Since premiering in 2012, Lena Dunham’s Girls has elicited cringes, laughter, boredom, a sense of camaraderie among a certain subset of millennials, and almost every kind of praise and every kind of criticism a half-hour HBO show can possibly garner. On February 12, the series will enter its sixth and final season.
“I don’t give a shit about anything, but I simultaneously have opinions about everything,” Hannah (Dunham) tells a potential new editor, played by Chelsea Peretti, in the first few seconds of the Season 6 trailer. This suggests that Hannah—after ending last season with a triumphant performance at the Moth—has re-devoted herself to writing and is entering the world of New York media (as if this industry needs another monster).
“I wanna write stories that make people feel less alone than I did. I wanna make people laugh about the things in life that are painful,” she says—though Hannah (as I suspect/hope Dunham intended) is more responsible for her loneliness than anyone else.
Elsewhere in the Girls universe (i.e. Greenpoint, Brooklyn), Jessa (Jemima Kirke) and Adam (Adam Driver) continue to fight through their worst instincts to make their relationship work, Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) reckons with a life that’s turned out in unexpected and unwanted ways, and Marnie (Allison Williams) gets cozy with Ray (Alex Karpovsky) while continuing to fuck around with her estranged husband, Desi (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). The husband and wife are “even considering trying anal,” announces a horrified Hannah, as if butt play was previously beyond Marnie’s experience level.
Little does she know...