HBO’s LGBT History: Girls (2012-)
Wednesday, March 16, 2016 at 3:01PM Manuel is working his way through all the LGBT-themed HBO productions.
Last week we looked at Back on Board: Greg Louganis, a doc that traced the life story of the (now) out gay Olympic diver. That meant that for two straight weeks we’ve been looking back at the latter half of the twentieth century (previously we talked about Robert De Niro’s gay father), and so to shake it up we’re talking Girls this week. Well, the boy in Girls, but still.
With its new season well on its way, and with Elijah (played deliciously by Andrew Rannells) given a heck of a love interest this past week, I couldn't help but write up this most recent episode rather than reach further back. As always when we dip our toes into television we’re focusing on one episode and really, I couldn’t have planned it better if I’d tried seeing as “Old Loves” allows us to talk about Elijah within the confines of a burgeoning relationship and talk about that very steamy (if hilarious) sex scene. The title of the episode, as Lena Dunham has explained elsewhere, is a nod to the Tumblr of the same name which is name-dropped in the episode that puts up pictures of old celebrity couples (Tom Green & Drew Barrymore! Matt Damon & Winona Ryder! Thandie Newton & Brad Pitt!). But it is the “new” love in the episode that will be our focus today.
Once merely Hannah’s gay ex, Elijah who famously punctuated his first appearance on the show with what may be my favorite line of the series so far (“I'm gonna go now, your dad is gay!”), Rannells’ character has grown into a series regular who might best be described as the fifth “Girl.” He’d perhaps enjoy the label if he didn’t object to that whole not being first-billed thing. The blending of vain entitlement and unbridled lack of self-awareness is what’s endeared me to Elijah for over four seasons and counting. He’s the type of sassy “sidekick” gay we could so easily dismiss were he not also as fleshed out as a complex character by the show’s writers and Rannells alike. Look no further than the season 4 episode “Beach House” where you get to see the actor throw himself into scenes that require him to be both vapid and vulnerable when faced with a douche of a romantic interest (played by Danny Strong!) he feels he needs to feel validated.
"Old Loves" was a great acting showcase for Rannells: Elijah got to fret over back hair (“You just never know when some new hair is gonna go sprout in your body”), explain how celebrity friends refer to a TFE fave (“Patty Clarkson, her friends call her Pah-teeh”), and be flush with excitement at the prospect of dating a well-known actor, Dill Harcourt, played by all around hunk Corey Stoll. (Side note: This isn’t the first time Stoll has seduced a Broadway fave on screen: he played Jonathan Groff’s creepy and horny hookup in the Sedaris film adaptation C.O.G.).
Who's the lucky guy?
Well, I really shouldn't say. He's quite famous... Dill Harcourt, but let's not make a big deal out of this, okay?
In the episode’s most smile-inducing moment, Elijah and Dill roam around Times Square embracing the thrill of newfound intimacy—they make out in front of plenty of Dill (and, one has to imagine Andrew and Corey) fans who are quick to request selfies and capture the moment on their phones. The almost wordless montage is fascinating precisely because it so fuses the real and the fictional, celebrating on both levels the current cultural landscape that sees nothing wrong with two men kissing in public. That this “public” is Times Square, both a tourist mecca and a Broadway hub, opens questions about this so-called tolerance and visibility that we’ve been tracking.
To follow that montage with a hilarious sex scene (from public to private) shows the way Girls, more than any other show I can think of, has used sex as a way to examine couple dynamics. There’s seldom a trace of gratuitousness to any moment in the show where its character bare it all. And so, when we cut to Dill and Elijah having sex we see that despite being in the bottom (both visually and literally), Stoll’s Dill is in control, yelling increasingly frantic and hilarious directions at Elijah (“FASTER! Okay now stop… Now go! Faster! … Slower then faster. Stop talking.”).
Better yet? Midway through trying to keep up with this bossy bottom, Elijah yells out that he’s getting a cramp, the type of throwaway line that points to the mundane and all too relatable sexual moments that are all too rare in sex scenes in general, and in gay ones in particular. (The obvious exception on HBO, of course, remains the candid, sweaty lovemaking in Looking, as we discussed a few weeks ago). If one of the main complaints about gay characters on American media has been their neutered sexuality, Elijah is not so much breaking the mold as showing us a (pardon the NBC-sitcom related pun) new normal. One need only look at How To Get Away With Murder to see that while cable has often been at the forefront of these depictions, network TV is slowly catching up. (They still have nothing on Netflix, of course, as Sense8 remains perhaps the most fluid and sex positive show to come along in quite some time).
Fun Awards Fact: Despite the swell of critical accolades (and attendant thinkpieces) that greeted the early seasons of Dunham’s show, that was never quite enough to garner Rannells much awards mileage save for Best Guest Actor citings from the Critics Choice Television Awards and the Online Film & Television Association (he lost the former in 2014 to Orange is the New Black’s Uzo Aduba and the latter in 2013 to The Big Bang Theory’s Bob Newhart).
Next week: We look at the Matt Bomer narrated documentary, Hunted: The War Against Gays In Russia.
Andrew Rannells, Corey Stoll, Girls, HBO, HBO LGBT, TV, sex scenes
Reader Comments (6)
I'm a super fan. I literally pee myself every time Elijah opens his big mouth.
The Emmy for Guest Actor in a Comedy Series should be in his possession since the very first season, but Emmys are obsessed with SNL hosts.
The whole storyline with Corey Stoll is driving me crazy. I can't think of anything else. We deserve it after the bleakness of American Crime.
I love Corey Stoll sooooo much that perhaps i'll tune in to GIRLS again. I've always liked it but I think i just got tired of it since its topic is so much narcissism.
absolutely agree that sex scenes rarely feel authentic and i think it's for the same reason that many things don't feel authentic -- range of feeling. Almost nothing we experience is only one note... but sex scene operate usually on a very very one note range. that being "passion" so it ends up feeling dispassionate because it doesn't feel real
Haven't watched this episode yet, but wasn't the meeting between Andrew and Corey's characters just the epitome of a NY fantasy? The sexy, rich man in a suit orders you a drink and then comes over, and later actually gives you his number? Christ almight. So sexy. And Stoll is just making it more so.
Totally agreed about realistic representations of sex on screen. Of course, the issue so many gay people have isn't that they're having sex it's that the characters are representative of themselves - the Looking Syndrome - and I know so many who can't stand Rannells or this performance because he's so flamboyant. Their loss, I guess, and hypocritical, too.
I watched Girls for the second time yesterday after reading the links round-up. (Okay, I fast-forwarded through most of the episode.) I'll definitely be back for more Corey, but that's it.
Girls has been really funny and poignant this season. I definitely think it's the best since Season 1.
Paul -- i watched the whole episode and remembered why i stopped watching. BUT damn that scene with Corey & Andrew