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| (HBO) |
Girls
There’s
an air of pointlessness clouding Girls
at this point.
Though
Lena Dunham remains intellectually-engaged with her breakout half-hour, the
currently-airing fourth season is landing flat. This was never an especially
comedic or dramatic series – its creative juice has long been mined from the
perceptiveness in its ideas and language – but at this stage, it seems to be
weightlessly humming along. There’s a thematic unity in the predicaments faced
by Hannah (Dunham), Marnie (Allison Williams), Jessa (Jemima Kirke) and
Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) alike – they’re in definitive moments, where they can
either make a serious leap forward or regress once again – and, occasionally,
there’s an inspired, biting engagement, as in the goings-on at the Iowa Writers
Workshop. Even at its least cohesive, no one should accuse of Girls of being stupid. But with Marnie
drowning in a romantic subplot, and Jessa coming out of another slight,
inconsequential storyline, and Shoshanna entering the working world, Dunham’s
work isn’t cohesive right now; rather, it’s awkwardly segmented.
Girls has
never seriously developed its characters, and part of that is the point: one,
these characters are stuck; and two, evolutions in the relationships are
what chiefly matter to Dunham as a storyteller. The problem, then, is this: the
characters are mostly separated right now, and they’re just not interesting
enough. They lack gravitas, depth – and they’re not particularly funny, either.
Girls appears trapped within a
cynical, finite premise about a group of friends falling out and drifting
apart. The show is perpetuating this conceit and therefore is dependent on our
investment in its characters’ individual challenges. But we have no real reason
to invest if what’s going on isn’t especially funny, or romantic, or profound. This
may be a show that just doesn’t age that well; crafty dialogue and a
contemporary feel can only get you so far. But there’s no sense of history –
remembering what Jessa did in season two takes a minute, and when you finally
do, you realize it doesn’t even matter – and so, when things are naturally
slower, Girls is an excessively
uninvolving experience. Thank God Elijah (Andrew Rannells) comes around every
so often to spice things up a little bit.
C+
Togetherness
The
Duplass Brothers don’t really transcend. The appeal of their work, and the joy
of experiencing it, is derived from its lived-in nature. As writer-directors,
Mark and Jay put beautifully naturalistic dialogue on the page and, when behind
the camera, translate it to the screen with unmistakable intimacy and subtle
verve. But as far as slices-of-life go, they don’t take that artistic leap, as
we’ve seen Jill Soloway do on television with Transparent or as Ira Sachs did in film last year with Love Is Strange. Even so, I’d argue television
is an optimal format for them, and thus far, Togetherness is working quite well as a result.
I’m
struck by how quickly the series has created a lush sense of familiarity and
comfort with its characters; the Duplass team is bouncing them off of each
other as most shows typically do in later seasons, when the groundwork has been
laid. In Togetherness, between the
beautifully grounded performances of its quartet, everything already feels ripe
to explore. The series’ third episode, as an example, focuses individually on
Melanie Lynskey’s Michelle, who decides to take a night out for herself rather
than join her husband and friends at a party. Lynskey is so connective as an
actress that she, just 90 minutes in, feels remarkably fleshed-out; as such,
watching Michelle patrol nighttime Los Angeles is an evocative, gently
informative experience about where she is in her life, and what’s going on with
her internally. It’s a perfect example of what the show does with all of its
characters, softly subverting the archetypes they ostensibly fit as.
Each
episode works as a slight, intimate experience, and at this stage, they work
best as standalone half-hours. There’s less of an overriding intent here than
in a Transparent; Togetherness is more about a feeling,
and an ongoing exploration of people at a certain place at a certain time in
their lives. Like Duplass films, this series is not especially thick. But it retains
their rich, innate realism and specificity, and the episodic format is rendering
their work more streamlined, effectual and resonant. B+
Looking
In
the second season premiere of Looking,
Patrick (Jonathan Groff) and friends attend a massive gay party in the woods of
Northern California. The episode up to that point had been pleasantly
unremarkable, but in comes director Andrew Haigh’s Steadicam shot: against the
music, he pans around the scene, inviting into his frame an impenetrable sense
of joy as an incredibly diverse community comes together. The camera captures
it all, and the sensation is irresistible.
Looking
may be the most visually-adventurous (and imaginative) half-hour on the air, as
beyond the mastery with the camera, Haigh and his team make fascinating
choices: I haven’t seen sex scenes filmed with such a combination of naturalism
and eroticism as they are here, and as touched on with that moment at the
party, Looking’s framing choices are
blessedly inventive. Haigh is a filmmaker turning to television, and so you can
understand where his strengths and weaknesses stem from. Looking just doesn’t have the bones of a television show. Surrounding
Groff’s likeably dorky Patrick are a collection of thin characters doing mostly
uninteresting things (though Lauren Weedman’s Doris can do just about anything
and we’ll smile, I’ll concede). I’ve put aside my confusion as to how Patrick,
Augustin (Frankie J. Alvarez) and Dom (Murray Bartlett) became best friends,
but there’s an ongoing problem: these actors just don’t have the chemistry with
each other that you see within the cast of Togetherness
or even Girls.
But
the show is making strides. In particular, its fluency has come through more in
Patrick’s affair with his boss, Kevin, as there’s a weight behind both their
banal conversations and their more intimate encounters. And the show is
skirting around, with a bit more deliberateness, the sexual tension between Dom
and Patrick – you’re finally getting a sense of something there. But Looking is sorely lacking in a strong
foundation; it still can’t confidently or successfully weave between characters
and relationships, even in its second season. It’s a bit stoic, and is yet to
delve deep. But if Haigh’s narrative work is still defined by a collection of
unintegrated parts, he holds you with profound image-based communications. Looking possesses a unique vivacity in
that way: it’s pretty darn masterful when, you know, nobody’s talking. B