Distributor: Warner Bros.
Episodes: 10
Duration: 36 minutes (per episode)
Girls: Season 4 (DVD) – Series Review
Hannah, Jessa, Marnie and Shoshanna are the four friends that make out the main characters of the hit series Girls. They don’t seem to have that much in common, yet this makes them quite an intriguing group of friends. They all suck you into their own world, while once in awhile these worlds collide and they keep each other from drowning, and that is no different in this fourth season we are reviewing for you now.
Hannah (Lena Dunham)is getting ready to move to Iowa, where she wants to pursue her dream and study to become a successful writer. Even though she is really excited to go, she is also afraid, since she will have to leave her boyfriend Adam (Adam Driver) behind. While she is desperate to figure out a good way for them to stay in contact, Adam’s approach to the whole situation is just ‘we’ll see’, which leaves her with mixed feelings. Nonetheless, she decides to go with it, hoping it will all turn out fine. Meanwhile Marnie (Allison Williams)and Desi (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) are becoming more and more known as a singer-songwriter duo and have a gig at a café while also trying to figure out where they stand as a couple, since Desi is still seeing his girlfriend Clementine.
After she moves to Iowa, Hannah finds it difficult to fit in with her classmates and her work gets criticized a lot by them as well. Jessa (Jemima Kirke), probably the most troubled soul of the lot, takes Adam to her AA meeting, but ends up being arrested by the police. Also for Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet)things don’t go as smoothly as she had hoped. She thought she would land a job in no time after graduating, but the reality is that she isn’t as needed as she thought she was.
After a few weeks in Iowa, Hannah decides that the dream she was pursuing wasn’t the nicest one after all, and she quits to come back to New York, where she finds Adam has moved on an has a new girlfriend living in their apartment. For Marnie things seem to go better, as Desi decides to go for her, be it only after Clementine dumped him. Shosh is determined to help Ray (Alex Karpovsky) pursue his political career, since that seems to be the only thing she is good at these days, and Jessa is still her old, down to earth self, keeping her friends there as well when they threaten to have an emotional or nervous breakdown.
The episodes of Girls’ season 4 only last thirty minutes each, yet a lot seems to be said during this half hour. Nonetheless the story never feels hasty, as each episode is well thought out and has a clear subject. As Hannah is the main character, her storyline gets the most screen time, but her friends also get their fair share of attention, even though their storyline is more shallow than Hannah’s. Only Jessa’s character seems a bit less explored in this season.
Topics that are handled in each episode have a very wide range. While they are all about finding yourself and your place in this world, all the characters experience different things such as being rejected emotionally, sexually, or even at a job interview, but also when in a relationship, how to see the cracks, or how to keep things going. Some scenes are really explicit, while others could have come from your own experience, which makes the series relatable, yet might also scare some people off.
It has to be said, Lena Dunham does a great job, as an actress as well as a director. She portrays Hannah beautifully as a young woman who tries to be mature and always knows what to do, yet often makes the wrong choices, in life as well as in fashion, and calls her mom whenever she needs a listening ear. Zosia Mamet plays a slightly neurotic, or at least very perfectionist Shoshanna, up to the point where you start to wonder whether she would actually be so in real life too.
Special features come in the form of audio commentaries with a few of the episodes, as well as ‘Inside the episode’, where Lena Dunham gives a short explanation to every episode. This proves to be rather interesting, as you’ll get to know why they made certain choices or used certain props as well as what the meaning of the episode’s title is, without it dragging on forever.
Conclusion
The fourth season of Girls shows an interesting plot, as all four of the girls struggle with different issues in life, which are nonetheless all very relatable. In the rather short time span they had to work with, the focus is mainly on Hannah, making the others’ problems less elaborately portrayed, but despite that they still have enough content to keep being interesting. We’re certainly curious as to what Lena Dunham has in store for us in season five.
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