Today in celebrity news: Charlie is leaving Girls, a Game of Thrones actress is completely broke, and big One Direction dental news.
Season two of Girls ended on a — sort of — upbeat note on Sunday after a seriously dark turn, but a call for extras indicates that the HBO hit will be taking a trip to rehab sometime in the third season.
Not a single episode could air during season one without an overanalysis of controversial themes and Dunham's perceived agenda. And so in season two Dunham's agenda was to address controversial themes head-on, or indirectly, but mostly on purpose. Let's discuss.
Goodnight, bittersweet season two of HBO's Girls. You gave us a lot to think about. And now, hope springs new again, because season three could really bring anything.
Last night brought us the season two finale of Girls, an episode with the unusually rom-com-esque title, "Together." It's been an interesting ride this season, full of discomfort and displeasure, cringing and awkwardness for characters and viewers alike, and this 30-minute season ender was no exception.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Sunday's episode of Girls was about pain. Physical, mental, and emotional pain, and all three, together. And most of all, the pain of watching people in pain.
"If People Talked About Seinfeld Like They Talk About Girls," a much discussed satirical essay, has incited a range of responses — because the Girls backlash train never stops rolling — including a not-so-friendly reminder that there was once a Seinfeld backlash, too.
"It's Back" is the title of last night's episode of Girls. It refers most obviously to the reappearance of Hannah's OCD. But it's a phrase that applies to nearly every major character on the show in some way or another.
In a season of Girls which is growing increasingly more interesting and rewarding, last night's episode, "Video Games," shed light on perhaps the most mysterious character of the four ladies, Jessa (Jemima Kirke).
Last night's episode of Girls was titled "Boys." True to its name, it gave us the opportunity to spend more time with Adam, Ray, and Booth Jonathan than we have in any other episode this season, and certainly more time than anyone should ever need to spend with Booth Jonathan.
While everyone was worried about "female breast nipples" and other sexual horrors at the Grammy Awards on Sunday night, over on HBO Lena Dunham, star and creator of the acclaimed series Girls, was busy baring it all with impunity. And the Internet went crazy!
Who hasn't wanted to say forget it to the toils and troubles of daily life and instead move into a castle, or brownstone, with a handsome older person who can take care of us and maybe even save our lives?
After the complicated emotions last week's Girls inspired, episode four, "It's a Shame About Ray" — hark, a Lemonheads reference! — went a long way toward redeeming and refocusing the show.
It seems like everyone has an opinion on Lena Dunham and Girls, so it wasn't a terrible surprise to see Kareem Abdul-Jabbar post a thoughtful critique of the show on The Huffington Post. Oh wait, yes it was.
If art's great power is making the person who interacts with that art feel something, you could argue that HBO's Girls is highly successful television. But if a TV show consistently makes a watcher feel bad, can it be good?
Today in showbiz news: Discussing the J.J. Abrams/Star Wars news, Joaquin Phoenix and Paul Thomas Anderson are teaming up again, and a first look at the Coen Brothers' new film.
Lena Dunham and company are far too skilled to simply deliver something that lands right on the nose, as nuanced as an after-school special. Right? Somewhere between parody and reality there is Girls.
Don't look now, and don't blame the bad karaoke, but Lena Dunham really cannot do wrong: According to recent numbers online and off, HBO's Girls has become a kingmaker to just-under-the-radar musicians, sending their record sales abuzz
On a night in which the HBO show won two Golden Globes — Best Television Series and Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series for Lena Dunham — Girls was back with a season premiere. What happened?
In the second season, Lena Dunham's show is blessedly less concerned with defining an era or a generation and more relaxed in its own particular conventions. And that's a good thing.
The second-season premiere of HBO's Girls arrives Sunday, and along with it comes an outpouring of love from members of the media for its creator and star. But Oates's piece in Vanity Fair takes the take.
As happens every so often, this Sunday is a night when many important shows are airing or premiering at the same time. So which should you watch? What will best suit your tastes? Here, let us tell you.
So this is how Girls is going to deal with race. And politics. But mostly race.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
In the real world, there were escalating political nightmares and merciless superstorms and terrible shootings. But on TV and on the radio, at the movies and all across the Internet, there was revitalization and renewal, invention and good old-fashioned fun.
The most noxious, wrongheaded, misleading, silly, and downright awful pieces of punditry to somehow end up in print or online this year.
Time can have its real person of the year, but not-real people can influence us, too, and in 2012, fake characters mattered. From Katniss to Bane and Zero Dark Thirty's Maya, here's our alternative list.
Every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the video clips that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention
Fathers are doing more of the family shopping, and more of the caregiving, too. So are these new Barbie construction sets for girls, or for their dads?
The show we can't stop talking about no matter how hard we try is coming back in January, and creator/star/generally controversial person Lena Dunham posted a trailer for the show's second season from her Twitter feed just now.
Esquire's Q&A with Lena Dunham in its December issue is getting plenty of attention. It's not because the Girls creator/writer/director said anything particularly illuminating or scandalous. It's because we found out that Dunham rides around Manhattan in a chauffeured Mercedes.
Today in showbiz news: HBO might already have a third season of Girls planned, E! renews an important series, and Louis C.K. is doing another comedy special.
The Voice has two new voices, Robocop gets a makeover, Smash adds a Hairspray alum, and the first-look at the second season of Girls.
A poster child for cord cutting has given up on the cause, moving into an abode with a "tricked-out TV set up." That man is Forbes' Jeff Bercovici, who has gone without paying for cable for 13 years.
The Baby-sitters Club: Kristy Thomas, Mary Anne Spier, Claudia Kishi, Stacey McGill. They were the originals, the quintet of female friends who preceded the ladies of Sex and the City and came well before the foursome in Girls.
Oh Lena Dunham! Is she a true artiste, a flash-in-the-pan fascination, or a repackaged Candace Bushnell come to usher in a whole new terrible era of self-involvement? It turns out she's really none of those things.
Open the latest New Yorker and you'll find that Hannah Horvath has finally made it you'll be able to read about Lena Dunham's emotional tailspin when she found out an ex-boyfriend's mom un-friended her on Facebook two years to the day after breaking up with her gay son.
Every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the video clips that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention.
Today: Lifetime gets some new housekeepers, there's been a change in the summer movie schedule, and Lena Dunham is giving herself a hot new man.
Caitlin Moran's personal essay "I Know Why the Fat Lady Sings," calls compulsive overeating "the most pointlessly secret of miseries" for women.
Pixar's new movie, Brave, is out Friday, and it features the first girl lead the studio has ever had in 17 years of existence. Her name is Merida, she is Scottish, and she is a princess.
The Atlantic Wire's Jen Doll talks about the season finale of Girls with The A.V. Club's Todd VanDerWerff for The Guardian.
Girls may be the one show that we, as a collective TV-watching presence, have had the most to say about this season. It's left a mark.
In the wake of the controversy over the sexism in Girls Only! How to Survive Anything, we present this badass addendum to our previous compendium, "The Greatest Girl Characters of Young Adult Literature."
Discovered: Another close-to-Earth asteroid, even the formerly fat are remembered for being fat, and TV only improves the self-esteem of white boys.
Is there a G-rated word more hideous and nasty to women than the word "cougar"? What about when we apply it to 16-year-old girls?
HBO's Girls is not exactly the show we thought it was a month ago. It's still about a general narcissistic, mostly clueless, selfish ambition that many young people possess but are too lazy to realize, but it's also just, I dunno, about a few characters in a nice, quiet, mostly humane way.
Amid the heaping vat of Girls-related blog outrage stew, show creator/star/writer Lena Dunham has remained relatively mum regarding her show's much criticized/discussed treatment of race.
For television shows, technology presents particular problems. Some are doing it well...others, less so.
HBO invites two shows back for next year, Teri Hatcher is slumming it, and E! gets an awkward new makeover.
Today's made-for-outrage New York Times trend story: Little girls are wearing fancy, expensive clothes made by fashion designers who make fancy, expensive clothes for little girls now. Little girls!
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