Girls

It’s [Shoshanna's] and Jessa’s plot lines--and a surprisingly tender one involving the blossoming romance between Elijah (Andrew Rannells) and an Anderson Cooper-like newsman played by guest star Corey Stoll in a multi-episode arc--that feel like the season’s new emotional center.... It’s still pretty great to watch them flail--in all their messy, misguided, ridiculous glory--towards something like it [womanhood].

Girls continues to mine comedy out of the vast gulf between its characters aspirations and their reality.

It has matured, but it is still dark and funny, its characters flawed, and its depictions of sex and friendship startlingly but refreshingly bleak.

The start of the fifth season won't launch an armada of think pieces, but if you still get pleasure from watching these flawed, often awful characters make flawed, often funny choices, Girls is still Girls.

The new season pushes Adam Driver’s Adam and Jemima Kirke’s Jessa into a fraught relationship from which no good (for them) can come, but is interesting to watch--such a clash of acting styles those two project! And Girls continues its valiant attempt to integrate Zosia Mamet’s Shoshanna into the group in a believable manner. It’s doing this through off-beat ways that may actually end up working.

With Season 5, Girls feels like it’s finally becoming greater than the sum of its selfish jerk parts.

Reliably entertaining and wise new season.... What’s readily apparent on Girls nowadays is that the show doesn’t even need Hannah front and center to achieve narrative momentum. Dunham and her writers and cast have done a terrific job of creating an array of characters fully capable of carrying their own solo storylines.

The friends’ travails are presented in a kinder and gentler manner than we’re used to, and the balance has shifted away from cringey awkwardness and toward something resembling warmth.

Even though it all feels better balanced than a few of the past seasons, Hannah’s downward spiral into destruction in the opening hours of season 5 is the purest example of Girls‘ repetition fitting its stuck-in-a-rut proto-millennial themes in a not-so-fortunate way.

The premiere of Girls is perfectly enjoyable without feeling as current or well-written as those first two seasons. The ensemble has always been excellent and they do their best, but my issue with Girls remains tonal.

Season 5 of Girls resolves the angsty cloud that has long swirled around the series by making it, more than ever, something generic.... But outside of [Hannah 's] home life, Girls now has the airlessness of a laugh-tracked sitcom.