What I’m Watching: Girls

Girls: Season 2, Episode 7 “Video Games” (B)

This show is extraordinarily capable of achieving a spectacular focus, tuning out the rest of the world to focus only one specific place. Jessa bringing Hannah with her to see her father turned out, expectedly, to be just as much about Hannah as it did about Jessa, and it was a fascinating if odd journey. The casting of Ben Mendelsohn, who played Pope in “Animal Kingdom,” as her father, and Rosanna Arquette, who I remember best as Cherie Jaffe on “The L Word,” as Petula, was fantastic, and added greatly to the episode. Some of my favorite quotes from the episode were “Do you have any evidence that life is just a video game” and “I really like the way that you fold down your turtleneck.” Jessa’s visit quickly turned sour, of course, and, as usual for Hannah, it turned into a horror story when Jessa covered the driver’s eyes. This show never portrays serious trauma, but rather something that seems very much like it and then ends up being merely disappointing, like Hannah’s cemetery rendezvous with Frank. Jessa telling Hannah that their trip wasn’t meant to be a sexcapade was condescending and unsupportive, and very much in character for her. Calling her parents while she was struggling with her UTI and waiting for her train back prompted similar results to times past: an authentic effort to be grateful for something random interpreted as an attempt to be manipulative and snide. Peter Scolari and Becky Ann Baker are so terrific as her parents, and it’s great to see them again.