So can I tell you how surprised I was to fall completely in love with Girls? I didn’t think too much of Lena Dunahm‘s semi-prequel Tiny Furniture, so I braced myself to hate her show. I know I’m a mom in my mid-thirties and so what would a bunch of cool nerds in their early 20s care what I think, but my cable dollars still count! Going in to the series premiere, I thought it was going to be a bunch of hipsters whining their way through New York City. Instead, I got…a bunch of hipsters whining their way through New York City in a completely, brilliant, self-aware, and hilarious manner.
I was even more surprised to slowly realize how much I like Adam, played by Adam Driver. The awkwardly reluctant boyfriend to Dunham’s Hannah initially seemed like a callous jerk. But as his character and the relationship between Adam and Hannah developed, he became one of my favorites. His brusque approach never wavers, but we soon saw how he cut through Hannah’s bullshit that she didn’t even realize she was putting out, called her out on her insensitivity, and challenged her to be a better friend and lover. Their interactions as a couple are so perfectly crafted. Like this scene. I love everything about it.
Plus their sex scenes are just so hilarious. That time where he said something about her Cabbage Patch lunchbox and then forgot about it the next morning when she referenced it? I totes died. (/Shoshanna)
There’s an interview with Driver in this month’s GQ. It’s pretty fascinating so I suggest that you read the whole thing. In it he talks about his time in the Marines and how he realized that he wanted to do something else with his life, dealing with being recognized, and people’s reaction to his character.
Then the interviewer asks him about one particular line (“Step on my balls”) during a sex scene with Hannah and Driver answers that he hasn’t watched any of the shows because he doesn’t have cable and doesn’t really watch TV and oh, whoops, my eyes just rolled out of my head.
It’s not that he doesn’t doesn’t have cable and doesn’t watch TV or Girls that makes me roll my eyes. It’s just so frustrating when people who operate that way feel the need to point that out. And, okay, yes, it taps into my insecurities about my low-brow tastes because there’s so often this element of superiority involved in a statement like that. But why can’t it ever be like, “I haven’t seen it?” Why the clarification that it’s because they don’t watch TV and/or don’t have cable as though they’re expecting someone, anyone, to respond, “That’s so interesting! Tell me more!”
Granted, Driver didn’t really come as being a smug jerk about it. Just ugh. It was totes un-self-aware hipster shit, Adam!
About Kelly Delaney
