Ask Me My Name Plot Summary:
On this week’s episode of Girls, titled Ask Me My Name, Hannah (Lena Dunham) moves on with a new career choice and potential guy, while everyone else gets a double dose of Mimi-Rose (Gillian Jacobs).
You can ‘Ask Me My Name’, but do the Girls even care anymore?
This week’s episode wasn’t the comeback from last week’s diabolical mess I was hoping it would be , but it was a slight improvement. They kept plotlines down to a minimum, however that might not be the best thing by focusing on the wrong characters aka Mimi-Rose and not Adam (Adam Driver) and Hannah.
Mimi-Rose’s extremely straight forward home-wrecker is a bit of a mystery and character development is necessary for her. However, it just changed the tone of the show having the episode mostly be about her and Hannah bonding in a very odd way.
While Jacobs is extremely entertaining to watch, this episode was completely thrown off by the tone her character has been setting since last week’s episode. You can’t quite tell if she is good or bad, annoying or fun, and unfortunately this hurts the tone of the show. It distracts from the main plots this season is trying to convey and just adds unnecessary drama and annoying rational talk that just doesn’t fit with the weirdness that is Girls.
Along with the tone being off, the writing just didn’t seem to make sense for some of the characters. It seemed unrealistic, especially with how things went down last week and how things went down the week before that.
The show is losing storytelling consistency, which is a shame since it was really on the right track to its glory days earlier this season.
However, some positives came from this episode, like the acting of the amazing (and always-praised by this critic) Lena Dunham and the addition of the always-fabulous, scene stealing Zachary Quinto.
These positives though just couldn’t save the tone of the show from complete tedium. The writing and the face that the focus of the episode was on a character not many are interested in besides the fact that she is connected to the two most interesting characters of the show.
It feels like Jacobs comedic talents are being wasted here, (see an episode of Community and you’ll understand), and this just isn’t good. The writers spent way too much time trying to make her likeable, but at the same time pretentious. The beginning of the episode, with Hannah on her really cute date, made me feel like the episode was on the right track, but once the art show/Mimi-Rose extravaganza started, the episode just faltered back into the bad rut it found itself in last week.
Praise is due to the writers though, for finally figuring out that they need to tackle one story line at a time and have less characters featured in the episode to make the show less confusing and more entertaining, it is just a shame that they wasted it on a plot line that will most likely end before it even really begins.
On to the positive, which is the introduction of Zachary Quinto’s promising character, however I may be bias since everything that has ever had Quinto just guest star in it has been turned to gold within five seconds of him being on the screen. The man is a talent and one of the best out there, bringing him on to the Girls team can only help, or at least lets hope it does for the sake of the show and its future.
Special mention, once again, to Lena Dunham who makes acting look like a piece of cake anytime we see her. The beginning scene of her on her date, with a man named Fran, was such a delight to watch. Dunham made the scene so natural and the writing made it actually seemed like she was on a date for real.
It’s this type of acting, and writing, that saves the show every time and it is this type of acting and writing that needs to be showcased more and more from not just Dunham and her scenes, but from all the characters on the show.
All in all, this episode was an odd one due to the tone just being all over the place and not really showing what the audience is interested in. It’s a shame Girls is losing the pace that was set at the beginning of the season, however there are still some scenes, and characters, with potential. Let’s just hope the writers can nail those scenes next week, and not have the audience asking whose name is who at the end of the show.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
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Laura Dengrove is the one of youngest members of the Pop-Break staff and is a critic for television/movies of all types on Pop-Break. She’s in her first year at college where she will be studying to obtain her bachelors degree at Rutgers University for Journalism/Public Relations. She was the editor for the Arts and Entertainment section of her school newspaper, runs her own blog (Pop Culture Darling), and interns for Design New Jersey. She also has an in-depth knowledge about all things True Blood and an avid Eric and Sookie shipper.
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