If there’s one thing missing from this season of Girls, it’s Shoshanna. She dragged Elijah and Jessa to a WeMun party back in episode two, but we’ve neither seen nor heard from her much at all since then. She’s not involved in Hannah’s pregnancy arc or Marnie’s collapsing relationship with Desi. Sure, Shoshanna got to hang out with Ray last week, but he quickly forgot about her to hang out with her former boss, Abigail, and ride a carousel.
As we’ve been missing Shoshanna, and Zosia Mamet’s perfectly oblivious line readings, Vulture decided to do a little math. According to our breakdown, Shosh has spent only 19 minutes onscreen this season, the least of any major character on Girls, behind even Desi. Elijah, who’s come into the spotlight thanks to his big audition episode, has gotten the second most screen time this season, though of course Hannah spends almost three times as much time onscreen as anyone else (the bottle episode really helped, as did the season premiere, where Hannah spent a lot of time alone with Riz Ahmed).
Where has Shoshanna been all this time? We can only imagine. Like everyone aside from Hannah, she didn’t appear in episode three, but she was also absent from episodes six and seven, and only got a minute and a half and a minute of screen time in episodes four and five respectively. Desi, at least, got a big breakdown to play in episode two. Shosh hasn’t done much since she returned from Japan, and that was last season.
Hopefully she gets something to do in Girls’ final stretch. According to show’s cast, Shoshanna’s supposed to have matured the most of any of the characters on the show by the end of the series. “All of the other girls’ experiences, collectively, are so fucked up it really scares her straight,†Zosia Mamet told Vulture. Allison Williams, meanwhile, said, “She learned from her mistakes. She watched all of us flail against the world and was the only character that was capable of learning from the mistakes that people made around her. She’s the least narcissistic.†Girls has two episodes left to provide Shoshanna with that sudden burst of emotional maturity. We humbly suggest that one be dedicated to her tearing each and every one of her friends apart, the way drunk Shoshanna did in “Beach House.â€
Research by Lena Rawley and Jake Nevins.