Everyone—artists especially—keeps tabs on their classmates’ movements. Who works at what publication, who got a promotion, who lives at home. It’s always been a sick obsession of anyone with any hope for a career, but for the current crop of twenty-somethings, of which I am…

At some point during last week’s episode – probably when Marnie was getting scolded by Elijah – Girls found itself. It was the rare episode that had all of the characters in the same place, even if they weren’t together, and the plotlines just clicked.…

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oZDKFoCqAw&w=560&h=315] The trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s newest epic, The Master, dropped at Cannes this past week, and it looks to be just as beautifully and bizarrely psychotic as his all of his other films (There Will Be Blood, Magnolia, Boogie Nights). The clip, which…

You can never go home, as the saying goes, but the rough truth of it is that sometimes, you just have to try. This week, in an episode co-written by Judd Apatow, Hannah returns to her childhood home in Michigan to join her parents in…

For months, Bethany Cosentino has been saying that The Best Place, her follow-up to her great 2010 debut, Crazy For You, would be different but the same. Featuring producer Jon Brion and what Cosentino calls “grown up” and “seriously emo” themes—as well as country western…

Of all the complaints aimed toward Girls, the one thing you’ll never hear is that it doesn’t move fast enough. The show has fallen into a fairly steady rhythm of conflict/resolution/conflict, and “Hard Being Easy” is no different. This week opens on Hannah/Marnie/Charlie immediately after…

Comedically, this is one of Girls’ weakest episodes. Luckily, there’s a lot of good character stuff happening. Like so many of the best television shows, Girls—especially this episode—seems to be about characters’ lack of control. In “Hannah’s Diary,” none of our women are in control: Even…

It’s safe to say that GIRLS has found its feet. With “All Adventurous Women Do,” the intent of the show is revealed: It is not going to be, as so many Brooklynites had feared, a rumination on the difficulties of being cut off from your…