In the Season 3 finale of HBO’s “Girls,” Hannah got into the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop – to her surprise and to the delight of her beleaguered parents, who hope the program will set their directionless daughter on a new path.
Self-obsessed Hannah, of course, couldn’t help but ruin this emotional high point of the series by springing her life-changing news on her high-strung boyfriend Adam just as he was about to make his Broadway acting debut.
“Can’t one thing ever be easy with you?” he angrily asked her afterward.
Adam’s words instantly became a key line of the series, perhaps second in importance only to Hannah’s self-defining declaration, a mix of hubris and insecurity, delivered in the debut episode nearly three years ago: "I may be the voice of my generation – or at least a voice, of a generation.” As “Girls” heads into a pivotal fourth season, Hannah has an opportunity to get serious as a writer and finally find her voice.
Not that Hannah’s alter ego, “Girls” creator and star Lena Dunham, has any trouble using her voice, even if she doesn’t speak for everybody. The show about over-privileged and underemployed twenty-somethings taking an overwrought angst ride through the millennial theme park that Brooklyn’s become for some young "haves" doesn’t resonate for all. Her characters’ woes are magnified by the emotional excesses of the youth they can’t give up, even if their problems are a joke compared to those without their socio-economic advantages.
Dunham plays this seeming disadvantage as a strength – she’s not asking us to like Hannah and her friends. “Seinfeld,” after all, proved that characters don’t have to be likable for a series to succeed.
But Dunham is asking us to care about Hannah and Co. While she hasn’t fully succeeded, it was hard not to be happy for Hannah – or at least for her parents – when she got into the writing program. If the show’s characters haven’t grown up, they’ve at least started to grow on us.
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Shoshanah, struggling to better herself through school, emerged last season as more than just the group’s annoying motor-mouth. Jessa’s family and drug woes don’t excuse her erratic behavior, but give some insight into her actions. Adam, who actually seems to have some talent, has turned out to be more complicated than the vile user of Season 1.
Credit Dunham with building interest in her flawed characters, even amid bizarre missteps (Hannah’s role playing stunt last season) and departures (her Season 2 brief affair with a young doctor, by turns passionate and domestic). Both episodes, even if seemingly out of left field, speak to Hannah's search for identity.
There’s been much written about the frequent nudity on the show. But, as previously noted, Hannah isn’t comfortable yet in her own skin. We’ll presumably learn this season whether she finally can become comfortable with her own voice.
Jere Hester is founding director of the award-winning, multimedia NYCity News Service at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He is also the author of "Raising a Beatle Baby: How John, Paul, George and Ringo Helped us Come Together as a Family." Follow him on Twitter.
