First off, sorry I missed last week, I was busy doing some collegiate bullcrap (for the last time, btw) but don’t be skurred, here’s a double dose of Girls re-up to make up for it. I’m still loving the show, but I better get my jollies in quick before we hit Season 2. This week brought the news that Donald Glover has been added to the cast, and I honestly don’t think I can ever appreciate something with Gambino in it. Ugh. Let’s start, naturally, with Hard Being Easy, an episode all about trying to figure out what other people want from relationships, big or small. The episode is essentially small satellite vignettes that frequently spin back to an extended centerpiece breakup between Marnie and Charlie, who is still dealing with the fallout from Hannah’s journal last week.

I wasn’t so much a fan of the opening scene which, while funny, pushed credulity a bit in Hannah’s attempts to glean literary advice from her best friend’s heartbroken boyfriend. I must say though that Allison Williams and Christopher Abbott both did their best acting work in this episode. The show has always done close-ups and quiet reaction shots very well, and each gets a great moment. In flashback a (not bald) Charlie meets a Marnie who’s too fucked up on jello-shot topped brownies (what) to step away from a pole, and plays a more realistic version of the annoyingly doting guy we saw in the first few episodes.

That iteration of the character was funny but cartoonish. Asking Marnie to come to his band’s show and slowly increasing the intensity of his hugs, however, was perfect. And it’s very interesting to see the way his relationship with Marnie has changed him in the present, with his attempts at hard edged commitment that you just know are a thin, sad candy shell. Which Marnie breaks in what is probably this show’s saddest sex scene thus far (an achievement, to be sure). Marnie thinks she can just change herself to cater to what she thinks Charlie wants (visits to her apartment, food, blowjobs) then realizes what he really wants is something nowhere near as easy as any of those palliatives.

The way her face shifts into this weird disgust of realization during sex was superb. Hannah meanwhile, in the comedic version of this plot, thinks that her creepy boss really wants her in a legitimate way. This leads to a pretty funny though not hysterical scene where she tries to seduce him only to be let down kindly. His reaction (to laugh it off) I thought was weird at first, but upon reflection I think it’s indicative of the way many adults do and should act towards people in their early 20s: as though they are insane people who can’t be held accountable for their actions. While Jessa’s storyline with her boss continues to worry me (I like James Legros and especially Katherine Hahn, who was excellent with like two lines here, it just feels rote to me) I did like the shifting tone of her meetup with an ex-boyfriend (very different than Hannah’s).

All of this leads up to a really kind of wonderful scene at the end between Hannah and Adam, which despite involving Adam masturbating the whole time, is really quite sweet and very smart. I’m really enjoying the way the show is handling the slow evolution of their relationship, how they soften towards each other as they invariably learn more about the other, what they each want and the little ways they are willing to provide them.

Building a relationship, essentially. Which brings me to the next episode “The Return”, an exploration of perspective on what you have. Though I was surprised it happened this early into the series, this really was a good “going home” episode, and I liked that it wasn’t bogged down by interludes in NYC with any of the other characters. At the end of the day Hannah is the center of this show, and it was cool to see her interact with new characters.

While some of her former classmates were perhaps too-crude caricatures (and the song for the Natalee Holloway-style missing girl was conspicuously well produced), the Hanson Brother looking pharmacist was finely drawn, a layered together mix of small-town attractiveness, what Hannah would probably perceive as the guy her parents wanted her to be with, while also at the same time being totally wrong for Hannah for reasons that come both from her issues and also (crucially) his own. Similarly, while the episode at first seems to be going to great lengths to show all the things that life as a “struggling artist” denies Hannah (cheap rent, food in the fridge, no drama, a guy who doesn’t want a pinky two knuckles deep in his butt, etc) it also ends up showing what it affords her.

I guess I fel that most strongly in the scene where she calls out her ex-friend’s legitimately stupid plan to move out to LA. Hannah’s really is an accurate view on that situation, and it comes from a perspective that being shit on and simultaneously pampered in a city could give you. She also has Adam, who is the nicest he’s been to her yet in their sweet phone call which closes out the episode. Lena Dunham and Adam Driver have this very strange chemistry that ricochets wildly between a lot and none at all in all the places you wouldn’t expect, and as I mentioned their relationship becomes more and more interesting to me. Also, you get to see Mrs. Weir’s boobs and Peter Scolari’s dick. HBO everybody!

Maybe it’s because many of the internet’s favorite shows (Community, Parks & Rec, Fringe, etc.) were up for cancellation, but whatever the reason the pilot pickup process has seemed much more transparent this year than ever before, from the obvious picks (The Mindy Project, The Following), suprising snubs (The Corrections, Rebounding, Super Fun Night), and interesting gambles (The Neighbors, Hannibal, Last Resort).

As always, there’s a few shows that look alright and maybe even good, and then there’s a lot of stuff that looks like shit. Just big, steamy piles o’ turds. Welcome back to network TV folks! I’ve sifted through all this matter in order to bring you the trailers for shows I will be watching in the fall and, quality depending, maybe be re-upping on The Bloglin. And won’t that be so much fun. Let’s take a gander. I was going to break it down by network, but there weren’t even enough good pickups to justify that. Pessimism becomes me.

DRAMAS:

The Following (FOX) // Created by Kevin Williamson

Okay first two little disclaimers. I know a lot of this will seem skewed to my more genre taste, but honestly networks just went with a lot of weird genre pickups this season. After the success of American Horror Story (as well as network’s still on the hunt for the next 24, not to mention the next LOST) the execs finally realized maybe people don’t want as many hospital dramas and multi-camera sitcoms. Second, these trailers that get put together for the shows all suck, always. Because they can only pull from one episode, but they have to make it seem like it’s for the whole series, and they also try to pack this whole arc in and… it’s terrible. So you gotta try to look past the nature of the trailer and see the potential.

I think there’s potential in Kevin Williamson’s so stupid it just might work horror series about an incarcerated serial killer (James Purefoy) who leads a cult of murderous fans and copycats. There is a surprisingly large amount of people (especially women) who communicate (and even marry) serial killers, so I guess this vaguely makes sense, but hey, it’s Kevin Bacon fighting a cult. Of serial killers. On TV. It’s a cult of serial killers. Who cut out people’s eyes. Network television.

Last Resort (ABC) // Created by Shawn Ryan

Here’s another show with a concept so specific and ridiculous, I imagine it has to be really good, because based on production value this looks expensive as shit, so ABC must have really high expectations. Coming from Shield creator Shawn Ryan, it certainly has pedigree. A nuclear submarine captained by Andre Braugher and crewed by Scott Speedman refuses to blow up Pakistan so the US Government tries to sink them and so they seize an idyllic island, seceding from the country and becoming the world’s smallest nuclear nation. Mmmmkay.

Andre Braugher can never be a bad thing, especially when he’s looking all surly and firing nukes at the eastern seaboard (seriously, what the fuck is going on in this show?) but I can’t help but have no idea what this show will be like. Even if it does have a deep mythology, there has to be some level of serialization, and I’m very curious to see how the “plots of the week” take shape. Submarine misadventures? Hawaii Five-0 style tropical policing? Everyone getting radiation poisoning? Andre Braugher cashing his paychecks?

Revolution (NBC) // Created by J.J. Abrams & Eric Kripke

Hey look, it’s Jericho, except this time it’s produced by JJ and the guy who created Supernatural. It’s another high concept, big budget piece that NBC really must have faith in because they are (as always) floundering and need a big old hit. This looks like it has the set design to attract an audience, but does it have a real star to hold them?

Billy Burke looks pretty cool fucking people up with a sword, and Giancarlo Esposito is an immense talent, but the main girl isn’t really grabbing me yet. Still, the two creators are smart enough that I’m sure we’ll see some really interesting interpretations and ramifications of a world without electricity, some really deep (probably frustrating) mythology, a heady mix of old west and futurism (but not, unfortunately, in a Brisco County Jr. way) and I can’t stress this enough: badass sword fight.

COMEDIES:

Ben And Kate (FOX) // Created by Dana Fox

Slim, slim pickings here folks, but let’s start with the best. The trailer for single-camera sibling oriented comedy Ben & Kate (formerly Ben Fox is My Manny, and a vehicle for SNL’s Abby Elliot who was booted as production began) has a script that was repeatedly called the strongest of any comedy, and the addition of Oscar winner (still funny) Nat Faxon to the mix, as well as the always funny Lucy Punch makes me optimistic.

This actually plays much more like a movie trailer than one for a series, but considering the odd ways the medium of television has been evolving as of late, I’d say that’s probably a good thing. Plus, you can see how this gets serialized really easily. Things I’m not enjoying? The little girl from We Bought A Zoo. Sorry. That’s an annoying child.

The Mindy Project (FOX) // Created by Mindy Kaling

This one might collapse under the weight of its own expectations and messy, protracted path to reality, but if people can just chill out and try to appreciate this show for the quirky, light, star-centric half hour comedy it most assuredly is then I think it will be a pretty fun ride. Kaling can come off as slightly grating at times, but she actually looks very likable in this trailer. I’m back on her team.

It may not be exactly X-Rated either, but there is some talk of the Fass-penis (topical) as well as getting shitfaced and arrested after falling in a pool, so this isn’t just going to be some bland bullshit. I hope. I also really like the bit about the Springsteen concert- err… show.

The Neighbors (ABC) // Created by Dan Fogelman

Okay so this one doesn’t look good at all. I just had to include it because… just watch that trailer up there. How in the holy hell did this get ordered? How fast will this get cancelled. So fast. I really can’t wrap my head around how not good this looks. How are you supposed to look at those effects every week and also be able to engage in the world of the show?

Before seeing this I actually didn’t mind the idea for this series, but the execution looks absolutely piss poor. I thought the “aliens” thing was supposed to be more of a mystery, but no it’s way out in the open, looking like it was done in MS-Paint and everything. This looks worse than What Planet Are Your From. Please America: don’t watch the neighbors. Don’t do this to sci-fi.

The Legend of Korra is getting slept on. TLoK, as we may refer to it here, is the sequel series to Avatar: The Last Airbender that premiered on April 14. Why it is not called Avatar: The Legend of Korra is beyond me. The new series takes place seventy years after the original’s finale. Aang has died, leading to the existence of a new Avatar (Korra); Katarra unfortunately has not died, leading to an atrocious series introduction featuring her character as an old woman (just as annoying as when she was a young woman); and technology has now progressed significantly to a point in time comparable to 1920s America.

This time around, the Avatar has already mastered three of the four elements and all that is left to learn is air (so, the opposite of the original series). Korra travels to the recently-founded metropolitan mecca, Republic City, to train with Aang’s old-man-of-a-son, Tenzin. There, she encounters the popular sport of pro-bending, and discovers a bubbling anti-bender resistance led by a shadowy non-bender named Amon.

Five episodes in, nothing past that basic series description has unfolded. The show plays as a more traditional anime, focussing on the teenage Korra and her two teenage pro-bending comrades Mako and Bolin, and the love triangle that inevitably unfolds between them. Along with that comes a heavy focus on pro-bending, which is a cool concept for the updated series mythology but not much more. There’s nothing explicitly bad about the show. It’s definitely entertaining, but with stakes that, so far, are much lower than those of the original series, it’s sort of only operating as an epilogue.

And though the creators clearly are attempting to develop a unique identity for TLoK, it doesn’t help that the characters are all rehashes and mash-ups of character from The Last Airbender. The president of Nickelodeon described Korra’s character as “hotheaded, independent, and ready to take on the world,” which is completely true and ridiculously annoying. Her character is 100% just a combination of Katara, Zuko, and Toph. It’s as if the creators decided the best way to differentiate this show from the original is to make the lead the exact opposite of Aang. Supporting character Bolin is very much a replication of Sokka, and Mako is more or less Zuko.

The mysterious antagonist Amon is the most interesting part of this show. For one, mysterious masked villains are always a guaranteed success. Look at the Teen Titans animated series, for example. Unlike Slade from TT, who was never unmasked as his actual identity would have had no emotional weight within the context of the animated series, Amon has the potential to have canonical resonance as someone from, or descended from the original series. Besides his identity being withheld, he also possesses the ability to take away a bender’s bending, a power previously only available to the Avatar him or herself. This raises the question that, if Korra has her bending taken away (a plot point that has been foreshadowed at every possible juncture) what will happen to the future Avatar lineage?

Stakes risen. The show is fine. Korra is obnoxious and should have her powers taken away and be embarrassed that she failed all of the benders in the world, but once some more plot details are revealed and the season gets underway, TLoK should be as captivating as Airbender was. The anti-bender angle of the show was a good call on the creator’s part, and the series will likely end similar to Digimon, with everyone gaining bending abilities and being happy and loving each other. Something heart warming like that. Catch The Legend of Korra on Nickelodeon on Saturdays at 11, or online whenever, and stay tuned for Re-ups here, on Sundays.

What gives a collection of events meaning? Is the inherent human urge to uncover a superstructure itself a search for a concrete answer that exists, somewhere, out in the earth? Or is it instead a sort of water-treading until we manufacture an answer on our own that satisfies the curiosity without ascribing to any particular objective reality? Is this episode of Mad Men going to answer these questions?  Absolutely not, but it does a pretty darn stunning job of replicating the experience of grappling with them.

Past seasons of the show have, by this point in their arcs, more or less revealed the master narrative. Season 1 is about the revelation of Dick Whitman, and Don starting to truly embrace the character of “Don Draper.” Season 2 is about escaping from responsibility, whether it be through giving away your child (Peggy), infidelity (Don, Betty), a false marriage (Roger), and finally a trip to a California that seems more like a fantasy land. Season 3, more tangibly, was about the slow then very fast dissolution of Sterling Cooper. Season 4 then was about moving on, the grueling process of going forward and chaging. Season 5, while probably the most opaque of the bunch, seems to revolve around the phrase “what is happening?”

I’m truly impressed with the string of episodes that started with “Mystery Date” and continues with “Lady Lazarus”, perhaps the finest streak the show has exhibited. This is intelligent, evocative, but most importantly empathetic television that is basically firing on all cylinders. The sense of unease and paranoia that this season is slowly cultivating is impressive, yes, but also boldly different than what it has attempted in the past. As each successive episode passes, I can’t help but fear the bad thing that’s about to happen. Because as our characters recognize their surroundings, their own lives, and other humans less and less, so do their actions become less predictable.

The heart of this episode revolves around everyone unable to understand the intentions of two women: Megan Draper and Pete Campbell’s coworkers wife Beth, played by Alexis Bledel (not great, unfortunately). Let’s start with Pete’s tale. What begins for him like some sort of erotic fantasy (the beautiful, vulnerable housewife is locked out of her car and just needs a ride home oh-so-badly) and devolves into the story of a man breaking under the wiles of a femme fatale who might not even know what she’s doing. What do her strange comments about photos from space mean? How to interpret the heart drawn in window fog?

Pete, it seems, is less interested in the girl than by how firmly she’s yanking his puppet strings. By the end, I wasn’t even sure if she was locked out of the car in the first place. While I feel the book is closed, albeit inconclusively, on this particular plotline, I fear the path that young Pete is progressing down this season. While I don’t think, as some have inanely suggested, that he will jump out of the SCDP window, becoming the falling man in the credits (because that would be the dumbest thing ever), I don’t think that things are exactly looking up for him.

Don, and to a lesser extent Peggy, are confounded by Megan’s abrupt decision to leave SCDP despite becoming an unlikely rising star. Her exact motivations for returning to acting remain murky (as evidenced by her saying, well, “I can’t explain it but failing at acting is better than succeeding [at the office]” a writing kluge that is never appreciated) but the end result of it is fascinating, as Don and Peggy get the foundation of their cages rattled substantially.

I particularly liked Rizzo explaining to Peggy why someone would leave (and I’m paraphrasing): “you work your ass off for months, worrying all day, and for what: Heinz. Baked. Beans.” But for Don and Peggy there has to be a reason. These are people driven by deduction, by causality (you sell the product right, people will buy it), by the ability to figure things out, see the bigger picture, and meticulously control the world around them. They’ve lost those footholds, and I wonder how long they can keep up without cracking.

So we get to the defining image of the episode, as Don summons an elevator (directly, I might add, after Megan goes through with her decision to leave. Was he perhaps picturing her chickening out at the last minute?) only to find an abyss, a deathly hole going as far as he could see. Is there a reason no elevator came? Why a routine trip downstairs became a near death experience? Why even the simplest things now seem wild and unpredictable? The future is murky for our protagonists. I’m rather excited to see how it plays out.

HBO’s Girls continues a string of episodes that I hope will silence all the “haters” (what an unfortunate and nebulous phrase, by the way) with another truly excellent outing – though checking around the internet today I saw some lukewarm reactions, most centered around racial politics, an issue that considering we are still only 4 episodes into a series with almost no secondary characters continues to boggle my mind.

Maybe I’m just a “hipster racist” (and aren’t we all going to look back at that term and laugh…) but I’m pretty sure the non-white characters in last night’s episode: A. rightfully called Jessa out on her boho-chic disguised holier-than-thou attitude B. were the only ones smart and responsible enough to keep track of Jessa’s charges after she had lost them and C. were genuinely kind to Hannah at her new job, and despite giving her some terrible eyebrows (remember folks: comedy), also gave her the best advice about Adam that anyone has on the show thus far.

Meanwhile the privileged white characters (the ones the show supposedly puts on a pedestal) lost children, snooped through people’s diaries, and openly cyber-cheated on each other. But that’s just me. Anyway, much like last week’s outing I was extremely impressed by the way the show intertwines its more overtly comedic joke based aspects with its situational/cringe humor and also the places were it verges on straight drama.

The raccoon dick pic (which, by the way, I’m sort of surprised we didn’t see) was a great running gag, but it also ended up paying off during Hannah’s conversation with Adam near the end of the episode, probably her finest acting work thus far (perhaps because it’s the first episode she hasn’t also been behind the camera), where she very endearingly lays out the essentially impossible thing she wants Adam to be. It was another in a long string of biting honesties on this still young show, and the moment where she realizes she’s gonna go into his apartment anyway was a little devastation played well by both actors.

Shoshanna meanwhile gets her meatiest storyline yet (though it’s still nowhere near Hannah’s or even Marnie’s) as she tries to lose her virginity from a humorously weird but at the same time very normal friend from camp. At first I thought it was a mite cartoonish but Mamet’s performance is starting to grow on me. As far as Jessa’s ongoing storyline with her boss, I’m ready to like it as long as it doesn’t end with her having sex with her boss. It’s just such a cliche, and it’s been so blatantly telegraphed from the start of the story that I really hope Dunham subverts that tired trope. That’s why I liked the scene where Jessa talks about the ways she used to run away so much, as it was about as far away from subtly erotic banter, instead more about Jessa connecting with her own mother by seeing the other side of the coin with her employer.

Finally there’s what’s ostensibly the main storyline of this episode, which is Charlie’s discovery that not only is Marnie quickly falling out of love with him, but Hannah is exhaustively recording it, perhaps even for an essay. I’m happy to see that plotline coming to a head, as more “he loves me so much but I’m over it” talk would have gotten old. Fast. Looking forward to the fallout from the Questionable Goods performance (and perhaps more of the “Keds” track?) next week.

As Girls progresses and settles into just being a show that airs every week, as opposed to some sort of weekly event/lightning-rod/anger-factory, I’m very much enjoying how the show is quietly making the episodes more obviously humorous, perhaps slightly more “normal”, whilst still retaining the smart novel edge that dominated the initial outings. Indeed the whole seems to be slowing down slightly, allowing scenes to play out with some of that back and forth energy that makes for many of the best jokes in producer Judd Apatow’s ouvre.

It’s also giving more time to Dunham as director, unfettered by briskly moving plot, to really push herself and her other actors. This episode more than the others is full of lingering close up shots on the leads faces, forcing them to act subtly, emoting with their eyes and the tiny details of expression, just as you do in, y’know, real life. It’s a revelation that seems as stupidly obvious as it is exciting. While Charlie shaving his head is only a vaguely funny (if at all) concept, the extended close-up of Allison Williams’ face as she processes it gives the scene a double dose of pathos and laughs.

Ditto for the scene between Hannah and her ex-boyfriend that is hilarious on the page and made even better by Hannah’s weirdly quivering lip and flittering eyes. It was probably the show’s most successful comedy sequence thus far. Speaking of that ex, the whole reason he’s in the picture is because Hannah finds out that, from one person or another, she’s contracted HPV. It’s really the perfect STD for the situation: obscure enough to not cause outright, visceral, world-ending terror, but significant enough to still certainly register.

Most importantly, it’s not a disease that poses immediate danger to men beyond passing it on to other girls, something that would be upsetting to almost everyone but is lodged right in Adam’s blind spot. So much so that his only anger comes from her accusing him of carrying it, an idea he rebukes and then tries to work through with a strangely hilarious session of bicycle kicks. So Hannah, after a much needed venting session with Marnie, is off to reunite with her Ex to tell him he’s probably the carrier.

Marnie, meanwhile, is off at her job in a gallery (had that been established before?) working an event with some pretty broad “gallery types” that did nothing except highlight that cheap laughs do not work on this show. It’s all a vehicle to introduce a douchy artist played by The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone, a casting decision that goes from confounding to impressive around halfway through the episode’s signature line “The first time I fuck you, I might scare you a little. Because I’m a man and I know how to do things.”

It’s such a bizarre and specific line that, as much as it pains me to think about it, I feel it must have come from reality. Because guys really do say some pretty insanely ridiculous things to girls, especially ones they want to establish dominance over. Probably just because of her dissatisfaction with Charlie, it seems to work on Marnie who has to go rub one out in the bathroom. Still not sure how I feel about that scene, but at the very least it was a bold decision.

Jessa has the most relaxed plotline of the week, starting her new babysitting job in a wildly inappropriate outfit. I hope the kids’ mom makes more than her brief appearance in this episode, because Kathryn Hahn is such a funny actress. The scenes with Jessa and the kids are predictable but nicely low-key. Jemima Kirke exudes a very real seeming laissez-faire attitude that’s not so stereotypical as “free-spiritedness” and it carries otherwise bland scenes like the interplay between her and bored dad James Le Gros.

But enough of all that, back to the scene between Hannah and her ex Elijah, who is now quite obviously gay, a revelation that sends Hannah into a tailspin that goes from self-pitying to vindictive quickly and hilariously. By the end of their conversation she’s calling him out for putting on a fake fey accent, he’s saying he could only get it up with her because she was “handsome”, and, while Hannah desperately wants the last word, Elijah flies out with “it was nice to see you. Your dad is gay.”

I was pretty much chuckling-to-outright-laughing throughout. I’m glad the show has that level of comedy in it to balance out the more dramatic elements. Unfortunately still not much going on on the Shoshanna front. Still a virgin, still the most cartoonish of the four. At first I thought having her not be a close friend of any of them was a really good idea, but they’re really not forcing her into the plot like they probably could (maybe should?). It’s hard to picture her having a scene with any of them as great and touching as Hannah and Marnie’s dance that closes the episode. It’s Robyn. What’s not to like?

While the overwhelming theme of season 5 of Mad Men has been the way that time changes the things around you, transforming what used to be normalcy into a quite literal horror show (I’m still, to be honest, monumentally impressed by the way the she embraced an Edward Albee – who, by the way, was name checked last night – type suburban terror), the past two episodes – “Far Away Places” and “At The Codfish Ball” – have been about the way that you change without even noticing.

Both episodes carry an almost body snatchers feeling, with characters acting in ways they don’t recognize and don’t really have an answer for. Consider Peggy’s tryst with the weirdo flunkie in the movie theater, or more notably Don leaving Megan in the parking lot of Howard Johnson’s (“How could you do that to me?” “I don’t know… it was a fight”). Last week’s realizations came from looking inward. This was most plainly realized in Roger Sterling’s segment, as he uses LSD, a drug renowned for its (real or perceived) ability to incite deeply weird levels of introspection.

We see some more benefits (or fallout, depending on your perspective) of Roger’s trip in “Codfish.” He’s uncharacteristically chipper, unburdened by the occupational paranoia which has been haunting him. But at the same time, you wonder whether the whole thing is about to go off the rails. Sure, people can change their attitudes, but when personality shifts are so rapid (especially when aided by drugs) they are more often than not masking an increasingly cavernous disconnect from reality. Not to say that Roger is the only person experience this.

Consider Megan, who’s shaping up to be a really fantastic character, and who’s French-Canadian parents are in town for a visit (parental interaction being the other strong narrative thrust of “Codfish”). In a quietly terrifying conversation with her father at a American Cancer Society Ball honoring Don, she is prodded into realizing that she, in a way, has no idea what she’s doing, working with these people and taking care of these children and so on. Her whole life becomes instantaneously unfamiliar.

There were a lot of blindsides in “Codfish”, usually forced upon one character by another, whether it be Peggy and Abe’s will-he, wont-he, okay-he-kind-of-did situation (Peggy and Joan’s two scenes were some of the best of the episode, as Joan gently helps Peggy feel comfortable owning her feelings. Those two’s friendship may be the purest of the series), or the very grim way that Sally, all dolled up and high off her hysterical rapport with Roger, realizes she’s not ready (or willing) t0 enter the adult world – whatever that means.

If I were to have some quibbles with “Codfish”, the weaker of the two episodes, it would be the several moments where writer Jonathan Igla got too cute by a half with himself. I’m thinking specifically of Peggy’s “I do” at dinner, in reference to wanting to order (but she really meant about marriage you guys, did you get that???) and the closing line as well (“How’s the city?” “It’s dirty”) smacked of the smugness that can be Mad Men‘s very worst trait. Nonetheless, both episodes displayed a cast and crew that were firing on all cylinders, from Don & Megan’s impressive romancing of the Heinz people, to Ginsberg’s chilling origin story (first time I’ve enjoyed that character), and on and on. After a slow start, season 5 is shaping up to be a doozy.

I felt a personally unearned but nonetheless pleasant satisfaction as “Vagina Panic”, the tremendous second episode of HBO series/pervasive-thought-piece-subject Girls wrapped up. Not only was it better than the premiere episode (something I, quite frankly, was not expecting) but it – probably inadvertently – did much to rebuff the perplexing and uncomfortable vitriol that’s been spewed at it over the past week.

Sure, Lena Dunham’s auteur project is still about 4 young, privileged white women, but whereas last week’s episode was built around the probably-not-universal plight of being financially cut off by your parents at age 24, “Vagina Panic” bravely went places most everyone goes but don’t necessarily talk about. If anyone wants to argue that they can’t relate to being treated poorly by a sexual partner, fear of contracting STD’s, the difficulty of acing a job interview, fear of pregnancy, or helping a friend through a difficult situation like an abortion, well… I think that would probably be a pretty shitty argument.

As of two episodes in, has the cast shown much diversity? No, and that may eventually become an issue, but to borrow the words of the always astute Film Crit Hulk, “AFTER ALL, WE DIDN’T MIND THAT THE ENTIRE CAST OF FREAKS AND GEEKS WAS WHITE.” I’m not saying that Girls should remain white washed, not at all. What I am saying is that it’s been like 56-57 minutes of show thus far, and we haven’t really met too many character beyond the four leads, one of whom is the creator of the show, one of whom (Jemima Kirke) is essentially playing herself – as she is the IRL best friend of the creator – and one other is supposed to be that character’s blood relative. Besides all that, I certainly will go to bat about this show presenting a viewpoint that is unique in the world of TV.

Much more than last week’s installment this episode was about female troubles, and not in the euphemistic way (well, except for one part). It started with a blisteringly uncomfortable pair of sex scenes that continue to be not only funny but painfully well observed and informed by character. Whether it’s Hannah’s cum-stained tryst with Adam (where the problem, in a subtle importance, isn’t the dirty talk or the domination but its intensity coupled with Adam’s simultaneous aloofness), or Marnie’s perhaps even more awkward sex with the doe-eyed Charlie, where almost imperceptible movements speak volumes about a relationship that is all candy shell.

I was impressed and very pleased that the show was smart enough to spare us Jessa telling the other girls about her pregnancy, and her decision to have an abortion. Because, let’s be honest, after meeting the character I assume we all expected that was a foregone conclusion. So kudos to Girls for diving into the meat of the situation without delay. After all, we’ve seen a hundred PSA style scenes about abortions. But have we seen women chiding each other in the waiting room about the entertainment quality of said procedure, or another show up with snacks because she’s not sure how long it’s going to take? I submit that we have not, but it addresses the uncomfortable but necessary way that humans temper sadness with humor.

Though perhaps it wasn’t as novel, the job interview scene between Hannah and Mike Birbiglia was so funny and cringe-worthy I really didn’t care. The way the scene shifted on a dime was just perfect, illustrating how Hannah isn’t incompetent or stupid she’s just still feeling out the limits of the scary new world of adulthood. All of this paled in comparison, however, to the closing scene between Hannah and the doctor administering an STD test. Lena Dunham (once again the writer of this episode) bravely tackles a monologue where she basically talks herself into admitting that a small part of her wants to contract AIDS (or, I should say, HIV that eventually turns into AIDS) just to get people off her back.

It sounds like the most awful thing ever (and the show does a good job of addressing that through the doctor’s appropriately stern but mannered reaction) but I once again think it demonstrates an honest understanding of another unfortunate but real human (especially young humans) reaction to hardships or mistakes, where a (always, in imagination, consequence free) action like suicide or contraction of a deadly illness reminds everyone how great and important you are. The nurse says “you couldn’t pay me to be 24 again.” You know how she knows that? Because she’s been 24. It is, almost unavoidably, a universal experience.

For a show that proudly proclaimed to be about nothing, there were certain things that popped up so many times and with such focus on Seinfeld that you could put together a pretty compelling argument that the show was about a lot of things. So today we’re gonna talk about Seinfeld: the show about candy. For something that sounds so specific and odd, if you take a second to think about it you’ll realize that this was not an easy High Five to put together.

I could have at least done a High Ten, especially since I’m including sweet treats in general. Why? Because I felt like getting down like that so back off. What’s the deal with Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer eating so much candy? And what’s the deal with sweets frequently being being important episode plot points? What’s the deal with airline food? Answer none of these questions and less as you check out my High Five!

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Honorable Mention: Snickers Bar – “The Pledge Drive”

The craze of eating your candy with a knife and fork (or M&Ms with a spoon) that takes New York in this episode, after starting with Elaine’s boss Mr. Pitt, is a great joke that touches on a lot of what Seinfeld is about. It’s right in the wheelhouse of strange cultural behaviors, and how quickly trends can alter the way people act.

Do we all secretly want to eat Snickers with cutlery and we’re just one person away from actually doing it? Or are we so weird that if we see someone doing it, no matter if we know them or not, we’re so embarrassed of not being “in on it” that we’ll fake it until we make it. Seinfeld: deep, man.

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5. Twix Bar – “The Dealership”

Twix figures into one of the best kinds of Seinfeld episodes, the ones that stick to one location. Seinfeld took the old concept of the bottle episode and made it into a true art form. Kramer actually goes on a little solo-adventure in this one, but the rest of the gang is cooped up in the titular dealership that Puddy works at. Craving a sweet treat, his blood sugar plummeting (a trope that will arise again and again in this list), George attempts to purchase a Twix from the vending machine.

A series of mishaps occurs, all stemming from a quietly nefarious mechanic who – after refusing to give George a crisp dollar – ends up (probably) stealing his hanging Twix. So many great moments arise: George facedown on the ground searching for change, the panic of your item getting caught on the spool, Georg’es accusation of the mechanic (“Twix is the only candy bar with the cookie crunch!”), the candy classification discussion with the other customers, and of course George’s Twix-test being foiled when everyone eats the candy bars. TTTWWWIIIXXX!!!

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4. Jujyfruit – “The Opposite”

It’s moments like Elaine’s encounter with Jujyfruits that most noticeably bear the mark of Larry David’s hand, and the cringe humor on display here will later be turned into an entire show with Curb Your Enthusiasm. The best thing about this humor is that it actually makes you question how you’d act in these situations. Elaine is going to a movie when she learns that her date has been hit by a car and is in the hospital (she’s informed, bizarrely, by an usher played by French Stewart).

She rushes to the hospital, but not before getting a box of Jujyfruits. I mean, she was already at the concession counter. The Jujyfruits actually factor in again later, in an even bigger way when they set off a Rube Goldberg series of events that result in the complete dissolution of Pendant Publishing. But I’m more endeared to her short argument with Jake in the hospital, and Elaine’s sheepish explanation to Jerry about why she can’t resist them: “Because they’re Jujyfruit and I like them.”

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3. Entenmann’s Cake – “The Frogger”

The Frogger is a really fantastic episode overall, so much so that I had actually forgotten that it was also the episode with Mr. Peterman’s cake. But yes, the episode is indeed so strong that it contains two all-timer plotlines (the other, of course, being George’s attempts to preserve his Frogger high score). But what we’re talking about is Elaine’s low afternoon blood sugar (told you!), a result of too many cake parties in a row at work, and her attempts to solve the problem after the cake parties peter out.

Raiding Peterman’s fridge, Elaine accidentally consumes a piece of royal wedding cake from the 30s worth tens of thousands. We’ve all been there, right guys? This one is so high on the list because it ends with both a killer written joke (Peterman appraising his cake to find that it’s been replaced with a $2.19 piece of Entenmann’s. I always found the specificity of that numer hilarious) and an even better visual one: the perfect surveillance footage of Elaine dancing joyously around Peterman’s office as she eats the grody confection.

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2. Bosco Chocolate Syrup – “The Secret Code”

Here’s the one that, more than any others, highlights the hilarity of how important candy and sweets are to these people. George’s ill-fated fiancee wants his PIN number so she can get out money on an errand, but George being George he refuses to tell her. In the midst of discussing this with the gang, Kramer decides he’s going to guess it, leading to a really bravura monologue where he bit-by-bit deconstructs Mr. Costanza’s psyche, correctly guessing that his passcode must have something to do with a chocolate syrup.

That’s what’s at the very core of George’s brain: Bosco chocolate syrup. Later he finds he’s so pent up about the whole thing that he has to reveal it to someone: choosing Peterman’s unconscious mother, who suddenly awakes screaming Bosco as her last word. Basically, after some more shenanigans, Peterman comes to believe that George killed his mother. Maybe with syrup. Delicious, delicious Bosco Syrup. Only on Seinfeld!

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1. Junior Mints - “The Junior Mint”

Not only is this the most memorable instance of candy in the show (I mean come on: you knew this was gonna be here, right?), it might be one of the most well known moments from the show period. It’s another case where the set-up is so simultaneously mundane and bizarre that it could only happen on Seinfeld: why would you ever bring chocolate covered mints into a surgery theater? Why would you be in a surgery theater anyway? Because you’re Cosmo Kramer and you can do whatever the fuck you want.

It’s the easiest one on this list to explain and also the purely funniest: Kramer drops a Junior Mint into a guy’s stomach. What more do you need, really? In many ways it’s the perfect summation of the blase and once-removed way in which the Seinfeld characters go through life, the root of the self-consciousness that makes them so damn funny. Fun fact: it was originally supposed to be a Lifesaver, but they didn’t want to get down like that. Sucks for them.

So those are mine: what are yours?

To use her own words from last night’s exceptional premiere episode of her HBO series Girls, Lena Dunham is “the voice of [our] generation. Or at least a voice. Of a generation.” And all that before the show really even started. Though she was probably smart and talented enough to do it on her own, the world at large pretty much did it for her by inundating us with countless think pieces, takedowns, puff-ups, and magazine covers. Wasn’t this supposed to be an indie show?

Luckily, the show (or at least the first episode, and I hear that the quality doesn’t dip over the next few) is more than good enough to stand up to the immense weight that must be on the creative team’s shoulders, and any sort of vicious screed against it can probably be chalked up to “haters gonna hate.” After all, it is a show that is ostensibly about rich, young, white people who live comfortably in the most “cultured” city in the world and complain about it a lot. But to boil it down to that is to be glib and, ironically, elitist.

You should be able to at least enjoy this show if you are young, or at one point in your life have been young. By my count that makes, oh, everyone. Because, as the title suggests, this show is not about being an adult. It’s about trying really hard to and failing. It’s about that nebulous middle ground, where you can rent a car and your first friend has a non-accidental child and yet you still want to shotgun beers in a bathtub and watch Netflix all night.

Dunham (who humorously is, like, the first 10 credits at the show’s end) plays Hannah, an aspiring essayist who at the very beginning of the show is cut off financially by her parents Jean Weir and the other Bosom Buddy. This immediate establishment of stakes deftly refines Dunham’s sharp but sometimes directionless wit into a shape fit for television. I assume that was exec producer Judd Apatow’s involvement.

Hannah is at once self assured and incredibly nervous, a paradoxical combination that we have all felt at some point (or maybe always): the belief that because you are you that something special and good must eventually come but a fear of both the randomness of life and the imperceptible limits of your faculties. The reason people don’t push themselves is usually because they’re happier not finding their edges.

So Hannah, a smart and capable person, finds herself lost and floating, finding grim solace in the arms of a guy who’s even more aloof than she. Her scene with that guy, played perfectly by Adam Driver, was probably the highlight of the episode for me, using the physical awkwardness of sex to expertly portray two characters in a way that shows like Sex & The City or even (sorry) Game Of Thrones could only hope for.

Hannah has friends too, or at least acquaintances, and even though this episode was mostly her show I imagine the ensemble will come more to the forefront soon. There’s Marnie (Alison Williams), the “stuck up” one who isn’t that stuck up at all, and is trapped by her overly loving boyfriend (“I just exploded a kiss on your face”). Then there’s Marnie’s opposite who’s not really that different from her, the supposed “free-spirit” Jessa who’s mystique gets by mostly on her accent and flowy rompers.

Finally, and least present, was Zosia Mamet’s Shoshanna, a seemingly cartoonish college student obsessed with the aforementioned SATC and, at least for now, the most tangentially connected to the group. All were, or have the potential to be, extremely well drawn characters. To be honest I really just want to see more of this show. It’s so hard to pin down exactly what something is about after just half an hour, but it’s enough to know I am certainly coming back for more.

I know it’s funny. I know it’s smart. I know it’s well acted. I know it’s honest. I know it’s trying to say something, and – as a twentysomething in New York – it’s probably trying to say something to me. So sure, Lena Dunham. Be a voice of a generation. Or at least try.