The Girl may become an Adult … so exciting (not)
DAVID BASCKIN
SO. RAY (a man) and Marnie (a woman) are mostly naked and having sex in a kitchen. If this was Saturday Night Live it would qualify as a “cold open” but what the hell, this isn’t SNL but rather the promised (oh please don’t lie HBO) last series of Girls (M-net Edge).
The method of nonreproductive human sexual behaviour adopted for the scene is stand up. Ray stands up, Marnie bends over and grabs on the burglar guards for support. Whoops! Forgot to include the mandatory warning for sensitive readers.
Meanwhile back in the kitchen, it’s half time in the love making and the two star-crossed lovers are speaking poetry to each other.
They both wish they were in a lion’s mouth, where it is soft and warm and no doubt quite dangerous. Then they try some psychosocial engineering, which almost comes off, so to speak.
Phew. Back on Earth, out of the lion’s mouth, Ray, a philosophical person and one of the three complex and interesting members of the cast, tells Marnie he wishes their relationship involved more conversation.
She, mopping herself with paper towels, kinda agrees but reports that now is not the time for amiable chatter as she has other things to do, somewhere else. Ray, silenced, grumpy and depressed puts on his clothes.
This would be a good time to lie down on the floor and do your Kegel exercises while attempting to release the pressure in your Eustachian tubes.
Meanwhile Girls cuts to Hannah on the toilet engaged in conversation with her flatmate in the shower. It seems Hannah is not enjoying her current urinary tract infection. She phones her mom. Mom says take it to the doctor.
Meanwhile – and this a completely different meanwhile from the first one – Ray is back at work in a coffee shop.
A client is chatting to him about gays on a train. A queue builds up. Ray hurries the chatterer along. We see him through the coffee shop window having a stroke or maybe a heart attack and dying on the pavement. Ray is deeply shocked and engages in philosophical discussion (“he had the wisdom of a thousand fortune cookies”) with the owner of the coffee shop. Insults are exchanged.
Later, the coffee shop owner commits suicide and Ray is the first to locate the body. That’s two dead people in one show, both linked to Ray’s guilt and selfloathing.
We cut to Adam and Jessa experiencing the life-enhancing outcome of a creative crisis. It seems that Adam has walked off the set and out of a movie directed by a shrill East European woman director.
Meanwhile #3 pops up. Hannah takes her urinary crisis to the local hospital.
A friendly doctor does a couple of tests and makes some useful hygiene suggestions for future post-coital behaviour.
But wait! There’s more! He tells her she’s pregnant. Does this mean the main Girl is becoming an Adult? Not at all.
Despite the offer of a safe and legal abortion, Hannah decides to keep the baby. What next, one wonders? Forgetting her support for Hillary and signing on as a Trump fan? Watch next week if you can stand it. We Were Soldiers, Saturday, SABC 2 at 9.04pm The story of the first major battle of the US phase of the Vietnam War. Starring Mel Gibson (2002).