For the last few months, we've been sold on the season's tagline, "Almost getting it kind of together," supplemented by that New Year's resolution ad campaign. More or less predictably, we now find ourselves one episode away from the end of the season with a cast that hasn't gotten it together at all.
Let's begin with Hannah. Her first scene in this episode shows us that her book is not going well. "Did your hymen grow back?" her publisher asks, not having finished reading it of his own volition. "Where's the sexual failure? Where's the pudgy face flecked with semen and sadness? What I'm getting here is a lot of friendship. It's very Jane Austen." In what he calls an "epiphany," he suggests that she make it a novel if she's not currently having sex. Hannah looks dumbfounded
Ray is feeling sick, and Shoshanna is acting like a "geisha" (Ray's words, obviously), making sure he has white sugar, brown sugar, and artificial sweetener for his tea. Her guilt after cheating on him is taking its toll on their relationship, and he notices. Marnie, meanwhile, is pursuing her singing dreams and desperately needs GarageBand help.
Hannah is making no progress with her book, and we see her fidgeting on the floor of her apartment with her laptop until she gets a splinter in her ass. And because Girls is Girls, the next beautifully composed shot is one of Lena Dunham's ass with a very large chunk of wood in it. After pulling it out in the bathroom, she creates another problem for herself while trying to clean her ears with a cotton swab (something at least dozens of Web sites peddling medical knowledge tell you not to do). She scratches the inside of her ear. She cries. She calls her parents. We would pity her if we didn't think she was such an idiot. To Becky Ann Baker's credit, Hannaha's mom sounds just like mine when she yells into the phone: "Nothing smaller than an elbow in there, ever!" Hannah winds up having to go to the hospital, where a doctor with no bedside manner whatsoever asks if she was digging for gold, and suggests she frame the cotton swab.
Marnie, having been stood up at lunch by her ex-boyfriend Charlie, gets invited to his start-up's party celebrating 20,000 MAUs (monthly average users), which sounds like something to crack open beers over on a Friday night, not something to blow out with a live DJ, catered pizza, and "shitty beer" (according to the ever-quotable Ray, who attends with Shosh). While Ray goes to get himself a shitty beer, Shosh puts her foot in her mouth as she tries to pay Charlie a compliment: "You could have sex with any girl at this party, including me."
Meanwhile, Adam seems to be doing better. He and Natalia are now officially a couple. She's having sex with him and taking him to her friends' engagement parties and everything. At the party, her friend pulls Natalia aside and warns her that Adam "has the face of an old-timey criminal." Natalia, more astute than she realizes, replies: "What are you talking about? He looks like Peter Pan."
Adam, needing fresh air from a party at a bar where he's the only one not drinking, encounters Hannah outside, walking back home from the hospital. When she explains to him what happened, he calls her "kid" and tells her to be careful. The sentiment isn't lost on Hannah, who looks surprised and maybe just a little hurt when Adam tells her that he's at this bar with his girlfriend. There's no way for the conversation to not be awkward, and Adam cuts it short, heading back into the bar while Hannah tries to tell him about her book. Once inside, Adam promptly orders a Jack and ginger for himself. Natalia looks worried at first, but they drink and dance for the rest of their time there.
Back at the start-up party, Marnie, still nervous about her singing abilities, nonetheless resolves to perform a surprise version of Kanye West's "Stronger." Of course Marnie can't really sing. Not really. No one applauds but Ray (who probably does so more out of contempt for the party's crowd). After an intense conversation wherein he tells her she needs to get her shit together and she tells him she doesn't want his pity, Marnie and Charlie have sex on his desk.
Ray finally confronts Shoshanna about how strangely she's been acting around him. She quickly admits that she held a doorman's hand, and — because Ray is a blind fool — he laughs it off and gives her a hug, and Shoshanna makes a terrified face.
Back at Adam's apartment, Natalia tells him that she thinks his apartment's a mess, but when asked, says it doesn't change the way she feels about him. And then he tells Natalia to get on all fours. More perplexed than anything, she complies, and when he tells her to crawl toward his bedroom on a dirty nail-ridden floor, she does that, too. When she asks where it's leading, Adam lifts her off the ground, deposits her on his bed, and informs her "I want to fuck you from behind, hit the walls with you," pulling her panties down before she says anything more than an uncertain "Okay…" Natalia never tells him no, but it's clear that she doesn't want it to be happening, and after what cannot be more than thirty seconds, Adam attempts to finish on her dress-covered breasts, which Natalia has to bare for him if she doesn't want to look like she just got ejaculated on. Adam takes his shirt off (ironic, no?) and uses it to wipe the semen off of her breasts. On a show that portrays bad sex in almost every episode, the whole sequence stands out as scarier than anything we've seen thus far.
"I don't think I liked that," Natalia says simply as she ties her dress back up behind her neck.
"I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over me," Adam says, unable to look at her.
"I, like, really didn't like that."
"Jesus, I feel dizzy," he says. And finally meeting her eyes: "Is this it? Are you done with me?" We'll presumably find out next week, but it doesn't look hopeful.
This was an episode and a season of regression. As soon as we see the characters take a few inching steps forward, they seem to about-face and dash in the other direction. Marnie's trying to find herself but is again in the arms of a guy who doesn't actually care about her. Shoshanna is in a relationship with a great boyfriend but her own insecurities caused her to cheat and lie to him. Many of Hannah's problems could be solved if she would just take some responsibility and be more careful cleaning her ears. And Adam just started drinking again.
The episode ends with Hannah, again sitting in her bathroom, again with her OCD tics. She stares at the used cotton swab that she used earlier to pierce her ear, and, as the camera zooms slowly closer to her, proceeds to stick it in her other, undamaged ear.
These kids just don't ever learn.
One of the most fascinating TV marriages right now is between Philip and Elizabeth on FX’s The Americans. Sure, they’re KGB spies in the 1980s trying to bring down the Americans while posing as an American couple, but there’s a real love story there.
If you’re all caught up with the latest episode, you might want to check out some interesting tidbits from Matthew Rhys, who plays Philip, after a recent conference call with reporters. He discusses the marriage, Philip’s frame of mind and more.
The highlights are below. The Americans airs on Wednesday at 10 pm ET on FX.
On how his character has changed since the KGB captured him and his wife in a previous episode and tortured them to find out if they were moles. “So many things changed, in many ways irreparably, to a degree in that you wonder a) how he’ll be able to recover with Elizabeth and indeed the people he worked for. It sort of solidifies and consolidates everything he was beginning to believe, not about her, but certainly about the KGB anyway. It makes for that great pressure as something now must happen from that. Certainly in the episodes we’re shooting now, I think Philip is in this great transition. It’s like stalemate because he knows he wants to make a move and he wants to do something about it, it’s just he isn’t quite sure how to get out, really.”
On who his character might choose first: his children or the Soviet Union. “I think where you find him in the first episode is exactly that. I think he’s come to a point in his life where he is no longer defined by his job. His job no longer defines him and as you said the priority now in his life is his children. I think he’s realized that their job has a shelf life and that the vice is slowly tightening and it’s something they can’t sustain. I think his real ambition in life is to secure the future for his children and for him and Elizabeth, really. I think that’s his super-objective is to make sure that they’re all safe. The only real way to do that is to get out.”
On his character’s friendship with his neighbor, Stan from the FBI. “I think he’s a little torn about Stan, to be perfectly honest. Philip does come from a decent moral place in many ways and he has a love for the lifestyle they’ve created. I think part of that is this sort of white picket idyllic idea of having a best friend in a neighbor. I think he genuinely does like Stan, although he tells Elizabeth it’s good to keep your enemies closer, I think with Stan there is a genuine fondness there. It’s unfortunate that in a way he is manipulating him for information … I’m hoping they go on a fishing trip and fall in love, to be honest.”
On who Philip, his character, would shoot, if he had one bullet and could choose between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. “I’m not sure. I think it would probably— Oh, God, that’s an incredible question for a number of reasons. I think where we meet Philip, he has this great capacity for violence and murder, but I think in his heart he is a good guy. I think seeing as Mikhail did more, a little to a degree for that movement with Perestroika and Glasnost, he’d probably shoot Reagan, I think.”
On what he can tease about the season finale. “If I had to choose, I think for the finale would possibly be that— Oh, tease, oh, God no. I don’t know anything about the finale. We’re the last people they tell … I don’t know anything about the finale as of yet.”
And finally, on whether or not he’s fluent in Russian in real life. “I was fluent before I took the part, funnily enough. No, I wasn’t at all. I’m being scoffed at by my publicist because she is actually fluent, born and raised in Russia, funnily enough. No, I wasn’t. You will, in fact, unfortunately hear me butcher the beautiful language of Russian in an upcoming episode. It’s been a little bit of a linguistic struggle for me.”
From JJ:
Zac Efron and Dennis Quaid pose together at the screening of their film At Any Price during the 2013 SXSW Film Festival on Saturday (March 16) in Austin, Texas.
The guys were joined by their director Ramin Bahrani at the screening for a question and answer sessions with their fans.
It was recently announced that the film will be premiering at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival next month before hitting theaters in NY and LA on April 24.
Red Carpet
You don't have to do a lot of makeup or whatever. Just take care of yourself, take pride in how you look. There are some days I look homely like hell, but beautimous comes within yourself and if you're happy with yourself, that's all that matters.
