivers a diatribe towards Adam in which it’s clear how much she did really care about him and you wonder if this could be the type of thing that causes a huge rift in Adam and Hannah’s smooth relationship. But it doesn’t, which shows that Adam and Hannah are two mature adults in a mature relationship that I’m really rooting for and how did this happen?

Ray’s doing all right managing Grumpy’s and has moved into Adam’s old apartment after Shoshanna broke it off due to his unwavering and aggressive negativity. Meanwhile Shoshanna has transitioned into the prototype of the “over it” college senior, waking up in bunk beds and resting her hangover hoodied head on a library desk to nap next to a giant iced coffee.  Shoshanna has played it pretty safe in the time that we’ve known her but the end of last season hinted at her no longer wanting to be that girl so it’s not completely surprising that she’s now putting in major effort to change that image. Zosia Mamet says in this season’s production trailer that Shoshanna has “made an active decision to be reckless,” but it seems like there’s much more to it than that. Her new sexual freedom has been accompanied by an eating disorder that is almost as uncomfortable to watch as Hannah shoving a Q-tip in her ear last season.

Marnie’s miserable after Charlie pulled a disappearing dad and vanished on a trip to the store. She’s left to deal with the fact that she’s never going to have his brown babies and doesn’t understand why. She’s also living with her demanding mother, taking the bus into the city for her shift at Grumpy’s, and sobbing at dinner parties. Marnie is a blubbering mess and I suspect it’s more because she doesn’t think that she deserves this life than because her life is really all that terrible. Which isn’t to say that it’s not okay to wallow in your shitty-for-you life, but that Marnie will never be satisfied unless she realizes that she she’s not entitled to anything. Honestly, I’m bored with Marnie already. The Season 3 trailer shows Marnie furthering her music career on YouTube and I’m holding out for that because I love a good YouTube star.

We find out that soon after Jessa abandoned Hannah at her father’s house she was checked into rehab on her grandmother’s dime and her rehab behavior is just as you would expect. She’s taking none of it seriously, is disruptive during therapy sessions, and is terrible to the other patients which leads one, Laura (played hilariously by Danielle Brooks), to throw a cup of coffee on her after she outs her in group and accuses her of using her molestation as an excuse for her addiction. Jessa generously makes it up by performing cunnilingus on her and is then sent to solitary for breaking the well-known fraternizing rules of rehab. She ultimately sends for Hannah to come check her out of the program and in the meantime develops another relationship with an older man that results in me almost feeling sorry for this narcissistic sociopath that I’m pretty sure I can’t stand. We later learn that Jessa was free to leave at any time and it was unnecessary for Hannah, Adam, and Shoshanna to make the road trip to upstate New York—a trip that makes up Truth or Dare—to retrieve her, but Jessa enjoys counting on people while still knowing that no one will ever expect her to be there for them. She’s terrible.

The two biggest surprises of this season so far are that Hannah is the most stable and mentally well out of her friends (a position I think she really enjoys) and that Adam is capable of being a pretty great boyfriend. Hannah’s happy now and this happiness is reflected in her entire demeanor. It’s like looking at a completely different person from last season. Adam, despite making it clear that he doesn’t really care for Hannah’s friends, agrees to a dinner party with them, comforts Marnie with a sweet and thoughtful story about a past relationship, and offers to go to an AA meeting with Jessa. What a guy, this one! In true pessimist form, however, I can’t help but worry that we’re in some type of Hannah and Adam honeymoon phase and that the joy and stability will soon wear off. Despite my fear that Hannah will backslide into familiar territory, I put a ridiculous amount of faith in Lena Dunham and trust that she has made this season worth my while. 

Guest Post: Elaine Paddock is a writer in Boston.

The second season of The Mindy Project opens on what we’re meant to believe is Haiti, but is probably just a lot somewhere in Hollywood or more than likely The Valley. We’re quickly caught up on what life has been like, sorta, for Mindy and Casey--they’re young, in love, and now engaged. There were a few jokes in this opening that I enjoyed, specifically the Real Houseflies of Port-au-Prince, but overall it felt rushed and the gallstones seemed like an easy way out of Haiti and lands Mindy and Casey back in New York. 

The tension that was there in the final episode between Mindy and Danny was gone (at least for now) and that’s what I wanted again. We all know Mindy and Danny are going to get together; it’s just a question of when and will it work out. The other side story in this episode, not including the C storyline with James Franco (I’ll get to that) was what has been happening with the reunion of Danny and Christina, his ex-wife played by Chloe Sevigny. Things have not been so good for them. She wants to do it and he wants to do it with himself or more likely not with her. They decide to get some sex therapy, not conducted by Robin Thicke, but by James Franco. The sex therapy doesn’t really work because Danny doesn’t want it to work and that’s another thing we all know watching this so how does Christina not know? She finds his laptop (a moment that baffled me was how is Danny unaware that there’s such a thing a search history) and his search history is exposed in front of the entire office--he watches porn while he’s alone. Surprise! Doesn’t everyone? Anyway, she snaps his laptop in half, a gasp by Mindy and the audience follows, and she’s out. So now Danny is single again and now we have to wait for Mindy to catch up.

Mindy and Casey decide to have their wedding in her apartment, just to get it over with or something because they’re in love, but Casey stops it as Mindy is walking down her living room. “Let’s wait,” Casey says (I’m paraphrasing), but it’s another way to give Mindy and Danny more time to get back to where they were in the season one finale. It was more romantic than that and it was kind of sad to see him go back to Haiti. It reminded me of that scene in Louie where Pamela tells Louie to "Wave to me!" and Louie thinks she says, "Wait for me!" Will Mindy wait for Casey?

James Franco plays Dr. Paul Leotard, a perfectly named handsome doctor that can apparently do everything and is Mindy’s replacement in the practice. I like his part and it definitely plays into the handsome other guy trope that romcomsitcoms go for, but in a 30 Rock way. I don’t expect him to be long term, just another obstacle in the way for Mindy and Danny to get over.

I like The Mindy Project even though it’s often uneven and still feels like the cast is too big sometimes or maybe I just don’t care about everyone at the office as much as I should. I did like the exchange between Danny and Tamra where she called Mindy “Glob”, “I wanna say Glob?”. I want this show to be so good and it has the potential to be so good. I’m not sure what will fix it at this point. I don’t even know if I want Mindy and Danny together. Do I care why Jeremy is fat now or why that is even a thing they did? I want more Morgan. I love Beth Grant and she’s perfect, but feels like she’s there just for the occasional off color joke.

Maybe it all has to do with the title of the show--The Mindy Project just feels like that sometimes, a project. Something we’re all working on together. We’re all working on Mindy. I like Mindy Kaling, her love for romcoms (which is what this show basically is in a much longer form), I believe in her, and believe she deserves a network sitcom that we all watch and talk about. I guess I’m in it for the long run, because I not-so-secretly love romcoms and want to know how Mindy and Danny eventually get together.

Y’all, Mama’s got a headache again. This time it’s caused by a traffic jam of preteens screaming for Juliette Barnes while she is shooting a music video. Juliette is tired of being thought as a singer for preteens and wants to appeal to a bigger audience which is why she’s so adamant about getting Rayna’s lead guitarist Deacon.

Watty’s big idea from last week’s cliffhanger is for Rayna and Deacon to go out on tour together - just the two of them, real intimate, like when they first started out. Rayna reminds them that it was intimate because they were dating. She has to think about it. Back in bed while putting some hand lotion on she talks to her husband who is up to his eyeballs in paperwork for his mayoral run about the tour. He doesn’t like it, but wants her to do some vulnerability test. Which scares her because she likes to keep her private life private which means she wants to keep the fact that her older daughter is actually Deacon’s child a secret.

Later that evening, Watty tells Scarlett and Gunnar that what they did the other night was great and he wants to record three songs with them. I am predicting big things for these two! Like romance, heartbreak, cowboy boots, guitars, and probably an opening on Rayna and Deacon’s tour.

Some cat claws are unleashed between Rayna and Juliette at the rehearsal studio mostly over Deacon. Deacon heads off with Juliette after the rehearsal to the dismay of Rayna. Juliette brings him to land she owns that was once owned by Tammy Wynette and busts out some old ass fancy guitar. They get to songwriting/making out/actually songwriting.

Rayna and Coleman discuss why Lamar picked Teddy to run for mayor. Coleman tells her that it all has to do with the baseball field and that Coleman disagreed with him in a public venue. She apologizes and then heads off to Teddy’s fundraising event. Rayna starts talking with three ladies at the party and in my favorite moment of the show so far, one that really shows the potential for some real humor (like last week’s “Mama’s got a headache” line) one of the ladies asks if her album is available at Starbucks. She walks away only to be caught in another conversation with her daddy. He knows she went to see Coleman and isn’t happy about it.

Teddy gets pretty upset when asked about his investments and stuff at his vulnerability test. I am sure more will come out of this, especially when it’s Rayna’s turn.

Avery’s band is playing at the club and they aren’t as bad as I was expecting given the description of his music in last week’s pilot. He certainly has a lot of people, ladies mostly, interested in him and how hot he is. Gunnar came to the show and one of this one lady that was throwing herself at Avery recognized Scarlett and Gunnar from their Bluebird Cafe show. So, now Avery knows everything, even the Watty White thing, he is totally jealous.

Rayna has her vulnerability test which SURPRISINGLY revealed she is pretty vulnerable.

My favorite side storyline revolves around Gunnar and Scarlett. It’s the real heart of what Nashville is about. What country music is about. A struggling musician and the girl he can’t have. It’s basically an earlier version of Rayna and Deacon and what can they do differently. It’s like Rayna said in the pilot episode when Deacon asked if she would do anything differently if she could do it again. She says no instantly, then says she’d change everything. That’s the fun part about Gunnar and Scarlett - we get to see their mistakes and successes as they are making them.

Quick bits on the last few minutes: Juliette gave Deacon a demo of the song they worked on and told him he makes her want to grow up. Taylor Swift would just write a song about that Juliette! Lamar likes that Teddy wasn’t forthcoming during his vulnerability test. Teddy is standing by the fireplace burning papers which I assume were about the deal that went bad that ruined his career. Teddy has a vulnerable spot too.

The final scene at The Bluebird Cafe is a pivotal second episode moment. Deacon is playing his usual show and then calls Rayna up to sing an old song of theirs; it becomes clear to the audience and the two of them that they still have feelings for each other. I mean the song was called No One Will Ever Love You (Like I Do). Scarlett and Gunnar were watching from the audience, a reflection of their older selves on stage, and agreed to do the recording with Watty. Side notes:

Nashville was on my short list of most anticipated TV dramas in this fall TV season. I mean it had everything I could want: Connie Britton, Connie Britton’s hair, Connie Britton singing, Connie Britton saying y’all, Connie Britton saying sassy things, and more of Connie Britton’s hair. Nashville is really a story about a mass of red hair just trying to make it in the world of up-and-coming autotuned ingenues.

The show opens with Eli Young Band’s ‘Even If It Breaks Your Heart’ (I Shazamed it) playing so we know this is a real country show while panning over the city of Nashville before settling in on the home of Rayna James (Britton). We see her getting ready for what I assume is a concert and know that she has two daughters and a husband. Cut to a stage, where not even two minutes in, and we see a Country Strong fist punch the air and our first “Y’all” was said. The song that she was singing had actually been one of the promo songs and had been stuck in my head for some time leading up to watching the actual show so it was nice to see it in action. We also get to see her lead guitarist who I can guarantee will play a big part in either Rayna’s makin’ it or her downfall and then phoenix-like rise from the ashes.

The worst part about the pilot is all the character introductions and making them seem normal. We meet Watty White (some old guy), Scarlett (some young girl/poetess/secret ingenue), Scarlett’s boyfriend Avery Barkley (some young guy/songwriter), and we learn Rayna’s lead guitarist’s name is Deacon. I feel like the writers went to the store and bought a book called So You Want Your Baby To Be A Country Star: A Name Book when naming all the characters.

Not to be upstaged, but clearly not as important as Rayna/Connie, we finally get to meet Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettiere). She’s sitting on her couch surrounded by her ‘team’, piles of her memoir, new CDs, and testing out her perfume bottles spray when her phone rings. It’s her mother and she clearly isn’t happy about this. We can hear her mother asking her for $50 and Juliette pretends she can’t hear her, hangs up, and then throws her phone in the trash. She berates her assistant and tells her to change her number.

Juliette and Rayna are set to meet before Juliette goes on stage as part of an ambush on Rayna by the record company. The company wants Rayna to co-headline (which secretly means open for) a concert tour with Juliette Barnes. Rayna’s tour is not selling like it used to sell and she’s facing some trouble.

Juliette takes the stage and is very Taylor Swiftian. She has all the young girls in the audience eating out of her hands while in her dressing room Rayna James is watching her on the monitor and saying, “Ugh.”

Just when we all thought that this show was going to be only a diva-off between Rayna and Juliette in slips a little political storyline. We get to meet Rayna’s father Lamar, played by Powers Booth, as some political heavyweight getting a day declared to him as well as her sister Tandy. Tandy, it seems, is the “poised and driven daughter and protégé of Lamar Wyatt.” (at least according to wikipedia). We also quickly realize that Rayna and her father do not get along, probably because he’s jealous of Connie’s hair.

Juliette is singing about mascara again in the studio and one of the producers sitting there says, “Thank God for auto-tune.” I don’t really care, because at this point I have restarted this song multiple times and am on the verge of downloading it.

My favorite scene from the pilot has to be the few second car ride with Rayna and her daughters. The two girls are sitting in the back seat harmonizing Juliette’s single about being drunk on wine and like any responsible parent with a vendetta she shuts the radio off and tell the kids she has a headache. An EMMY worthy headache, y’all!

Still recovering from her headache, Rayna sits contemplating her face in the mirror while she and her husband, Teddy, discuss what she is going to do with her tour. Teddy suggests borrowing money from her daddy, but Rayna would rather wait tables. She doesn’t want to turn into her sister. We also glean from this conversation that her husband is not making any money, but may have some “deals” in the works.

Rayna heads on over to Randy’s (her producer) house to talk about recording some songs he mentioned to her awhile ago. She’s a little late on this cause of course they have been recorded. This is setting up some awesome foreshadowing I am sure. He tells her that he is busy recording Juliette’s new album and Rayna goes off on Juliette saying that she sounds like feral cats. The camera pans up to Randy’s bedroom where Juliette is naked. OH DAMN! He’s really producing.

Up next is a country jam sesh at The Bluebird Cafe. I wonder if this spot is like the Peach Pit? Who will be the Nat? Deacon is playing, Scarlett is waitressing, and Juliette is sitting in the audience wearing a big hat. Scarlett’s boyfriend talks to Deacon after the jam sesh and asks if he’s listened to his demo, some alt cerebral country punk stuff. Deacon dismisses him and will likely never listen to it. Another character is introduced, Gunnar, and this time Deacon has listened to his demo and surprise Gunnar likes Scarlett. Oooh, love triangles all up in Nashville. Outside while Deacon is packing up his car, Juliette ambushes him with a request to cover the song he just sang and to be the bandleader on her tour. She basically throws her country pop pussy at him.

Back to the political storyline. Lamar and Tandy and a bunch of other guys in suits are talking about a major league baseball stadium in Nashville and know that Coleman Carlisle, a mayoral candidate and Rayna’s friend, won’t go for it. They suggest alternative mayoral candidates and (of course) Teddy’s name comes up. Tandy says Rayna will lose it and Lamar cackles.

Rayna has a diva dip while at rehearsals for her tour and then she and Deacon go out for a walk. Here’s where we find out for sure that there is some unrequited love thing going on between them, mostly on Deacon’s part. I am going to suggest that Rayna’s older daughter is actually Deacon’s daughter and this will be revealed in a shocking sweeps episode. Rayna mentions she want to go to Tootsie’s and I’ve been told “no self respecting local, much less ‘respected musician’ goes to tootsies at 11am or EVER”. I love getting the inside scoop, y’all.

Watty White has Rayna on his radio show for some girl talk and he tells her that Juliette is in it for the long haul and her ass better get used to it (I’m paraphrasing). While they are recounting fave songs Juliette is over in the closet at the recording studio talk to her methed-out mama who just needs $50 bucks still. Her mama has some Breaking Bad level makeup going on right there too.

Lamar invites Teddy for a lunch date to tell him he is going to run for mayor, but is a much more subtle way so it seems like Teddy was meant to do this on his own and is not going to be Lamar’s pawn (which is of course what he will be). Teddy tells Rayna and she doesn’t like this idea, but is put in a hard place when he husband tells her he needs to step into the limelight for a little bit.

Meanwhile, at The Bluebird Cafe, Gunnar is reading Scarlett’s poems and there’s some shameless flirting over songwriting.

Rayna finally has her meeting at the record label to discuss the co-headlining tour with Juliette. The commercials, trailers, preview clips all showed this scene, but seeing it in context was just perfect. Did you see Connie Britton’s hair bounce as she walked away? That is some EMMY worthy hair right there.

After leaving the record label, Rayna is over at her father’s mansion where they are arguing about Teddy and money and Lamar lets a few secrets out for the audience to bask in. He suggests that he paid for Rayna’s first album and basically helped start/create her career. He also says that Maddie (her older daughter) was probably not Teddy’s, but that Teddy just accepted that and treated her like his own daughter. Scandal!

Gunnar pulls Scarlett up on stage to sing the song they are working on (my favorite from the pilot) and this plays throughout the last few minutes of the pilot. Teddy is giving his speech announcing his candidacy for Mayor, Coleman is preparing for his speech and gets notice that Rayna won’t be coming to sing at his announcement, Juliette has succeeded in seducing Deacon, Rayna gets a call from Watty who is listening to Scarlett and Gunnar sing and tells her that he has an idea then Rayna goes out and stands by her man just like Tammy Wynette.

There were four episodes of State of Georgia on last week and I sat down for two hours and watched all four.  I thought for awhile about recapping each episode, but figured you wouldn’t want to read that and, honestly, neither would I.  What I have been thinking about, a lot, is how certain TV shows make it and certain TV shows don’t.  What it takes to make it beyond a season or even a few episodes?  What makes a certain show get picked up after the pilot is aired and how some shows just never see the light of day even though they may be better shows than ones that are actually on the air.

Let’s look at one of the episodes from the four that aired last week as an example. The episode titled “Mo’ Honey, Mo’ Problems” gives us Georgia and Jo thinking Aunt Honey is broke (they saw a bank account statement) then they get all Intervention on her while simultaneously making us miss Biggie & Ma$e.  It later turns out that Aunt Honey isn’t broke, but just put her money in an account in Barbados.  This episode was written by two people who I am sure thought they were writing a great story for Georgia. I get it. I’ve written scripts that I thought were great until someone else read it and said otherwise and I’ve also received good feedback.  The difference between them and me though is that they are getting paid to put this stuff on television.  Are there certain standards to which we should hold writers to? Well, duh, but who OKs this kind of storyline?  Someone obviously said, “Yes! This is exactly what we need! Aunt Honey will be the chairperson for a charity called The Poor Women Outreach Resource Network, aka PWORN, pronounced like porn! LOL’ing y’all!”  The thing is I don’t think anyone was really LOL’ing at least not as indicated by the amount of viewers it has had.  At this point I can’t imagine this show getting a second season.  I could be wrong.  Worse show have received a second season. (I AM LOOKING AT YOU HAPPILY DIVORCED).

If the script was written better could it actually be a better show?  I kind of doubt it and I think that comes to its star.  Raven-Symone is just not that good of an actress and I know I have mentioned this before it just seems really odd that she is playing an aspiring (over)actress.  I love Loretta Devine, but even her character, while fun & campy, is just too over the top and preachy.  There is always a lesson to learn with her.  I never watched Roswell so I can’t tell you how Majandra Delfino, Jo, was on that show compared to this one, but I can tell you the writers have made her too quirky.  I actually think she’s the best actor in this show (don’t get me wrong here I think Loretta Devine is amazing, but in the context of this show is what I’m talking about).

I would love to know what the executives of ABC Family saw when they watched the pilot?  Did they actually see a real future for this show?  Did they think maybe this was going to be an adult That’s So Raven? Would Raven’s audience grow up with her and move on to her next show?  I think what is more likely is that her audience grew up and moved on.  There’s only so much bad physical comedy and facial acting that people can tolerate in an ‘Adult’ program. 

I will be looking forward to seeing Raven in a independent movie playing against character in the next few years, but for now I will be reviewing State of Georgia until the end of the season.  Don’t miss an episode (Wednesdays on ABC Family) and we can discuss it over on Twitter where I will be live-tweeting each episode.

We open this week with some saucy jokes (that’s foreshadow joke telling at its worst). Georgia and Jo are sitting in a restaurant and Jo is eating some wings and getting sauce all over her face. Georgia notices that a man sitting at the counter keeps looking over at her and when Jo looks at him he notices that the two are talking about him. He takes this as his cue to head on over and talk to the two. He asks Georgia out and the two agree to go out on a date after Georgia makes sure they will be going out to an actual restaurant and not a drive through. There are also some really bad jokes in this sequence, but the best (worst) is when Georgia tells Jo “You know a wingman is not someone who actually eats wings.” Like any normal person these days you Google a prospective date, stalk their Facebook, twitter, blog, whatever is available on the internet and that’s what Georgia does with her future date. Unfortunately he has a very common name and they can’t seem to track him down. Aunt Honey is listening to this conversation and thinks the girls are crazy. Georgia makes a joke about Aunt Honey being old and Honey delivers what may be my new favorite State of Georgia line, “Honey, don’t make me put my glass down.” (Don’t think I forgot about Going Full Georgia, though).

Jo begins tutoring a math student to make extra money and Aunt Honey soon thinks that he is in love with Jo. Jo doesn’t believe it because who would be in love with her? Georgia asks Jo to continue to search for the real identity of her date, but Jo is coming up empty handed. Georgia decides to ask the guy out on a pre-date so she can learn more about him before their real date on Saturday. While on the date she has Jo on speaker so she can be using this info to narrow down the correct guys for her internet search. This super stealth plan backfires and they don’t find anything new about him to help in the google search. There are tons of red flags waving all about, but Georgia refuses to see them cause he's fine. The night of the date Jo is tutoring the math student Aunt Honey convinced her was in love with her. Jo believes this and confronts him, afterall he is wearing a suit and carrying a bouquet of flowers. When he tells her they are for his girlfriend she feels stupid as does Aunt Honey.

Meanwhile, Georgia is out on her date with the mystery man. He tells her (after she asks) why he doesn't have an Internet presence. Everyone has a personal brand these days! He tells her he had a mole removed from his face when he was younger and the doctors used skin from his ass as a graft on his face and kids in his school found out and called him Ass Face. Back on the other side of town (I'm assuming it's on the other side for story sake), Jo and the math student (well, mostly the math student) start working on a formula or something to find out who Georgia is actually on a date with.

Georgia and her date are eating at the restaurant when Jo and the math student come bursting in and they tell her that he is married. Womp, womp.  Maybe Georgia will never find love in the big apple? Maybe she will? Let's stay tuned to find out!

I will be here all summer reviewing State of Georgia so please don’t miss an episode (Wednesdays at 8:30 on ABC Family) and we can discuss it over on Twitter where I will be live-tweeting each episode. 

Some thoughts and pictures re: Game of Thrones episode 9

Some thoughts and pictures re: Game of Thrones episode 8

WARNING!!! SPOILERS AHEAD!

If you're watching Doctor Who on BBC America, you are a week behind people watching it on the internet or in Great Britian (which can't be anyone here because we have 8 posts about Franklin and Bash) because of the holiday weekend. So if you're planning to watch the midseason finale this Saturday on TV with your mom or some friends or maybe just your cat and a big bowl of popcorn, please scroll on by because it is a really wonderful episode, and I would hate to ruin it for you.

I feel like this was really the first season of Who where we've had a major plot or mysteries introduced in the first episode of the season that were left unresolved and really carried through a lot of episodes rather than having all the episodes be self contained with a couple of two parters and everything moving in a vague direction. Most of this stuff was driving me nuts, so I'm glad we cleared some of it up. Yes, Amy was pregnant. The little girl in the space suit is a Time Lord, which is also why we saw her regenerating. That's where Amy was when we heard her talking on the transmitter. And I'm assuming The Doctor who is 200 years older is the Flesh Doctor, or it's the other way around. Either way, now there are two Doctors, which is what I was kind of suspecting all along.

First off, I just want to say, this is some Twilight shit! In case you didn't read all of them in the summer of 2008 (what else was I supposed to do?), Jacob "imprints" (becomes creepy pedohilic soulmates at first sight with, not like a baby duck) on Bella's daughter Renesme as soon as she's born, and they wipe all the goo off her. I really thought that River was going to be an assasin sent to kill him except she falls in love with him or something, or she was that young cleric from the Gamma Forests who I think I was supposed to recognize, but was probably just a red herring. It's creepy, and I don't know if I like it yet.

What concerns me and what I feel like we're not addressing is that Rory and Amy just lost their daughter? Because she's River Song not Melody Pond, and I'm assuming she's always breaking out of prison because she's been locked up her whole life. Also don't we know that she's from way in the future? Or does the fact that she likes Stevie Wonder mean that she's from the 21st century, and wouldn't The Doctor know that Stevie Wonder wasn't alive in 1814 since he was active on Earth in the 70s and 80s? (Actually come to think of it, we saw Spacesuit Girl regenerating in 1969, so it's highly possible she just lived through the end of the 20th century.) Or is the feeling that she's from the future and the fact that we call her River Song and not by her real name just a component of her being a Time Lord (lordess? What is the correct way to say that?) because she was conceived on the Tardis?

Also worth noting is that we got some much needed self awareness ("Rory wasn't even there at the beginning, then he was dead, then he didn't exist, then he was plastic, then I had to reboot the whole universe"). The Doctor is the source of his own problems. You can't go around the universe destroying nations of beings to save your friends without eventually creating the source of your own destruction. It's incredibly elegant, and I'm so sorry for those nasty thoughts I had about you being emotionally manipulative. 

Finally, The Doctor returns in the fall in "Let's Kill Hitler"? Seriously!? Are you fucking with me right now? Brb, dying.

Game of Thrones season 1 episode 2

I feel like I'm only now talking about Sunday's Game of Thrones because I've been too busy FEELING EMOTIONS about it. It was so good right? I was a little worried when the first episode was on the slow side, but obviously that was just background, and now things are popping.

Good job Game of Thrones! See you next week!

I heard some rumors before I got a chance to watch last night's Grey's that it was a musical episode. I really hoped that I had heard all those things wrong, but alas my life isn't easy like that. Being a fan of actual musicals, I have a tenuous relationship with musical episodes. Since Glee, I have a hard time saying the words, "musical episode" without ranting, so I'm just going to say that sometimes they are good, and sometimes they are terrible. If you've got someone in charge who knows what they are doing (Joss Whedon for example), it can be a decent episode. If you don't, you end up with a lot of pandering and melodrama. Unfortunately, what we are looking at is something that falls into the latter category.

So! What happened this week? Nothing. Because we spent all our time singing in Callie's subconscious. Oh well, better luck next time.

We open immediately after Callie and Arizona's accident with Callie laying on the hood of the car AND standing next to the car looking at herself (normal!) talking about how the brain is a mysterious organ. Oh brother, here we go. Meanwhile at Seattle Grace (because Seattle only has one hospital), Mark is freaking out, and the only 10 doctors who work there are waiting to meet the ambulance. Then Brain Callie starts singing the 2006 Snow Patrol hit "Chasing Cars." Wow, how did you know that when I was 19 I wrote a bunch of lyrics from that song on the mirror in my dorm room, and everyone made fun of me? This show is so smart and current.

Callie is taken to surgery, and Lexi starts singing "Breathe" by Anna Nalick because a song about getting an abortion is totally what you need to sing while a pregnant woman is in surgery. Lexi is sent out to check on Mark, which confirms the suspicion I have that they are going to try to get those two crazy kids back together. Honestly, I like them together, but it's the back and forth that makes me want to blow my brains out.

Addison gets called in for a guest spot, but honestly, the cameo is wasted because this actress appears to not want to sing. Elsewhere, Meredith and Christina find out about Alex and The Other Blond One, and in a truly shocking moment of self awareness for this show, Alex says, "well she works here at Seattle Grace Mercy Death. I'm sure she's pretty much going to go crazy or get cancer, shot by a gunman or hit by a truck. So don't get your hopes up for Karev's big happy ending." Head of nail meet hammer.

There are a few other songs I don't recognize because I can't keep up with what the kids are listening to these days, but they are mostly terrible, and I'm sure if I knew what they were I would have hated them anyway. Mark and Arizona have a fight over Callie's care because Arizona wants a say but legally Mark is the only one who can do anything because he is the father of Callie's baby. Actually, the person with the actual say in this would be Callie's next of kin. You know her parents, but I'm guessing this musical episode is too expensive for any more guest stars. 

Then there's some questions about the extent of Callie's brain function (I mean she is making everyone sing right now even people who aren't in the room just with the power of her BRAIN, so I think she's probably going to be okay, or she's definitely not going to be okay ever again), and there is a number where everyone has sex because this is Grey's Anatomy and that's what we do in a crisis.

Callie is taken back into surgery, and because it is always 2005 somewhere, Owen and Christina start singing "How to Save a Life." Long story short they deliver Callie's baby premature, and it's a girl even though I was sure it was a boy (Sloane made a dick joke about a fetus last episode, which was apparently all for nothing), and Callie wakes up and agrees to marry Arizona. Woof. Apparently, the fact that lesbians can't get married in Washington (yet!) will not stop this dysfunctional couple who shouldn't be getting married even if they were straight people, and their marriage wasn't a current political issue.

Elsewhere Meredith asks why the universe is so terrible that she can't get pregnant, and Callie does without trying then goes through a windshield, and the writers say, "don't look at me." Avery tells Lexi that he won't date someone who is still in love with someone else, and Lexi says she's not; thus continuing the LYING TO HERSELF streak she's been on. Then Teddy tells Christina that she won't be her teacher anymore because Christina always wants to learn surgeries that Teddy doesn't know how to do because she is terrible, and I wish she would just marry Scott Foley for real and go away forever.

If this is what they're doing before April, I'm really terrified to see what Sweeps is going to look like on this show. Jesus take the wheel!