HBO's Girls season 2 premiere: Almost getting it kind of together

The buzzy dramedy returns for its sophomore season with a funny, resonant premiere

Lena Dunham's Hannah
(Image credit: HBO/Jessica Miglio)

The first episode of HBO's buzzy hit series Girls, which premiered last April, opened as protagonist Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham) preemptively defended herself while wolfing down mouthfuls of pasta: "I'm a growing girl." It's a throwaway line that also effectively doubles as a summary of the entire series. Last year, we spent 10 episodes watching Hannah and her friends grow, or attempt and fail to grow, as they navigated their messy, confusing lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Since its first season, Girls itself has grown, too. In the months-long gap between Girls' rookie year and its breathlessly awaited second season, the onetime "little show that could" has become a genuine cultural phenomenon. Girls has taken great pains to de-glamorize the lives of its characters, but the lives of the four actresses at the show's center have undoubtedly changed. Girls has skyrocketed these girls to fame, putting more distance than ever before between their actual lives and their small-screen doppelgangers. As aspiring-writer Hannah struggles to write a halfway interesting story, Lena Dunham signs a book deal for $3.7 million. Celebrity manicurist Deborah Lippman has created a Girls-inspired nail polish collection, with colors ranging from Hannah's "hapless hunter green" to Jessa's "bohemian burgundy." On Location Tours, which has run an incredibly successful Sex and the City tour in New York City for years — a tour that Girls' Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) would almost certainly have taken —is in the early stages of developing a Girls-themed tour of Brooklyn.

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Scott Meslow

Scott Meslow is the entertainment editor for TheWeek.com. He has written about film and television at publications including The Atlantic, POLITICO Magazine, and Vulture.