Girls, "Wedding Day"

There's a scene in the fifth season premiere of "Girls" which perfectly encapsulates the frustrations of this show.  Ray, who considers Hannah to be like a "little sister," is interrogating Fran on his intentions with her.  He soon begins a rant on how men mistreat women before landing on the real source of his discontentment: Marnie is about to marry the idiot Desi.  And Marnie is, according to Ray, "the love of my life."  Ray then learns from Desi's friend that Marnie is his eighth fiancee.

It's a nice little scene.  The camera placement is smart.  The acting is solid.  The writing is witty.  (Ray asks Fran if he just wants a "push in the bush.")  There's just one problem: the scene makes no sense.

Why does Ray care about Hannah?  We've never seen any reason for them to be particularly close.  (We haven't seen a reason for anyone to be close to Hannah, but that's another story.)  More importantly, how on earth is Marnie the love of Ray's life?  Ray's an angry wiseass.  Marnie's an empty-headed beauty queen stupid enough to marry Desi.  If Ray was 20, we'd forgive him for being fooled by Marnie's looks.  But Ray's pushing 40.  In any approximation of the real world, Ray would have realized that loving Marnie is a fool's errand.

This is par for the course on "Girls," a show that somehow manages to have good direction, writing, and acting while also being emotionally incoherent.  It's a gorgeous wedding cake with rotten eggs in the batter.

As always, the season premiere confounds in its characterization.  Why are Jessa and Adam hooking up, apart from the fact that the show needs more plot and it hasn't already happened?  Why is junkie Jessa suddenly the most responsible one of this group?  And the question hovering over this whole show: Why are these girls still together?  Someone like Marnie should have a flotilla of vapid but supportive girlfriends.  Instead, she's relying on Hannah, who she acknowledges hasn't connected with her in years, Shoshanna, who lives in Japan, and Jessa, who is her complete opposite.

Pondering these questions can lead to hyperventilation.  Better instead to focus on the great moments this show is somehow still capable of giving us.  Marnie, taking passive-aggressiveness to delicious new heights in ushering Fran out of the bridesmaids' area.  Ray, literally struggling to keep his head above water as he tries to impart life advice to Desi.  Hannah, in a pink parachute, awkwardly embracing Marnie, in horror movie makeup.  Marnie, putting her wedding dress on over her Spanx, using beauty on the outside to cover up the plain girl on the inside.

45 Years

It's a common assertion: there's no such thing as a soulmate.  How, in this world of billions of people, could there be only one for us?

And yet, even the most rational person wants to believe they're special.  That their partner chose them because they were unique in some way.  We don't want to think of love as some mechanical process, a chance meeting in which sparks fly because of aesthetic preferences shaped by nature and nurture, repeated copulation releasing hormones that engender goodwill, shared experiences building up fondness over the years.  You could do that with anyone.

Such is the disturbing realization hovering over "45 Years," a film about a couple celebrating their anniversary.  The body of an old lover of the husband's--she had died falling into a fissure in a glacier --is discovered, bringing back powerful memories.  Slowly the wife learns just how much the girl meant to him, culminating in a shocking revelation.  The film could be viewed as the most low-key horror movie ever made.  The sound editing mirrors the ominous buildup, as howling winds and tolling bells slowly invade the couple's previously idyllic life.

"45 Years" ends on a simple, heartbreaking moment that feels worthy of Old Hollywood.  The film doesn't offer much commentary on the situation, but I'll throw something out: the tragedy is, it's nobody's fault.

Hollywood's Real Race Problems

I'll be honest.  When I first heard the chorus of complaints over the lack of Oscar nominations for black actors this year, I thought it was a little overblown.  The Academy has awarded numerous black performances when it was less diverse than it is today.

But then I started thinking about those performances.  It's shockingly easy to put them into three categories:

• Saints: The Sidney Poitier model.  Reward a character who is basically perfect so you can pretend you're not holding black people to a higher standard.  More recent examples: Denzel in "Glory," Morgan Freeman in "Million Dollar Baby."
• Sinners: Do I even need to say why this is a category?  Denzel in "Training Day," Forest Whitaker in "The Last King of Scotland," Mo'Nique in "Precious."  Three of the most vile characters ever to net Oscars for their performers, all played by black actors.
• Sufferers: Nothing like a little suffering to invoke the white guilt!  Besides, it's a position we're used to seeing them in.  See Halle Berry in "Monster's Ball" and Lupita Nyong'o in "12 Years."  Hattie McDaniel and Octavia Spencer played maids to white people, which is its own form of suffering.

There's only five winning performances I haven't mentioned.  Two fit comfortably in the categories above.  The three exceptions:

• Whoopi Goldberg played a psychic, which opens up its own can of racial worms.
• Jamie Foxx won for playing beloved musical icon Ray Charles.
• Cuba Gooding Jr. won for yelling "Show me the money!"

In this environment, it's tough for many black performers to even be considered.  The studios for "Creed" and "Straight Outta Compton" didn't bother to mount serious Oscar campaigns for their black actors.  It didn't occur to them that they could win.

Michael B. Jordan's performance in "Creed" is exactly the kind of performance that needs to get more attention: one that could easily have been played by a white actor.  In fact, Jordan has publicly said that studios won't consider him for many roles.  They automatically assume they're going to cast a white guy.

And that's the bigger issue here: there aren't enough roles for black actors in the first place.  Only a handful of black performances could even have been in the Oscar conversation this year.  Black actors need jobs, roles, opportunities to share their gifts with the world.

One last note: let's not forget that this conversation needs to be extended beyond black actors.  Where's the love for Benicio Del Toro in "Sicario"?  Not to mention...actually...I can't think of any others...