There is a school of thought that suggests happiness lies in chasing your childhood dreams. “Follow your bliss,” Joseph Campbell advocated, and many took it to mean they should never give up doing the thing they love, even in the face of the universe’s lack of interest. For Alex, resting actor and owner of one of the saddest faces I’ve seen on television for some time, that led to an eviction and a hurried request for his best friend to bring a truck around. Welcome to Togetherness (Sky Atlantic), which promised to explore the world of some oldish young “normals” in Los Angeles.
The genre is hardly crying out for more exploration, but I enjoyed this a great deal. Alongside Alex (Steve Zissis), there was Brett (Mark Duplass), husband to Michelle (Melanie Lynskey) and father to their two kids, one of them still box-fresh and fostering unsurprising tension between his parents. And then there was Michelle’s older sister Tina (Amanda Peet) who you knew immediately was going to be trouble, because she had wide eyes and flitty hands that looked a little too needy right off the bat. These individuals’ growing pains ought to have eased by now, but their behaviour suggested a sort of suspended animation. The homeostatic fluid keeping them in place? Their own predictable mediocrity and dissatisfaction.
But it wasn’t grim. Or, at least, the downbeat tone was more than matched by moments of levity and verve. Brett and Michelle, for example, were sensitively written: we’ve seen enough TV to know that parents navigate new waters with every addition, and this was also funny and poignant. Brett, attempting sex with his wife in the morning, was rebuffed only to walk in on her taking matters into her own hands later that afternoon. “I have been depriving myself of the internet in hopes that we can make love,” Brett protested. “Come on,” she interrupted, “the cache is always cleared!” Their date night as described to Tina was the epitome of normalcy: dessert and maybe a frozen yoghurt somewhere else. It just felt … sad. Later, a little loose with alcohol, Michelle admitted bafflement at where they found themselves.
Tina was the showiest of the bunch. She had an air of a former head cheerleader (as taught to us by the movies) for whom life just hadn’t delivered. She said as much, during a conversation with her sister that veered from furious to humorous in less than two minutes. “Do you know what it’s like to be dating at my age?” she asked. “There’s nobody left!” Her sister hugged her. “That’s a real thing in your mind? It’s not even possible.” Except it was – as an altercation in the street later amply demonstrated. Where have all the good men gone?
But the star was Alex who, having been crushed by the weight of his ennui and sense of failure at the beginning of the episode, could maybe see light at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps he’d internalised Brett’s little mantra by then: “This is a setback. We regroup and we triumph.” I liked Zissis’ naturalistic performance and it’s his perspective I look forward to in the following weeks. I am particularly keen to see where they go with his comfort eating; it’s not a storyline that men get every day.
On the other side of the country, another batch of slightly younger people were regrouping and trying to triumph. Girls (Sky Atlantic), having crested the think-piece wave, is back for a fourth series. Hannah (Lena Dunham) was about to leave New York to attend a venerable writers’ workshop in Iowa, and fretting about how Adam (Adam Driver) would cope in her absence. Naturally, her genuine concern wound itself all the way around Adam before centring once more on herself. “There’s no need to create some drama,” Adam retorted. Oh, but there is.
Elsewhere Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet), a classic child of divorce(eyes darting rapidly between her parents’ as she finally “graduated”), was being quite clear-eyed about her previous behaviour with her ex-boyfriend. Marnie (Allison Williams) was busy having sex with somebody else’s boyfriend (and her co-songwriter, Desi) over the kitchen sink before putting on some clothes to go and sing at a “jazz brunch”. And Jessa (Jemima Kirke) was adrift, as ever: forcibly relieved of the duty of caring for Bedelia – whose suicide attempt she helped with at the end of last series – and on prickly form with Hannah.
The whole episode was about what had been left unsaid. Adam’s tendency to unravel loomed large in the background, deliberately undiscussed. Jessa, always the one leaving, seemed unable to deal with being left behind and so dug deep for meanness with Hannah. Marnie, increasingly terrible since the first series, lied to Clementine’s face, and Shosh, usually the most needlessly verbose of the bunch, learned to bite her tongue.
With all the screeds written about the show, it’s easy to forget that Girls is a comedy. An awkward, twisted one, but comedy still. So the laughs came reliably: Marnie’s overly-invested stage mother, fixing her daughter’s hair and singing along to banal lyrics, Hannah’s backhanded toast at dinner with her parents, the wonderful Natasha Lyonne unable to pronounce “unconscionable” as she ripped into Jessa. Moments of pathos too. I felt a genuine pang when Jessa asked Bedelia to say she loved her more than her own daughter. Bedelia obliged. Jessa, terrible and human, laughed with delight. Welcome back.
