Season four of Girls was a crazy, even-flowing rollercoaster ride of humor, heart and sadness. It did a great job of putting together strong storylines for each character and focused on their progression, again evenly, as the season moved. When it ended, it provided a proper, liberating out for Lena Dunham’s Hannah to find way to start over with independence as her driving point. Adam Driver’s Adam (that was weird to type) goes the opposite direction into the unknown. Marnie (Allison Williams) and Desi (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) decide to get married. Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) gets shipped to Japan, while Ray (Alex Karpovsky) struggles to keep his emotions afloat from the loss of Marnie. As an added bonus, Hannah’s mother and father struggle to keep their marriage together with her father’s recent admission of homosexuality. Lots of moving parts, all worth their weight in gold. More importantly, there are lots of good topics with season four that intertwine back and forth with each other, each doing their part to cap off a nice season of Girls.
So, how can season five top that? Does it even need to? Well, no, but keeping the flow going certainly would help it.
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With all of the above setup, how does season five handle it all? Unevenly, sadly. Not knowing the backstory about the fifth season of the show, and maybe there were some schedule conflicts for some of the actors, the fifth season of Girls seemed to struggle with strong content and keeping it together.
More specifically, season five had too much of some characters and not enough of others, which created an uneven flow that seemed to disrupt and even shortchange storylines that were interesting in season four. For example, season five was very Hannah centric. Even though the supporting characters revolved around her, season five tended to let Hannah drive everyone’s story, which wasn’t the case in the previous season. Adam and Jessa’s love affair was driven by Hannah’s lack of knowing they were going at it. Tad and Loreen’s story of getting back together and trying to make it work went through Hannah to push it. Hannah’s relationship with Fran, while cute and interesting became a victim of Hannah’s wrath and thus short lived in this season. It was not at all strong, fizzled before it meant something and ended with a small thud, rather than a large bang. The only three storylines that seemed to survive on their own had to share a chunk of writing time with Hannah’s other stories. We didn’t get a full perspective of Marnie and Desi’s issues in their new marriage, only funny moments. There seemed to be a lack of time to get a strong since of struggle with Shoshanna’s return back to the mainland. We also only get a taste of Elijah’s loneliness after a rocky relationship with a popular/rich newscaster because the season spends so much time Hannah. All of this is unfair to the characters establisted and the viewership that wanted to see what other characters were up to after the fourth season.
In short, everyone needed more time to explain themselves and it simply wasn’t given.
The drive of shows like these when it comes to interest and longevity is not to forget the other folks in the story. For some strange reason season five struggled with keeping everyone up and going. While that type of balance/structure might be set in stone when it comes to the success of a lot of television shows (be it cable or network), which might be a turn off to show runners who might want to be different than the rest, it still is a good structure to hold true to when putting stories together. The consequence of not going that route could be unnecessary and unneeded, though justified during the current season, dislike for a character. I did not like Hannah in this season. She seemed to be self-absorbed, ruining relationships and not giving a hoot until the final episode where she basically apologizes for her actions (which was not believable after the season built her into a mess). Hannah deserved a better route than what was provided and maybe season six addresses this issue and makes amends (I haven’t seen it, so I can’t say), but as it stands season five really does wreck Hannah badly. It certainly doesn’t match the lady in season four who had just decided to control her own fate without depending on anyone else. It was a real regression to Hannah and everyone’s story.
Having said all this meanness, it doesn’t at all hide the fact that there were some really great individual episodes in the mix. The best of the bunch is as follows:
Wedding Day – A playful way to begin the season. You get the only even juggling act of the bunch in terms of stories. It’s fun bringing the characters back via a wedding, trapping them in a small location and even funnier when no one is taking the situation too seriously. Seeing Desi panic on his wedding day is priceless. Seeing Fran and Hannah go at it in a car, then get stuck in the car because of rain is gold. Seeing Adam and Jessa fight their feelings was tragic, yet playful. Again, a fun way to bring back the team before being cast off into other episodes.
Japan – Shoshanna’s japanese adventures. A great episode that does Shoshanna justice, but sadly her adventures don’t last long, but a love story is established before she departs. Darn good episode that ends on a pretty note.
Hello Kitty – This episode is the true beginning of the end for almost every relationship in the show. It shows the crumbling walls of friendship, lovers and how lost a lot of the couples feel. It’s one of the more powerful of the bunch and one that isn’t as innocent as the episode title claims it to be.
While not a huge list, those episodes are my favorite of the bunch and do justice to the fifth season of the great show. These are beautiful sparks in a confusing season that certainly deserve your undivided attention when viewing.
Overall, I wanted more from the fifth season after ending it on a high note with the fourth, but it simply didn’t deliver the goods. Too much of one character and not enough of the others seemed to plague it throughout its 10-episode run. I’m sure season six will patch some of the holes up, but as it stands season five is just too darn uneven with its storytelling to be completely likable. It deserved better writing and seemed to live for the moment, rather than the long haul. It’s not terrible, but it simply does not compare to season four.
