Category Archives: TV

TV: Girls Are Complex Creatures.

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As I’m sure it did for everyone who’s even remotely self-aware, the fight scene between Hannah and Marnie on the second last episode of Girls last night hit pretty close to home.

I’ve had my fair share of roommates (okay, two), but the one I live with now I’m exponentially closer to me than my previous one. In this way, it is similar to Hannah and Marnie’s living arrangements.

I had to laugh out loud when, in the midst of their biggest fight yet, Marnie admonishes a hurt Hannah for eating her yoghurt: “Don’t look at me like I said something awful ’cause I really didn’t.” This is mine and my housemate’s relationship to a T, wherein I’ll get pissed off at something seemingly small, but that has been reoccurring for awhile, and my housemate, who is a sensitive soul, will get puppy dog eyes and retreat to his room. Hannah’s reaction to Marnie’s complaint is my housemate all over; and Marnie’s reaction to Hannah’s reaction is me all over.

Rachel Hills wrote that, despite her best intentions, she identifies with Hannah, flaws and all. While I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing (it’s good to be self-aware and to embrace yourself. As Adam tells Hannah, “You love yourself so much, so why is it so crazy that someone else would, too?” And what about Bridesmaids’ Annie, the epitome of a self-sabotaging hot mess, but who is the most relatable movie character in a long time. In fact, the very end scene of Girls, where Hannah finds herself alone on a beach somewhere in New York state eating stale wedding cake from Jessa’s shotgun nuptials with Chris O’Dowd’s creepy materialistic threesome man, echoes the scene in Bridesmaids where Annie sits alone in her dark kitchen, eating a beautiful cupcake she baked from scratch in the middle of the night.), I find I relate more to Marnie, despite my best intentions. I’ve ripped Marnie to shreds on this here blog for having “Pretty Girl Problems”, but I also think she’s a bit misunderstood and the way she’s portrayed isn’t necessarily the be all and end all of her as a character. Having said that, though, what else does Marnie “want besides a boyfriend with a luxury rental?”

A lot of the things Marnie brings up in her fight with Hannah are not only 100% true, but are reoccurring themes throughout the series. Hannah’s selfish. Hannah’s judgemental. Hannah’s a bad friend.

Marnie: “You judge everyone and yet you ask them not to judge you.”

Hannah: “That is because no one could ever hate me as much as I hate myself. Any mean thing anyone’s going to say about me I’ve already said to me, about me, probably in the last half hour.”

Marnie: “That is bullshit because I can literally think of a million mean things that have never once occurred to you.”

That was a bit of a low blow, but not completely unjustified. This is evident when Hannah tells Marnie that being a “good friend” is not really important to her at the moment: “I don’t really give a shit about being a good friend. I have bigger concerns.” Like how she made a fool out of herself at a reading because she didn’t trust her writerly instincts. Big whoop.

On the one hand, a friend who’s not concerned with being a good friend should be kicked to the curb, in my opinion. But I can also see where Hannah’s coming from: sometimes when you’ve got so much going on in your life the last thing you want to do is support someone else through their shit. But that’s what being a good friend is about, right?

Not only being a good friend, but being a good lover, too. Echoes of the apartment fight in episode nine that lead to Marnie moving out (Hannah was the one who mooched off Marnie and doesn’t have a steady job: shouldn’t she be the one moving out?) are heard at Jessa’s wedding in episode ten, when Hannah dismisses Adam’s request to move in with her. “I associate [love] with Marnie and Charlie and people who talk a lot about their relationship, you know? It’s like, ‘My relationship is doing really well right now.’ ‘I need to work on some aspects of my relationship.’ And it’s just like, your relationship is not ‘a thing’. You relationship is not ‘an achievement’. I’ve got actual things I’d like to achieve before I focus on, like, that.”

Wow, I’m starting to see where Hills is coming from when she says Hannah’s “not someone any person should want to be.”

Ahh, Girls… They’re complex creatures. Just like every other human being, really.

Related: Pretty Girl Problems.

Sexual Harassment & Invasions of Privacy.

Girls Just Want to Have Realistic Experiences.

Elsewhere: [Musings of an Inappropriate Woman] I am Hannah Horvath. And You Might Be Too.

Image via Nos Video.

TV: Being Lara Bingle—What is Normal?

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Last night we got a glimpse into the rigmarole that goes into Being Lara Bingle.

Lara attends Fashion Week and doesn’t like her hair and makeup done for her by her friend and stylist. She thinks she looks too dirty and her features don’t stand out (funny, I thought the same thing when I saw pap photos of her from the events), her hair is “too tight” and she “looks bald”, and she has a pimple coming up, which all-round nice guy Kyle Sandilands doesn’t fail to point out when Lara’s a guest on his radio show.

Juxtaposed with this is Lara’s insistence that she’s just “one of the boys” when she goes waterskiing with some friends in Cronulla. She says she’s a tomboy at heart. I’m not even going to go into the gender constructs at play here…

Moving on to what “normal people” do; apparently it’s not walking around your house naked. So we’re still on the naked photos from last week, then. Lara’s mum seems like a total bitch and obviously favours older brother Josh as she rips Lara to shreds for being “immature” and stupid for being caught in those pictures. I’ve said it once; I’ll say it again: it’s not normal not to walk around in your own home—indeed, in your own bedroom—naked. I admire Lara’s composure when she spoke about the scandal on The Project, which was filmed for her show, but it’s getting to the point now where I wish she had’ve just told everyone who’s got a problem with the nude pics that being naked is natural and she’s got nothing to be ashamed of.

Related: Lara Bingle in Who: A Prized Tall Poppy Who Polarises.

Shaming Lara Bingle.

Image via Ten.

TV: Girls—Pretty Girl Problems.

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Ugh, Marnie is so selfish. Yeah, she just broke up with her boyfriend two weeks ago and he’s already met someone else whom he’s holidaying in Rome with, but this doesn’t mean you have to accost strangers and people you haven’t seen since college to moan about it because your bestie is too preoccupied with her own love life to give a shit.

I wrote this last week, but I think Marnie suffers from Pretty Girl Privilege, in that she feels she’s entitled to have things go a certain way for her, and that she doesn’t have to put effort into what she wants, because she’s beautiful.

Further to this, Marnie actually tells a stranger that she’s “ideal” and that “you would have trouble getting over me”. Don’t worry; she’s “not bragging”. Look, I get where she’s coming from and there’s nothing wrong with thinking—knowing—you’re a good person and that you deserve good things, but has she really done anything to prove this? I’ve only seen her looking good and whining. When you can actually contribute something to the world and are a tolerable person to be around, then you can start telling strangers that, like L’Oreal, you’re worth it.

By the same token, Marnie defends herself to Hannah’s ex-boyfriend, whom she bumps into at a rave, saying that Hannah’s selfish and she’s nothing like her. I see more differences than similarities between the two, but selfishness is definitely a shared trait. I’m actually really surprised the two are even friends; increasingly as the series progresses Hannah and Marnie seem to grow apart, perturbed by the flaws they each possess reflected back at them by the other.

Related: Sexual Harassment & Invasions of Privacy.

Girls Just Want to Have Realistic Experiences.

Image via Putlocker.

TV: Shaming Lara Bingle.

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Lara Bingle: she can’t catch a break, can she?

She was called a whore for her affair with Brendan Fevola, fat when she put on weight after her breakup with Michael Clarke, and an attention-seeking diva when it was revealed channel Ten would air her reality show, Being Lara Bingle, which premiered last night.

I actually like Lara Bingle and thought her show would be an opportunity for her to commentate on how she’s been treated by the media for being an attractive young woman who happens to trade on her looks as her job. TheVine wrote this in anticipation for what the show could be:

“After another vicious attack on her intelligence and relevance by the tabloids, Lara Bingle delivers a thirty minute long piece-to-camera about how she is the ultimate personification of the misogyny that is still inherent in Australian culture, particularly surrounding our sporting ‘heroes’. In this monologue, she will argue that she has been torn down for exactly the qualities that first made her famous—her youth, beauty and privilege. Drawing on the groundbreaking work by Anne Summers, Damned Whores and God’s Police, Bingle will suggest that our simultaneous adoration and condemnation of these qualities speak more to our view of women in this country as objects of either moral upright (or uptight)ness or sexual depravity, but never as fully rounded beings for themselves. She will tie this in to her own journey as a cultural artefact from covetable innocent on a virgin beach to disgraced, discarded mistress. Finally, she will conclude that as a beautiful young woman, she is a shiny scapegoat that is in many ways the opposite of those who are really disenfranchising and frustrating everyday, working Australian families. These puppet masters, who would throw her to the dogs to distract from their own shortcomings are typically ugly, old men.”

Like the one who was allegedly behind the naked pictures of her in her new apartment that were sold to the media a few weeks (months?) ago. Paparazzo Darryn Lyons, formerly Bingle’s friend, was said to be shopping images of Lara around, lending doubt to the credibility of Bingle’s violation.

This isn’t the first time nude pictures of the model have emerged. Remember the one in the shower taken by her ex Fevola, or the publication of unused photos from a German GQ shoot when she was an unknown model in Zoo Weekly once she’d hit the big time? Yes, Lara’s posed nude before in high fashion editorials, but that’s different; she consented to those. It’s plain to see that she did not consent to the tacky shower shot of her captured on Fev’s phone. No matter, the general public will still shame her for being a young, beautiful woman who loves the skin she’s in.

And even when she puts on a bit of weight, which she did last year and is sporting a more voluptuous figure these days, Bingle’s not free from public torment. In a Who cover story late last year, Bingle had this to say about her others’ battles with her body:

“Tread carefully, because it doesn’t just affect me, it affects all women who read it… They have to ask themselves, would they do that to their wives, girlfriends or sisters? It’s just a negative message that doesn’t help anyone… If I’m fat, how does that make a girl who is a size 12–14 feel, and that’s the size of an average Australian woman? It’s ridiculous.”

Also cashing in on the Bingle-hoopla is this week’s Famous, which has published months-old shots of Bingle on the beach showing a bit of cellulite and asking, is she “Fat or Fab?”

Lara attempted to address all this on last night’s episode, which conveniently dealt with the fallout of the Lyons balcony pics. Her bestie/roomie/manager-ie, Hermoine, tells Lara she needs to be more careful and show a “sense of responsibility” about her own body:

“You don’t just walk around naked.”

Um, in your own home you do. Hermoine confesses she doesn’t even walk around nude in her own bedroom, which I think reveals some deep-seated issues about sex and nudity. One thing Bingle’s got going for her is that she is unashamed of her body; my thinking is that if you’re in your own home and feel the desire to get nekkid, then why the fuck not?! If the paparazzi happen to use a zoom lens and trespass on private property to capture this, then that’s on them. But misogynists will always find a way to blame women for the unwanted attention their bodies generate: uncovered meat, amiright?

At the end of the day, “This is a world that everyone makes fun of, but… it’s my life.”

Related: Who the Bloody Hell is Body-Bullying Lara Bingle?

Elsewhere: [TheVine] 5 Things We Hope Happen on Being Lara Bingle Tonight.

Image via Famous.

TV: Girls—Sexual Harassment & Invasions of Privacy.

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Call me crazy, but if my housemate’s significant other invaded my privacy by reading my diary (that is if I kept a diary, but I have experienced the encroaching of a housemate’s significant other on my relationship with him), I would throw down.

Hannah does no such thing on Girls, though, when Marnie’s boyfriend’s friend reads Hannah’s journal and uses it in their band’s song. She doesn’t even try to defend herself to Marnie, who is furious that Hannah would write such intimate things about her relationship. Um, am I missing something here? THOSE WERE HANNAH’S PERSONAL FEELINGS AND THOUGHTS THAT SHE DOCUMENTED IN HER OWN PRIVATE NOTEBOOK THAT WERE NOT MEANT TO BE READ BY OTHERS! (Okay, so maybe Hannah undercuts this argument when she says her notebook is not a “diary” but a “journal” that she someday hopes to publish, but work with me here, people!)

So what if she did publish them, anyway? Hannah’s entitled to her own opinions and she’s entitled to air them in any way she sees fit. (I’ve been in trouble with a friend whom I wrote about on this here blog. I didn’t name them, but they believed everyone would know it was about them because the characteristics I described were very specific, apparently. I was sorry that I upset them but I’m not sorry about what I wrote because it was how I felt.) I think Charlie, Marnie’s boyfriend, was just looking for an excuse to start a fight with Marnie as he was aware their relationship was stagnant. What Hannah wrote was exactly what Marnie expressed to her in the first episode, so I don’t think she has a right to be upset about it.

But  Marnie’s not exactly the most worldly woman. I feel like she’s managed to get by in life on her looks, and she thinks that because she “smells like a Bed, Bath & Beyond” that she doesn’t have to work at her relationship and that that should be enough. This is evident in her break-up sermon with Charlie:

“You watch porn? Why don’t you just, like, picture us?”

When she begs Charlie not to break-up with her, she offers to give him blowjobs if he stays with her. Call me crazy, but I would hazard a guess that healthy, equal sexual relationships would involve giving each other blowjobs on a regular basis. But that’s just me…

Speaking of sex, last week we saw Hannah being touched inappropriately by her boss. When she laments this to Jessa, she asks if Hannah’s flattered by it:

 “I’m not flattered by sexual harassment.”

“Why not? I love that stuff! ‘Sir, I have half a mind to call the authorities. How dare you!’”

Hmm, not exactly as progressive as Girls claims to be…

Related: Girls Just Want to Have Realistic Experiences.

The Harassed & the Harassed-Nots.

Image via Putlocker.

TV: New Girl—Wearing Baggy Clothes Prevents Unwanted Sexual Attention.

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When Jess discovers all her male roommates have had sex dreams about her or used her likeness as a “self-completion” (read: masturbation) tool, she takes to wearing a ski jacket and balaclava around the apartment until she can feel comfortable again.

Firstly, just because someone has sexual fantasies or, especially, sex dreams about a friend, co-worker, roommate or acquaintance, doesn’t mean they want those fantasies to come true IRL.

And secondly, although this is not New Girl’s first offence, what someone wears doesn’t necessarily prevent them from being sexually harassed or assaulted. Jess’ ski jacket is one step away from having her wear a burqa on the show. Not cool.

Related: Dermot Mulroney is New Girl‘s Knight in Shining Armour.

Sexual Harassment is Just a Myth. You Just Need to Give People a Chance to Show You How Good They Are.

Manic Pixie Dream Girly Girls & Not-So-Girly Girls.

New Girl Should Attend a SlutWalk Sometime…

Body Acceptance on New Girl.

Who’s That Girl? It’s the New Girl.

TV: Gossip Girl Season 5 Final—What Goes Around Comes Around…

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When Gossip Girl debuted five years ago, Dan was a Lonely Boy outsider, Serena and Blair were at war and Jenny Humphrey was around.

The latter might not be true but, for everyone else, the more things change the more they stay the same on the Upper East Side.

*

I enjoyed comparing the very first episode of Gossip Girl to its most recent, the season five finale. While it was hard to get used to seeing the fresh faced and über-thin Blair and Serena at first, by the end of the exercise I’m not sure which incarnation of the show I like better! The first season had so much promise, but it also had Chuck as a date rapist. The current season has the abominations that are Lola and Ivy, but is veering back towards that so-bad-it’s-good soap opera quality of yore.

Anyway, back to the task at hand: fairly early on the final, Serena and Blair call it quits on their roommate arrangement and friendship, with Blair finding Serena’s leakage of her diary to Gossip Girl unforgivable. I dare say Blair’s right: Serena has always been a selfish bitch, and Blair was as accurately harsh on her for spilling her secrets as she was for sleeping with her boyfriend six years ago.

Speaking of the wedding at which Serena slept with Nate, six years on and the marriage didn’t seem to last, with the couple hosting a divorce party at the same venue. Cue Serena’s inappropriate sex life and substitute step-brother and Blair’s current squeeze Dan for Nate and you’ve got Serena screwing over (pun intended) her bestie again.

After Dan realises Blair’s rebuffed him for yet another shot at love with Chuck, and Serena’s the shallow vixen she’s so often proved herself to be, he seeks revenge on the Upper East Side, enlisting Georgina to “help me write the book I should have written from the beginning,” you know, because his status as a bestselling author is nothing without Georgina’s “photographic memory and passion for social upheaval”.

Now that Dan’s been burned by both Blair and Serena, Chuck opts out of Blair’s tour de indecision, telling her he’s done with her because all she does is ruin his business prospects and “bet against him”. In a casino, in case you didn’t grasp the metaphor of gambling on love before, Blair accosts Chuck and puts her chips “all in” in her quest to win back his love.

Meanwhile, it seems Bart Bass’ return has left Rufus and Lily’s marriage up in the air, as she’s technically married to both of them! As in the first episode, Lily’s snooty and antagonistic treatment of Rufus leads her to choose to stay with Bart.

This flashback to perhaps better times (Gossip Girl has been renewed for a final season later this year; rumour is that the season will only have ten episodes) is not accidental: the writers make reference to it often in the characters’ dialogue. For example, Blair knifes Serena with the revelation that, “The best time I ever had was when you were gone six years ago!” Just watching the first episode again you can tell that Leighton Meester was playing wounded soul well, as Blair looks miserable in it. Talk about growth as a character. Blair goes on to tell Serena that she didn’t “steal” Dan, and that she “would know that if you’d grown up at all since high school”.

When Chuck has his pride and joy, the Hotel Empire, ripped from his hands by his zombie father, he’s told it’s because he’s “never grown up”. That may be true, but it could also be said of the writers of Gossip Girl. Do-over?

Images via Serena Van Der Woodsen Sucks, Sockshare, Gossip Girl Screencaps.

TV: Grey’s Anatomy—You’re Abnormal if You Don’t Want Children.

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According to Owen Hunt, anyway.

He’s still having issues with Cristina’s abortion four months after the fact. Cristina laments that he was supportive and held her hand through the procedure and the next thing she knows “you’re screaming, ‘You killed our baby,’ in front of all our friends.”

I’ve written before that Owen is rightfully upset that Cristina essentially made the decision to terminate her pregnancy solo, without his input, but it seems he’s now moved on to being frustrated with Cristina’s utter lack of desire to have children.

He says it’s not normal to not want children and that seeing as she and Meredith do everything together, Cristina should want a kid, too. Cristina yells, “there is no deeper reason” for her not wanting a baby; she just doesn’t. “It’s alright to never want kids,” she offers.

This episode touches on the very real stigma against women who don’t want kids. As I grow older and my priorities evolve, I’ve come to better understand this disinterest in raising children. That’s not to say I don’t want kids (I know I definitely do not want biological children, and in that respect I can relate to Cristina), but the fact that I want to adopt means there’s a very real possibility that I will not have children at all. But not everyone is as empathetic to Cristina’s plight, as Owen demonstrates. Dealing with such delicate circumstances within the confines of a relationship must make it that much harder.

Related: Grey’s Anatomy—“You Killed Our Baby”.

Grey’s Anatomy Final Asks “When Does Life Begin”?

Cristina Yang as Feminist.

Image via Watch Shows Now.

TV: The Simpson’s—Lady Gaga is “Pretty Much the Same” as Jesus.

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From last night’s episode of The Simpson’s, in which Lady Gaga starred:

Ned Flanders: “It’s one of those music industry superstars who are turning our innocent children into ladies of the night.”

Lady Gaga: “But all I’m saying is that everyone is beautiful.”

Ned Flanders: “Yes, but Jesus said… pretty much the same thing.”

Image via Putlocker.