The Definitive Ranking of NFL Helmets and Jerseys

 Tier IV: What are we doing here?

32. New York Jets

"I've got an idea for new uniforms.  I want to go retro."

"Great!  But we already have retro unis from the '60s.  The evoke the era of Joe Namath."

"Yeah, but I want to do retro unis from the '90s.  They will evoke the era of washed up Boomer Esiason."

"Sounds great, let's do it."

31. Houston Texans

Bland, corporate, soulless.

30. Tampa Bay Buccaneers

I will admit to having a wholly irrational love for the Bucs' old creamsicle jerseys.  So maybe I'm biased.  But pewter belongs on candelabras, not uniforms.

29. Washington Commanders

The Washington Football Team could at least lay claim to some old school charm via the numbers on helmets.  Now the helmets feature a "W" that looks like it came from a Division II team.

Tier III: Fine, I guess

28. Kansas City Chiefs

Red and yellow are literally the two most unpleasant colors you could put together on uniforms.

27. Arizona Cardinals

I have some affection for the simplicity of the Cards' mostly white helmets.  But let's face it.  This team is not winning any style awards.

26. Chicago Bears

These uniforms are the NFL's version of the Yankees': classic but boring.

25. Seattle Seahawks

Perfectly adequate, except for the neon green, which looks great as an accent but occasionally is used as the primary color, which looks hideous.

24. Baltimore Ravens

This team and the four just below have sleek, modern-looking logos that are all just kind of dull.

23. New England Patriots

Bring back the old uniforms, you cowards!  The flag isn't red, white, and silver!

22. Atlanta Falcons

Perfectly dull uniforms for a perfectly dull team.  I'll never understand why they mostly ditched the red.

21. Denver Broncos and 20. Miami Dolphins

Likewise, both of these teams traded in tacky uniforms with character for streamlined versions that have no sense of history attached to them.

19. Detroit Lions

Would the Lions' unis seem more classic if the team had ever won anything?  They have a solid concept and they've stuck with it for decades.  Maybe if the team had a more significant place in league history, the jerseys would too.

18. Philadelphia Eagles

The wings on the helmets are a pretty good idea, and the colors are fine.  I'm not sure why I'm left a little cold by these.

Tier II: Prettaay, prettaay, prettaay good

17. Jacksonville Jaguars

Their helmet background used to have gold that faded into black.  It wasn't pretty, but at least it helped the team stand out in some way besides losing an epic number of games.

16. Indianapolis Colts and 15. Dallas Cowboys

In the same neighborhood as the Bears, but minimalism works for them.

14. Minnesota Vikings

The Purple People Eaters!  Purple uniforms with horns on the helmets sounds dumb on paper, yet somehow it works.

13. Tennessee Titans

Gregg Easterbrook famously dubbed them the "Flaming Thumbtacks."  But considering that logo, they look pretty good!

12. New Orleans Saints

They'll never live down the name, but the black and gold look helps make up for it.

11. Cleveland Browns

Sometimes you watch a movie that isn't terribly ambitious but accomplishes exactly what it tries to do.  That's the Browns' uniforms.  I hope they never change.

10. Carolina Panthers

Maybe I'm biased because these were my high school's colors, but the teal/black/silver combo really pops.

9. Los Angeles Rams

That swirling helmet is a great idea regardless of the colors.  But I would submit that it's not a coincidence that they won their two Super Bowls right before and after they adapted the navy and gold color pattern.

8. Buffalo Bills

Like the logos of the Ravens, Broncos, and Dolphins, this one is meant to convey forward motion.  The Bills' logo actually achieves it, though, thanks to that red streak.  The weird shape of the logo also gives it much more idiosyncratic charm.

Tier I: Iconic

7. San Francisco 49ers

With a name like that, you can't do much with the logo.  But the gold and red are *chef's kiss*.

6. Cincinnati Bengals

The Bengals have never won a Super Bowl, and yet their uniforms are still iconic.  The helmets are that damn good.

5. New York Giants

The road jerseys are pretty blah--white shirts and gray pants, really?--but the home unis, with the blue shirts, might be the best in football.

4. Green Bay Packers

There was once a rumor that the "G" stood for greatness.  It has since been debunked, but I like to believe it anyway.

3. Pittsburgh Steelers

Putting the logo on only one side of the helmet was an absolutely inspired choice.

2. Los Angeles Chargers

If there's any football jersey that ever had a chance of wowing a fashion designer, it would be the Chargers' powder blue home unis.  Nothing else even comes close.

1. Las Vegas Raiders

The Raiders' look is more than just iconic.  It encompasses the whole ethos of founder Al Davis: aggression at all times.  Sure, it's also associated with lots of penalties and dumb personnel moves.  But the Raiders' franchise has an identity.  That's more than you can say for most teams.

The Beatles: Get Back

We've always known the Beatles were always ahead of their time: a boy band conquering American lands with psychedelic jams.  Turns out they were ahead of their time in another way, too: they turned the cameras on.

Today, pop star documentaries are a dime a dozen.  The likes of P!nk, Katy Perry, and Justin Bieber have put out officially sanctioned PR missives.  Some performers have allowed (still officially sanctioned) peeks behind the curtain in these films: Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish.

But nowadays cameras are ubiquitous.  Back in 1969, there was a thing called "film," and it wasn't cheap.  Expense, however, was rarely a consideration for a band that literally contemplated buying their own island.  And so, just a few months after the band had splintered during the making of the White Album, Paul decided the group would record a back to basics record--another thing the Beatles invented--in just a few weeks while cameras captured their every move.  What could go wrong?

Surprisingly little, actually, for much of the runtime of "The Beatles: Get Back," Peter Jackson's massive eight-hour documentary from the previously unused footage.  Paul forced the band to record everything together, live, and the gambit seems to have paid off in forcing them to interact.  It's striking how much Paul and John get along.  They get high and make each other laugh.  They jam with Yoko.  They may not collaborate as much, but they're still able to work together, refining each other's compositions.  There's also a fair amount of the serendipitous magic that seemed to follow this band around for a decade.  Paul vamps on two chords one morning and suddenly has "Get Back."  Billy Preston shows up to the studio to say hello and is quickly enlisted as their keyboard player.  Ringo plays a goofy snippet of "Octopus' Garden" and soon George has turned it into a real song.

Storm clouds do appear, however, first in the frustrations of George.  It's pretty tough to watch how this talented musician is treated by his bandmates: Paul as a kid brother, John as more of a nerd to bully.  His sudden departure from the band a week into rehearsals is almost unsurprising; he was simply tired of providing minor embellishments to the tunes of others.  The sudden rupture prompts much soul searching, culminating in the pinnacle of the doc: a secretly recorded conversation between John and Paul over lunch.  There's basically no rancor to it, just a fascinating exchange between two musical geniuses realizing they might only be able to walk the same path for so long.

If there's a fly in the ointment of this doc--and truth be told, the problem is big enough that it's more of a grizzly bear in a trailer park--it's that it was put together by Peter Jackson.  Between the end of "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King," a totally unnecessary three-hour "King Kong," and not one but three Hobbit films, perhaps no living director has proven more willing to waste his audience's time.  Want ten minutes with a record executive talking about publishing rights?  Want to see the band sit around for an entire morning while the recording engineer tries to get the sound right?  Want to see several different half-assed performances of "Stand By Me" when the band gets sick of its own material?  Too bad!

The piece is a significant historical document nonetheless.  There's plenty of evidence in the documentary that the Beatles were on their last legs.  But the consolation prize is the evidence of all the great moments still to come for them.  Paul ponders buying a farm in Scotland.  John sings a couple lines with the vocal melody from "Imagine."  (The words are different, but it's clear the song was already banging around his head.)  George tries to get the band to do "All Things Must Pass"; John tries to mess with the lyrics, but George would have the last laugh.

The documentary's most poignant moment comes after George has quit and John has failed to show up one morning.  "And then there were two," Paul says, with tears in his eyes.  But--just at that moment--the phone rings.  It's John.  Lady luck was often on these lads' side.

Beautiful Boy and Ben is Back

As two awards-season films about parents and children struggling with the latter's addictions, Beautiful Boy and Ben is Back were always going to be linked.  The funny thing is that the movies take very different routes to get to much the same place, without ever being particularly good.

Beautiful Boy is based on the memoirs of both a father and his son.  It jumps around in time, examining how the son fell into addiction and how he struggled to get clean.  This approach feels like a good way to get at the truth of what really happened.  But the movie just sort of floats along, struggling to find its bearings.

Ben is Back puts a lot more narrative meat on the bone, making it both more compelling and more contrived.  When the son returns home from rehab for an ill-advised Christmas visit, someone breaks into his family's house and steals their dog.  He and his mother go on a journey to save the dog, reflect on how things got so bad, and prevent the son from relapsing or dying (which might be the same thing).

There are certain movies where the protagonist has to go up against something much bigger than herself.  It could be a natural disaster.  It could be sharks or dinosaurs.  It could be cancer.  Or it could be a parent battling a child's addiction.  In such cases, there isn't much opportunity for interesting drama.  There might be thrills, but the heroes' choices are severely curtailed; all they can do is try their best and hope for good fortune.

Another challenge for addiction movies is that there isn't much room for subtlety or nuance.  Every sideways glance is freighted with meaning, a sign that the characters aren't being totally honest with one another.  Every 30 second period alone is a chance for the addict to relapse.  And there aren't many grey areas in films like these: the addict is either on the wagon or falling back off.

Ben is Back tries to solve this problem by injecting some suspense into whether the addict is really being honest or is just looking for opportunities to get high.  And the actors all give committed performances.  But the script barely has to do any work to turn up the histrionics.  It's a bit like watching a movie about a sick puppy.  Its heavy emotions don't quite feel earned.

A Simple Favor

Paul Feig has had a strange career.  After starting out as an actor, he moved behind the camera.  He got his big break cocreating "Freaks and Geeks" with Judd Apatow.  The show was a very grounded drama examining the pitfalls of high school and aging.  He then made "I Am David," a film about a boy escaping from a concentration camp.  Heavy stuff.

Since then, though, he's mostly spent his time making ever-more ridiculous comedies such as "The Heat" and "Spy."  It's telling that when he and Apatow took over at the helm of "Bridesmaids," they made a small indie film much broader, most infamously by inserting an extended diarrhea-and-vomit sequence.

Feig's latest, "A Simple Favor," would seem to be a turn toward more serious fare.  There's infidelity, murder, and a mysterious disappearance.  Yet in a way, this film is as ridiculous as anything Feig has directed.  It offers up some scenic views before eventually driving into Crazytown.

Anna Kendrick stars as Stephanie Smothers, a seemingly prudish stay-at-home mom whose life is changed when she meets fellow mom Emily, yet another uber-chic role for Blake Lively.  Emily shows off a depressive personality and hides a lot more.  One day, Emily asks Stephanie to pick her son up from school.  Then she doesn't come home.

This is all fun and games for a while, as Stephanie tries to track down Emily.  But even after she cracks that mystery, the film is still far from its endgame.  It piles on the twists until it collapses in on its own pretzel logic.  Eventually, keeping straight which characters are allied with one another becomes impossible.  Adding to the chaos, the script throws in plenty of broad comedy, too, along with some feints at observations on motherhood and female friendship that never really say anything.

It's a shame, because Kendrick nails every pose this ridiculous movie puts her into.  "A Simple Favor" is a movie that wants to give everything to everyone: Comedy!  Drama!  Suspense!  Surprise!  Social commentary!  But as has often been remarked this decade, one can't have it all.

What About Bob?

For one of our most beloved comedic actors, Bill Murray didn't make very many funny movies.  Caddyshack?  Stripes?  Ghostbusters?  All bad films.  (And the stakes in Groundhog Day are too high for it to be considered a comedy.) Part of the problem is that Murray's heyday was in the execrable '80s, probably the only decade in which Chevy Chase could have become a movie star. But some of the challenge stemmed from the nature of Murray's weirdo deadpan persona.  He's an odd sort to build a movie around.  When faced with a calamity, Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, or Will Ferrell throw a tantrum.  Murray just shrugs his shoulders.

The genius of What About Bob? is that it takes the things everybody likes about Bill Murray and amplifies them.  He's the offbeat guy everyone wants to be around.  But his neuroses have also been cranked up to 11, and that serves as the engine for the plot.  He stalks his psychiatrist, played by a razor-sharp Richard Dreyfuss, but he's so nice about it that his shrink is the only one who seems bothered.  The film slowly becomes an adult version of Looney Tunes, with Dreyfuss' Elmer Fudd going to increasingly desperate lengths to get rid of Murray's Bugs Bunny.  His efforts to "get rid of" Bob become more literal as the movie goes along, giving the film a dark edge that helps prevent it from slipping into sentimentality.

The ending also helps in this regard.  Unlike Planes, Trains, and Automobiles--another comedy about a lovable loser with a finale smothered in Cheez-Wiz--What About Bob? never redeems Dreyfuss as the straight man.  It's content to subtly show that we may have something to learn from "crazy" people.  That the "sane" ones might not be so stable after all.

The Beguiled

The premise of Sofia Coppola's The Beguiled is almost literally a Monty Python sketch; the Pythons' Holy Grail, perhaps in a sendup of the source novel and previous film adaptation, has a scene with a setup that's only slightly more ridiculous.  In both cases, a young man (for the Pythons, a knight, for Coppola, a Union soldier) is injured and reaches a haven with no men to be found (in Grail, a monastery with nuns, in Beguiled, a boarding school with a couple of teachers and one rstudent who's rather mature for her age).  It's not hard to see the comic possibilities: in the climax of the Pythons' scene, one of the nuns announces their plans, stating, "And after the spanking, the oral sex!"  The knight replies, "Well, I could stay a bit longer..."

The inherent silliness is not lost on Coppola.  She's included some rather amusing moments in her film, particularly a scene in which the teachers and girls sing to the soldier.  As they beam at him and he smiles right back, there are a million things left unsaid.

And yet this film is actually toned down from the 1971 Clint Eastwood version, which is by all accounts much raunchier.  Even though the 2017 version is the more modern film, it's this one that relies more on meaningful glances.  There's been much discussion of the male gaze in recent years; you could say this film is about the female gaze, and the projections the women put onto the soldier: as a protector, an escape, or perhaps just a night of fun.

Yet apart from this theme and a couple of melodramatic twists that follow the source material, there isn't much to the film.  It's hard to see why Coppola felt a remake was necessary.  Particularly undeveloped are the relationships between the women, which seems like a missed opportunity in light of some juicy assignations that go down late in the film.  A worthwhile remake of this story could be made.  But this isn't it.

The Golden Slumbers Suite

I just got a book of essays on Beatles songs.  I'm doing one on the Golden Slumbers suite, because I can.

I prefer Paul.  I know that this is not the cool answer.  I know that John Lennon was a brilliant songwriter--probably more brilliant than Paul.  I know that I will never be smart enough to appreciate many of Lennon's songs.  I know that the Beatles would not have been a great band without the magic of the Lennon-McCartney collaboration.  I know that they would have been a lot less special with George Harrison.  (I'll put "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" up there with anything they ever did.)  I know that Ringo was fun.

I know that Paul could be maudlin.  Like Brett Favre, who once held the records for most touchdowns and interceptions, they are probably few people in pop history who have written more bad songs than McCartney.  I will forever hold a grudge against him for writing the hideous "Wonderful Christmastime," an insipid ditty for which he's probably made royalties in excess of the annual GDP of some small nations.

But come on.  Just look at this motherfucker's oeuvre.  If he had never written a song after the Beatles split, he would still be one of the greatest pop songwriters of all time.  If he had never written a song until after they split, he would still be on the greatest pop songwriters of all time.  One of my maxims is that songwriters have to keep experimenting to stay vital; basically no one in the pop canon can hold a candle to Macca in that regard.  He still doesn't get enough credit for how much he pushed himself.  From helping create pop's DNA with the Beatles to "Ram" to Wings to electronica to classical, he moved forward over and over instead of resting on his laurels.  Just listen to "Band on the Run," a song that's been played to death and yet still sounds interesting, thanks to Paul's funky detours.

The best part of Dave Grohl's Sound City, in which he records collaborations with pop stars using a famous sound board, is when McCartney, who's there to record "Long Tall Sally" with the surviving members of Nirvana, ditches that plan and says, "That's been done before.  Let's do something new."  They proceed to write "Cut Me Some Slack," five minutes of dumb, fun rock, in a matter of hours.  Grohl says, "If only it were always this easy."  Macca says, "It is."  That's Paul McCartney.

***

So where were we?  Oh, yeah, the Golden Slumbers suite.  Paul promises "I will sing you a lullaby," and boy does he ever.  Yes, it's boring to say it, but the melodies here are gorgeous.  Moreover, it's a nice quick spin through the Beatles' sound at the close of the final album they recorded.  There are guitar solos, horns, a callback to "You Never Give Me Your Money," and vocals from all four members.

Then there are the words.  Another maxim of mine: it's really hard to write lyrics that are profound without sounding silly.  Paul nails it here.  "Once there was a way/To get back homeward" is the perfect line for if your band is breaking up or your partner left you or your job sucks or basically any situation in which you realize that childhood was the best time, dammit, and you didn't appreciate it when you had the chance.  "Boy, you're gonna carry that weight" is a perfect pop juxtaposition, an uplifting melody undercut with melancholy.  You'll never find a better pub singalong.

And then?  "And in the end/The love you take/Is equal to the love/You make."  Would that it were true!  But you have to believe it, at least sometimes, or you'll never make it through your days.  Yes, Lennon was great.  But we needed Paul McCartney.

Don't Think Twice

Many writers have said that they like young characters because they're in their formative years.  They're still figuring out where they want to go, who they want to be with, what they want to do.

But in the 21st century, this process of figuring things out can last well beyond high school and college.  People in their 20s and 30s can now stay single and pursue dream careers that many would have bypassed for family and a "real job" in decades past.  Whether they achieve these dreams, though, is another matter.  "Don't Think Twice" is a movie that expertly explores this dynamic.

The film focuses on an improv comedy group called The Commune.  Its members dream of starring on "Weekend Live" (a very thinly veiled version of "Saturday Night Live").  One of them, Jack, actually does get hired.  The film nicely demonstrates the tension that arises between Jack and his friends in The Commune; they're happy for him, but not as disappointed as they are that they weren't the ones chosen.

Meanwhile, the other members are starting to realize they may never make it.  Miles may not have the talent.  Bill has the talent, but he may never catch his big break.  Allison may not have applied herself enough.  In 2016, you can pursue your dreams unencumbered by the obligation to start a family and settle down.  But success is no more likely than it ever was; it still takes lots of hard work, talent, and luck.

And how do we even define success?  Perhaps the most talented member of The Commune, Samantha, discovers that she loves improv so much that she may not want to give it up for stardom.  As ever, true success is about finding happiness where you are.

Southside With You

The opening credits of "Southside With You," writer-director Richard Tanne's film about the Obamas' first date, are set to Janet Jackson's bombastic "Miss You Much."  The credit font is very '80s, scribbles in hot pink.  The message is clear: this will be a different sort of story about the First Couple, one that brings them back down to earth from the rarefied heights they've reached.

Tanne has compared his film to Richard Linklater's "Before" trilogy.  It's an apt comparison in terms of structure; like those movies, this one follows a couple over the course of a few hours.  But the "Before" characters are fictional.  They can be used as constructs to discuss matters of youth, romance, parenting.  The Obamas are flesh and blood people, and on a first date they spend much of their time recounting biographical details that are already familiar to viewers--or could be easily learned about elsewhere.  Barack's tussling with the ghost of his father is much less resonant in a film when the real one already wrote an entire book on the subject.

Tanne does try to communicate the everyday struggles of a young Barack and Michelle, which mostly center around their challenges as young black lawyers at a prestigious firm dominated by whites.  But he can't resist throwing in a speech to a community group about the diversity of our nation that sounds an awful lot like a warm-up for Barack's 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention.

Tanne's tin ear for dialogue doesn't help.  (After the speech, Michelle says, "Thank you for inviting me.  It's been a while since I've been in contact with real-life issues like that.")  But his bigger problem might be that a movie like this simply isn't worthwhile.  The Obamas aren't some distant figures from history; we already know them quite well.  They appear on late-night talk shows.  They do the Dougie.  They tweet.  They're not even out of the White House yet.  It will be some time before we can say that we miss them much.

Girls, "Love Stories" and "I Love You Baby"

Season finales on "Girls" tend to be happy affairs.  End of season one: Jessa's getting married!  End of season two: Adam saves Hannah!  End of season three: Hannah's going to Iowa!  End of season four: Hannah has a new boyfriend!

The subsequent seasons undermine these apparent happy endings.  Season two revealed Jessa's marriage to be a shitshow.  Season three saw Hannah and Adam drifting apart.  Season four proved that grad school is not a great place for Hannah.  Season five saw the unraveling of Hannah's new relationship.

But the end of season five may finally prove to be a turning point for these girls.  They're finally starting to try new behaviors, instead of just trying new things.

Hannah has a run-in with a friend from college named Tally, played by Jenny Slate.  Slate's appearance is Exhibit A for why I wish this show had more guest stars.  Her monologue on being a successful author is one of the standout moments of the series; in examining how she's become divorced from her own persona, Lena Dunham comes as close as she ever has to capturing the disorienting nature of fame.

Tally is invaluable for Hannah's character arc as well.  As Hannah catches Tally up on all the crazy stuff she's been up to over the course of the series, we start to realize that she's been through a lot in just a couple years.  And she's starting to wise up; she knows not to trust her instinct to try to make Adam and Jessa's lives hell.  Instead, she lets it go, and turns her inner turmoil into a terrific monologue for a podcast.  Maybe all those mistakes we've seen her make were just her way of learning how to be an adult.

Marnie has a breakthrough of her own in the wake of a truly weird sexual dream involving Ray.  Marnie's a strange character, a type-A personality who's been consistently flailing since graduation.  But she's now realizing her problem: she's been pursuing what she thinks will impress other people, rather than following her own muse.  No one's going to be impressed by Ray.  But he makes her happy.

Shoshanna's storyline may be my favorite.  She comes up with a novel strategy to compete with Helvetica, the new coffee shop across the street from Ray's: court the anti-hipster demographic.  "We need to sell coffee to people with jobs" is her hilarious pitch.  And she does it with flair, courting media attention by putting up signs that say things like "Trust the Government."  What I like most about this storyline is that it doesn't involve a boyfriend.  No doubt she'll get a new beau as part of her happy ending next season.  But it's nice to see the show remind us that these girls don't need men to be happy.

And, finally, we come to Jessa.  I may never be totally at peace with the Jessa-Adam relationship.  When it first developed, these were my objections:

1. Hannah was inevitably going to find out and throw yet another temper tantrum.
2. These characters never showed any chemistry before.
3. The whole premise that Jessa doesn't want to upset Hannah is undermined by the fact that Hannah and Jessa never seem to have any positive interactions.
4. Despite the fact that there are 8.4 million people in New York City, "Girls" sometimes seems determined to only pair off its main characters.  Adam has now dated Hannah and Jessa.  Ray has now dated Shoshanna and Marnie.  It's a bit tiring to see them stay within this circle of friends who are "poor and mean," as Elijah memorably put it.

To the writers' credit, they solved the first problem by using the relationship as a springboard to a more mature Hannah.  The other problems are probably unsolvable at this point.  There's a bit of a "wobbling Jenga tower" feel to this show by now.  But it can probably stay up for another season.

Girls, "Homeward Bound"

On one level, you could view "Girls" as an audacious experiment in seeing how unlikable it can make its protagonists.  This may seem like nothing new; we live in the age of TV antiheroes.  But most of those bad boys (and they're mostly boys) are also badasses.  Tony Soprano is charismatic as well as cunning.  Walter White is a monster, but a brilliant one.  Don Draper offers Madison Avenue cool to help disguise his misogyny.

Our four titular girls are not quite so impressive.  True, they may not be wholly off-putting.  Hannah can write and joke, Marnie can sing, Shoshanna is sweet and diligent, and Jessa is the ultimate Cool Girl.  But "Girls" spends far more time focusing on the "warts" part of the "warts and all" equation.  This approach reaches its apotheosis in "Homeward Bound."

Consider the awful behavior on display: Hannah dumps Fran at the outset of their vacation, then sexually assaults and ditches Ray.  Shoshanna does a poor little rich girl routine, whining that she's going to have to go on welfare as she eats sushi.  Jessa is preoccupied with her feud with Hannah as Adam struggles to care for his nephew, who's been abandoned.  Marnie appears reasonable in trying to deal with Desi at a recording session, but their problems are framed as a byproduct of her anger management issues.

What's really amazing about "Homeward Bound" is the gender divide on display.  While the girls are being terrible, the boys are struggling to be decent.  Fran practically begs Hannah to let him give her a ride back to the city.  When she refuses, Ray comes up to get her.  She eventually hitchhikes with still another man, who turns out to be a victim rather than a perpetrator of domestic violence.  Meanwhile, Adam and Laird step up to the plate in caring for poor little Sample while Jessa whines.  Marnie's storyline is the exception that proves the rule: Desi is as terrible as ever, but he's enabled by a new girlfriend whose idea of conflict resolution apparently involves blaming Marnie for everything.

Look, we all know where "Girls" is going.  Our heroines will plunge to new lows, then emerge with a newfound sense of maturity, only to see it tested in the final season and come out stronger than ever.  But do they all have to hit rock bottom at the same time?

Girls, "Hello Kitty"

In my review of the "Girls" season premiere, I discussed how the show can create great moments on the backs of somewhat shaky storylines.  Let's take a look at a few such moments from "Hello Kitty":

Hannah learns of Adam and Jessa's relationship: For me, the most tiresome aspect of the Adam-Jessa tryst is that we knew this moment was coming.  Hannah was going to find out and have yet another meltdown about how the universe was conspiring against her.

But give the show credit: I had expected this moment to come in the season finale.  Instead, it comes in the seventh episode of the season, moving things along more briskly.  Moreover, the moment when Hannah finds out what's been going on is absolutely masterful, a purely cinematic sequence.  There's no dialogue at all, just Hannah looking at a statue representing a rape and murder, then Jessa mooning at Adam, then Adam coolly smoking a cigarette.  The sudden realization that sweeps over Hannah's face is almost Hitchcockian.  (And Jessa's clumsy "Hello/goodbye" to Hannah at the end of the episode--while unusually awkward for the character--is a great example of how this sort of thing would go in real life.)

Elijah learns of Dill's dalliances: While in line for drinks at a swank party thrown by Dill, Elijah meets another of Dill's lovers.  The guest proceeds to inform Elijah of Dill's many boyfriends with such cold-bloodedness that I almost believed he didn't mean any harm, that he assumed Elijah knew the deal.  But given that this is the "Girls" universe, where, as Elijah says, most of the characters are "mean and poor," this has to go down as one of the most deliciously passive-aggressive moves on a show full of them.

Desi returns to Marnie: Just when she thought she was out...he pulled her back in.  Desi is an excellent example of the "Girls" conundrum.  As a reliably narcissistic idiot, he's comic gold:

"We have to get back together!"
"Yeah...wait, you mean the band, right?"
"...yeah, totally."

Hilarious.  But the two-dimensional nature of the character, which makes him so effective from a comic standpoint, also makes him much less interesting from a dramatic one.  We already know what he's going to do: try to get in Marnie's pants.  Perhaps that will involve a reprise of their relationship.  Perhaps that will involve something darker, possibly a sexual assault.  Either way, it's not a great sign when it's this easy to predict where the writing staff is going.

Girls, "The Panic in Central Park"

Standalone episodes for supporting characters seem to be having a moment on TV right now.  "Better Call Saul" and "The Leftovers" have recently used them.  They're following in the footsteps of "Orange is the New Black," which uses flashbacks focusing on characters who mostly stay in the background.  OITNB, in turn, has been building off the lesson of the capital-G Great shows, "The Wire," "The Sopranos," and "Mad Men," all of which featured sprawling casts with interesting players that the writers could drop in on from time to time.  Supporting characters may not be able to carry their own show, but they're often interesting enough to merit their own episode.

I was particularly excited to learn that this episode would focus on Marnie.  She's my favorite character on the "Girls," mostly for comedic reasons.  Marnface is simply hilarious; she lacks so much self awareness that she once sang "I'm not aware of too many things" for a music video which she then immortalized on YouTube.

However, "The Panic in Central Park" focuses on Marnie from a dramatic standpoint, which is probably a wise move.  She's interesting from this perspective as well: she probably got better grades than any of the other three titular characters--and she's certainly the prettiest--but she has made less progress than any of them toward where she wants to be in life.

After another absurd meltdown by Desi in their cramped apartment, Marnie goes for a walk and runs into her ex, Charlie.  This was quite a surprise: Christopher Abbott left the show shortly before the third season started shooting, leaving the producers scrambling.  When Marnie asks why the hell he left and he responds that he was going through some issues, it feels like the show is getting something off its chest.

Charlie has changed a lot.  Some of it is superficial--he's bearded, tanned, and tattooed--but he's also acting differently.  Eventually we learn that he's a heroin addict, which the show does a nice job of slowly teasing out.  He's impulsive.  He goes to the bathroom a lot.  He deals cocaine.  He lives in a crappy apartment in a bad neighborhood.  When the big reveal finally comes, the show does a nice job of underplaying it.  Marnie simply walks out, which feels more true to life than the kind of melodramatic confrontation that would typically come on a TV show.

Luckily for her, Marnie spends a night with Charlie before learning of his habit, because she gains some much-needed perspective from him.  He teaches her to go with the flow, to not try to change people.  Most importantly, he reminds her that she can change her life whenever she wants.  When he fantasizes about running a store with her, she seriously considers the idea.  And while she's too uptight to drop everything and move away, she does muster up the strength to ditch that awful husband of her's.

All in all, a terrific episode.  One quibble, though: since when does using heroin lead to weight gain?

Girls, "Queen for Two Days"

"Girls" typically has at least one episode per season where the humor runs a little broader.  With Shoshanna exploring the Hello Kitty playground that is Japan and Hannah and her mom going to a "Spring Queening" retreat, "Queen for Two Days" is absolutely that episode.  The tiresome Jessa-Adam storyline even has a nice comic moment as Adam, following Jessa's instructions, pretends he forgot to pull out.  ("Coach is gonna kill me!")

Unfortunately, for some reason these sillier episodes tend to be more on-the-nose in their messaging.  Do we really need Shoshanna's ex-boss to tell us that Japan offers valuable life lessons?  Or one of the older women at the retreat to lament that she'd love a gay husband?

Still, "Queen for Two Days" has some worthwhile moments.  We eventually learn that, despite putting on a brave face, Shoshanna is actually miserable in Japan.  It makes sense that she'd feel out of sorts.  While someone like Jessa would just accept the differences and roll with it, Shoshanna is too rigid for that.

Meanwhile, Hannah's mother faces an interesting choice.  With lengthening lifespans, divorce is becoming more common for people approaching retirement.  But with age comes the knowledge that it's unwise to expect too much from love.  Hannah's dad may be gay, but he's great at Scrabble and can do a mean Chris Rock impression.  Sometimes settling is the wisest path.

Girls, "Old Loves"

The fourth episode of a "Girls" season has typically been a significant one.  (This was most notable in season 2, when "It's a Shame About Ray" pulled things together after the show had been floundering.) Given that this is a half-hour show with a lot of dramatic elements, it makes sense that it would take time for it to build to a crescendo.

But the crescendo doesn't mean much if the tune is no good.  This fourth episode does build to a climactic montage, but the centerpiece of it is the consummation of the frustrating Adam-Jessa relationship.  Although their sex is endearingly awkward, having both characters say "I've wanted this for a long time" doesn't make it any more believable.

As the title "Old Loves" implies, most of the rest of the episode is concerned with showing cracks in the facades of more developed relationships.  Fresh off their battle over nude selfies, Hannah and Fran have a prickly argument over grading.  Fran rather presumptuously starts marking up the grammar on one of Hannah's student's papers, showing an irritating type-A side to his personality.  Hannah, of course, does not respond well.  Rather than make an excuse  ("I spilled coffee on it!") and ask the student for another copy, she drags the poor young pupil into her boyfriend drama.

Hannah is told that she just needs to work things out by Marnie, who's having her own problems in her new marriage.  (This is the one terrific moment of the episode: we're always projecting our own situations onto the issues of others.)  Marnie is deluding herself that her marriage will work if she tries to be the bigger person.  But she's already the bigger person.  The imbalance between her and Desi has never been more clear.  Marnie has the fundamental tools, the drive and intelligence, to succeed.  She's just making bad choices right now.  Desi, on the other hand, is simply a fuck up, as demonstrated by his meltdown over the $3,000 wall he attempted to put up in their tiny apartment.

Perhaps an even bigger imbalance exists between Elijah and his new celebrity beau Dill.  Dill makes a (rather too) unsubtle threat about crossing him, and then more or less uses him as a sex toy in bed.  As Elijah looks at the gorgeous view from Dill's apartment, it's already clear that he'll be facing a Faustian dilemma.  Should he give up on love and do it (literally) for the money?

That kind of problem highlights one of the disappointments of "Girls": it hasn't done much to tackle the financial struggles of millenials.  The major conflict of the pilot is Hannah's quest to get more money from her parents, yet the show has rarely been interested in the challenges of paying the rent.  The characters' jobs only come up when it becomes convenient from a plot standpoint.  (Shoshanna's recent firing, for example, is designed to set up a love triangle, not put her in dire financial straits, though that may be a side effect.)  The show has barely tried to explain how Elijah, Marnie, and Desi make it in what may be the most expensive city in human history.  Jessa's sudden allusion to her "studies"--without even spending 10 seconds of expository dialogue to explain just what those are--shows how blinkered this show can be.

Girls, "Japan"

"What a breath of fresh air!" thought Shoshanna, and probably all "Girls" viewers, as she steps out to her commute in the Land of the Rising Sun.  This show has explored a small slice of New York life for such a long time that any new settings and characters that mix things up are welcome.

And there's more than just the novelty of loudly colored apartments and sauna breaks at work here.  Shoshanna's time in Japan gives the show the opportunity to explore what can get lost in translation.  Both literally, as she and Yoshi struggle to communicate in broken English, and figuratively, as Shoshanna deals with Japanese assumptions about American girls.  (Just as Americans make assumptions about those abroad.)  But in spite of Yoshi's friends' best efforts to treat Shosh as a slut at a BDSM club, these two connect just as any two people might in any culture.  Some things, thankfully, are universal.

And some things are just universal on TV shows.  "I'm not doing the 'Will they or won't they?' thing," Jessa insists.  But referencing the trope you're using doesn't make it feel any less tired.  As Jessa and Adam review his performance on a show in the vein of "Law and Order" and make cute eyes at one another, it's depressing to see these prickly characters pushed into the same old familiar boxes.  Thankfully, they can't be totally contained.  Adam's performance on the show-within-the-show really is good.  (While at the same time slightly hilarious, as Lucy Liu tells him, "Brother, we're both from the streets.")  And his little awkward dance after Jessa leaves is a marvel.  The man continues to push the limits of what acting in a conventional TV show can be.

Meanwhile, you're not going to believe this, but we've got a storyline about how selfish and unreasonable Hannah is!  After she discovers pictures of naked women on Jake's phone, it seems for a thrilling moment that Jake is going to turn out to have a creepy dark side.  But it turns out he just needs masturbation material and is morally opposed to porn.  (Hannah has taken her own nude selfies, but she strikes an awkward pose, as she demonstrates in an amusing photo shoot with Ray and Elijah.)  This is a profoundly first-world problem.  But I suspect that there is more to Jake's collection than he's letting on.  Here's hoping that it leads to a discussion of monogamy as a construct, as Marnie puts it.

Girls, "Good Man"

Any show fortunate to live a long life is going to have some episodes that feel pretty inconsequential.  It's inevitable: more than 20 hours into a show, particularly a relatively light one like "Girls," not everything is going to feel like compelling drama.

Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner, the cowriters of "Good Man," come up with a pretty good solution to this problem: they throw a ton of stuff at the audience so that the energy never flags.  (Now we know why last week's episode felt like a cost-cutter, neglecting to show any of the non-principal wedding guests.  This week is bursting at the seams with characters.  All those actors didn't come cheap.)

Fran moves in with Hannah after his roommate experiences a psychotic break.  Hannah teaches Phillip Roth to eighth-graders, which is just a prelude to her helping her dad through the aftermath of an awkward sexual encounter.  Adam visits his niece, which is just a prelude to him continuing his courtship of Jessa.  Elijah gets a new suitor, who just happens to be a famous news anchor.

The strongest of these storylines is Hannah's time with her father.  Up until now, the "Hannah's dad is gay" subplot has mostly been used for jokes about how Hannah doesn't want to hear her parents talk about icky sex stuff.  But "Good Man" moves things into more dramatic territory.  Hannah meets her dad's new fling and learns that he's a pretty nice guy.  She takes a stormy phone call from her mother, who's demanding a divorce.  These developments are forcing Hannah to view her parents as the messy, flawed human beings they are.  It's a tough lesson that people tend to learn as they start treating their parents as peers rather than authority figures.

Unfortunately, the other material here just doesn't measure up.  Adam and Jessa's developing relationship continues to make no sense.  Wouldn't these two have hooked up already if they had such a strong connection?  Even leaving that aside, their day spent mooning over each other at a carnival didn't feel true to these characters.  Adam and Jessa are both impulsive people making a bad decision.  This feels like the kind of fling where two people suddenly collide and then instantly regret it, not something that would develop through puppy dog love.

Meanwhile, Ray faces stiff competition from a neighboring coffee shop.  This thread isn't completely devoid of worthwhile material.  Helvetica is a pretty great name for an annoying store.  And Ray's confrontation with a barista of ambiguous gender is a great illustration of a peril of living in New York.  But this feels like a rerun of Ray's storyline from last season, in which he got pissed off about something and found a way to take action.  Will Ray use his political muscle to force Helvetica to use lids?  I may need some coffee to stay awake for this storyline.

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...