A new season of Girls will soon be upon us. In fact, it’ll be upon us/HBO on February 21. And its trailer is upon us now. So, should you dare to step back into the precarious and oft-embittered existences of Hannah Horvath, Marnie Michaels, Shoshanna Shapiro and Jessa Johansson (who knew they all had last names!?), here’s a rundown of what you’ll find:
1. Collectively, “they’re older, but not much wiser,” as a couple of intertitles suggest.
2. Hannah is overcoming “the challenges of [her] nontraditional body type” and thus having Ray and Elijah take nude photos of her. She’s also still friendly with Marnie (always hard to keep track of what phase their friendship is in) who’s giving her advice about her relationship so she can avoid being alone “like Cher.” (Jessa, meanwhile, suggests that she’s “already like Cher.”)
3. Shosh is performing what looks to be mild BDSM (it’s hard to tell whether it’s a one-time thing or a new extracurricular activity) at a club in Tokyo and has befriended Aidy Bryant — who plays her boss at her social media gig.
4. Jessa is still occasionally dropping in to give Hannah questionable advice (here, they partake in rice pudding!)
5. Marnie is clearly unhappy — as everybody would have guessed — in her new marriage, as indicated by her looking off into the distance while dancing with her terrible singer/songwriter husband.
There is, of course, more to be found between all that (some of the items mentioned may have spoken more to my desires — i.e. rice pudding — than to what’s crucial about the trailer/show, but then again, it’s Girls, and is all about what happens when nothing seems crucial, and when most things are matters of idle desire).
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