After last week's Hannah-centric episode "Triggering", this latest episode, "Female Author" is surprisingly and thankfully about the rest of the gang, with Hannah's misadventures taking a backseat until the last quarter. While the episode eventually begins losing steam once she returns as the focal point, this latest episode returns to the fun and wit of the series.
With Hannah (Lena Dunham) still trying to figure herself out for the 20 billionth time, Jessa (Jemima Kirke) is finding herself budding him with her boyfriend Adam (Adam Driver). Marnie (Allison Williams), meanwhile, is trying her darnedest to make her bandmate Desi (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) her official boyfriend, and not just be second-fiddle to Desi's actual girlfriend Clementine (Natalie Morales). Oh yeah, and Shoshana (Zosia Mamet) is trying to get a job. All in all, it's your typical episode of Girls, but remembering how wearisomely Hannah-driven the last episode was, this is a welcomed return to form.
For a show called Girls, it's weird how often the male characters outshine the female ones this season. In the season premiere, Adam was the highlight, while Elijah (Andrew Rannells) stole the show last week. While a very welcomed return to focus on Ray (Alex Karpovsky) in "Female Author" gets some of the episode's highlights, and Elijah's newfound love for photography in this episode feature some great lines, Jessa is the one who takes the episode and runs with it.
Considering she hasn't gotten a good moment to shine since the beginning of season three, this is highly refreshing, and brings the show's most enjoyable crass humor in some time. Additionally, her scenes with Adam have a breezy, Woody Allen-esque feel to them, as we watch these likable 20-somethings stroll through the streets of New York.
These moments are what make the ones with Hannah at the forefront so disappointing. As enforced by her overwritten and eventually tiresome rant to her student colleagues, Hannah's attempts at feminist uprising are much too on-the-nose and take away from the charm of the series. Of course, these attempts are noble, but they were able to be earned previously without big speeches and in-your-face verbal attacks.
The biggest problem with the latest seasons of Girls is that it has been maturing in the wrong ways. Rather than trying to progress how these characters learn from their mistakes and accept their failures, they all, for the most part, remain stubborn with sticking to their personalities and regressing to their bad traits. I mean, they literally are having Hannah regress back to college.
It's hard to be too judgmental, for it is mostly unclear so far where Dunham plans to take this season, and that plays into the show's remaining strengths. Considering she has a fifth season greenlighted before a single episode of this fourth season aired, at least she has some ideas as to what should happen to these girls from New York City.
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