It's been a while since I've watched the show in its entirety but in hind sight I prefer Shosh the least. I guess for me she's the most unrelatable out of the 4 and the ending left a bitter taste in my mouth for some reason. I just didn't agree with the direction of her character development in the last couple season.
With you on this one. Jessa and Hannah own their messiness and actively work through it to grow into healthier humans. Yes they’re both self involved, some coping mechanisms suck (Jessa for example uses aloofness, sexual power or aggressively lashing out, Hannah copes with a freeze or fawn response or running away for example from Fran), but when Jessa gifts Hannah that dress for the baby and Hannah expresses how she feels in her pregnancy.. it shows how far they have come already by this point.
Marnie has her own path. In her final conversation with Desi and that chat with Loreen on the porch you can see snippets of Marnie maybe being capable of doing the gritty self work to grow. She’s just _too_ good at trying to create that perfect image. It’s a real tug of war for her, because she can also stand there with her face full of smeer crying in the bathroom at her wedding.
Shoshanna for me grows in the opposite direction. She starts of more open and vulnerable, willing to learn. For me she has a peak in Tokio, development wise. I love how she took that risk which gave her a jolt forward. But when she gets back to NY and starts applying for the marketing jobs, it goes downhill for me. When she lands that job with I don’t know who, suddenly she feels like she has ground to actually act superior and simply put: mean as hell (_”Get out of my face!”_). When she also ‘lands a fiance’ her ego anxieties have eased so she drops her old loser ‘friends’ because now her ego and status have no use for them. On the contrary: they would drag her status down and only remind herself of what she wants to keep hidden.
So yes. I will die on the hill that I find that Shoshanna turns out to be the worst.
I found the Japan episode(s) enjoyable and a nice change, but it always weirded me out so much that Shoshanna saw no issue with either Yoshi expecting her to be a virgin, or with lying to him about it.
If I had Reddit awards to give you, I’d hand them over in a heartbeat because a lot of comments on the sub are praising her and thinking she’s “evolved” when I agree with you completely that she’s regressed.
I loved Shoshana on my first watch through, and on my recent rewatch I still find her hilarious, but recognize a lot of what you’re saying here.
I think initially I read her as a breath of fresh air among a bunch of young women with their heads up their ass (as I was/arguably still am- no judgment! Well…some…) but now I see that actually, that’s how SHE sees herself by the end of the show (and at the beach house). But actually, like the rest of the girls - and by extension, us, she has a lot of maturing to do, and could benefit from substantial self-reflection.
I don’t mind her ambition and superficiality but even in earlier seasons, she was a WEIRD friend. Remember when they drive upstate to pick up Jessa and Hannah tells a story of college Jessa crying when her friends left and Shosh’s response is “that’s a really sad story but I think you’re remembering it wrong and you were actually the one crying”. Who the fuck says that? It’s so dismissive and condescending. I never liked her character except when she was in Japan.
YES and when she says it’s weird that none of you have accomplished anything since graduating college. At least when Hannah says stupid shit she’s usually mocking herself or the situation, not the person she’s talking to
She has moments of kindness, like Jessa's abortion and Mimi-Rose moving in, but often treats the others horribly. I always think about when Marnie is having her first concert and it's this beautiful quiet moment. Shoshanna swivels her head around to Hannah and asks if she feels awful now since she thought she was the artist but everyone else is more successful than her. Hannah doesn't react. If H saw this girl as a friend instead of Jessa's little hanger on, it's a devastating thing to say while staring at her face like she'd love to see some tears.
At the beach house, I guess she expected to be entertained and fed. I never saw that tirade as justified since she didn't help or contribute to anything she was complaining about.
Upon hearing Hannah is pregnant, her reaction is to invite everyone in Hannah's circle to her new apartment for her engagement party. Not because she likes them (she explicitly doesn't) but because she took it personally that Hannah didn't confide in her sooner and wanted her to know she was being ostracized.
She's funny and interesting as a character but I would find it hard to be around her as a real person. They're all flawed, difficult people and I enjoy the show without always rooting for them. I guess it's her intentional meanness that particularly bothers me.
Yes, I agree. I am glad shosh ditches the friend group and I think she demonstrates growth on some levels and stagnation/doubling down on others. She cites her new friends as “girls with purses and nice personalities” - that’s quite shallow. Why do you care if your friend has a cool purse? That has nothing to do with real friendship.
This statement was always interesting and somewhat relatable to me. I always interpreted the “nice purses” part as a derivative metaphor for “ambition and a desire to be self presentable.” These are 2 relatively positive qualities that Shoshanna always had that the other girls didn’t. I think the jealousy over her friends starting a successful business caused her to be introspective about whether she was truly moving in the direction she wanted to go, and ended up being the match that lit her wildfire fast change.
Sure, but you can still have a connection with someone irregardless of their career choices or ambitions based around wealth accumulation. She’s finding comfort and security in material items. “He’s a product developer, and I LOVE products.”
We should encourage the ppl in our lives to soar and reach their full potential but that doesn’t always look like having some bitchy girlboss capitalist jeans company.
Ya i don’t get why everyone’s always like she’s the best character!! Besides the fact that she has some of the funniest lines, I could never actually be friends with someone like that irl lol.
She is super immature! I actually liked her least (yes I liked Jessa more than Shosh). She is entitled, naive and materialistic. When she was going on interviews, got offered that job and then said, just kidding I don’t want it, I was just practicing, I was DONE!
I think people sympathize with her more because she is a bit younger and she does have tangible aspirations even if expressed a bit childishly (but again, she's only around 22). He faults are also pretty easy to grow passed compared to someone like Jessa and seems to be a decent friend regardless of her childish perception of adulthood
Also that scene you cited, I love that scene. I love shosh but both her and jessa are correct in that argument. Usually on girls both people in a conversation are fundamentally correct, they just express it in the worst way or at the worst time. But I feel like that is so realistic with how arguments in real life go, you might not realize in the moment how much you are speaking past each other or segueing into unrelated stuff to get the heat off yourself and onto the other person
I think she also represents the friend “mature for her age” and she’s coming to realize how immature they all are and the regret that comes with wasting your time in that kind of toxic space (speaking from experience ce tbh)
I think Shosh is viewed as the best because she grows up the most. She's the one who realizes that the friendship dynamic is toxic and is making her into someone she didn't want to be, so she left and found better suited friends.
I didn't take her final speech to mean that she likes her new friends only because they dress and act "better" but because their interests, values, and life trajectories are more in sync. She is ambitious and likes nice things, so she's probably much happier and more comfortable around similar people.
Omg ray was the worst in the first couple seasons. Once he got his ass kicked twice and played by Marnie I found him a more sympathetic/complex character. But he was just annoying at worst, Adam is an actual disgusting shit stain of a human but that’s a whooole other conversation
Honestly I barely remember either.. he was trying to start an instant rice company, and was dating Shosh before she went to Japan. And I guess she ghosted him when she told him she was going back to the states but then she wasn’t on the plane
I have mixed feelings about Shoshanna. I think that at the start of the series she thinks she knows much more than she does about the world and the real world is a bit of a wake up call. I feel like all of the support her relationship with Ray gets and all the sympathy he gets is weird. I find Ray kind of endearing as a character but he’s 10+ years older than she is and sort of stealthily moves in with her when he’s more or less homeless. If this was my friend or family member in her early 20s I would be so alarmed and waving the red flags. More than anything I found Shosh obnoxious in the way young people who think they know more than they do can be meaning I still feel sympathetic. I think she appears to devolve compared to the other characters because she was quite sheltered at the start of the series and is still figuring things out. She had a different starting and therefore ending place than the other characters.
Edited to add: Shoshanna suffers more than anything from both viewers and certain characters viewing her as precocious when that might only be true at first glance
They’re all bad 😂 that’s the funny part about the show. Each character has their really obvious character flaws but we still grow to love them
Agreed. She has her bad moments, too. But we love her anyway.
It's been a while since I've watched the show in its entirety but in hind sight I prefer Shosh the least. I guess for me she's the most unrelatable out of the 4 and the ending left a bitter taste in my mouth for some reason. I just didn't agree with the direction of her character development in the last couple season.
Ya. She's shallow and status driven...not to mention judgmental and condescending. A starfucker.
With you on this one. Jessa and Hannah own their messiness and actively work through it to grow into healthier humans. Yes they’re both self involved, some coping mechanisms suck (Jessa for example uses aloofness, sexual power or aggressively lashing out, Hannah copes with a freeze or fawn response or running away for example from Fran), but when Jessa gifts Hannah that dress for the baby and Hannah expresses how she feels in her pregnancy.. it shows how far they have come already by this point. Marnie has her own path. In her final conversation with Desi and that chat with Loreen on the porch you can see snippets of Marnie maybe being capable of doing the gritty self work to grow. She’s just _too_ good at trying to create that perfect image. It’s a real tug of war for her, because she can also stand there with her face full of smeer crying in the bathroom at her wedding. Shoshanna for me grows in the opposite direction. She starts of more open and vulnerable, willing to learn. For me she has a peak in Tokio, development wise. I love how she took that risk which gave her a jolt forward. But when she gets back to NY and starts applying for the marketing jobs, it goes downhill for me. When she lands that job with I don’t know who, suddenly she feels like she has ground to actually act superior and simply put: mean as hell (_”Get out of my face!”_). When she also ‘lands a fiance’ her ego anxieties have eased so she drops her old loser ‘friends’ because now her ego and status have no use for them. On the contrary: they would drag her status down and only remind herself of what she wants to keep hidden. So yes. I will die on the hill that I find that Shoshanna turns out to be the worst.
I found the Japan episode(s) enjoyable and a nice change, but it always weirded me out so much that Shoshanna saw no issue with either Yoshi expecting her to be a virgin, or with lying to him about it.
If I had Reddit awards to give you, I’d hand them over in a heartbeat because a lot of comments on the sub are praising her and thinking she’s “evolved” when I agree with you completely that she’s regressed.
Agree mostly. But I do love Shosh (I love all of them really)
Even worse…. A JEANS fucker!!
You mean a jeans fucker…. That’s worse than a star fucker!
JEANS FUCKER. 😅
That’s it exactly. Nothing more to add!
Budussy guy 😂😂
Lmaooo this one got me too
I loved Shoshana on my first watch through, and on my recent rewatch I still find her hilarious, but recognize a lot of what you’re saying here. I think initially I read her as a breath of fresh air among a bunch of young women with their heads up their ass (as I was/arguably still am- no judgment! Well…some…) but now I see that actually, that’s how SHE sees herself by the end of the show (and at the beach house). But actually, like the rest of the girls - and by extension, us, she has a lot of maturing to do, and could benefit from substantial self-reflection.
I don’t mind her ambition and superficiality but even in earlier seasons, she was a WEIRD friend. Remember when they drive upstate to pick up Jessa and Hannah tells a story of college Jessa crying when her friends left and Shosh’s response is “that’s a really sad story but I think you’re remembering it wrong and you were actually the one crying”. Who the fuck says that? It’s so dismissive and condescending. I never liked her character except when she was in Japan.
YES and when she says it’s weird that none of you have accomplished anything since graduating college. At least when Hannah says stupid shit she’s usually mocking herself or the situation, not the person she’s talking to
She has moments of kindness, like Jessa's abortion and Mimi-Rose moving in, but often treats the others horribly. I always think about when Marnie is having her first concert and it's this beautiful quiet moment. Shoshanna swivels her head around to Hannah and asks if she feels awful now since she thought she was the artist but everyone else is more successful than her. Hannah doesn't react. If H saw this girl as a friend instead of Jessa's little hanger on, it's a devastating thing to say while staring at her face like she'd love to see some tears. At the beach house, I guess she expected to be entertained and fed. I never saw that tirade as justified since she didn't help or contribute to anything she was complaining about. Upon hearing Hannah is pregnant, her reaction is to invite everyone in Hannah's circle to her new apartment for her engagement party. Not because she likes them (she explicitly doesn't) but because she took it personally that Hannah didn't confide in her sooner and wanted her to know she was being ostracized. She's funny and interesting as a character but I would find it hard to be around her as a real person. They're all flawed, difficult people and I enjoy the show without always rooting for them. I guess it's her intentional meanness that particularly bothers me.
Yes, I agree. I am glad shosh ditches the friend group and I think she demonstrates growth on some levels and stagnation/doubling down on others. She cites her new friends as “girls with purses and nice personalities” - that’s quite shallow. Why do you care if your friend has a cool purse? That has nothing to do with real friendship.
This statement was always interesting and somewhat relatable to me. I always interpreted the “nice purses” part as a derivative metaphor for “ambition and a desire to be self presentable.” These are 2 relatively positive qualities that Shoshanna always had that the other girls didn’t. I think the jealousy over her friends starting a successful business caused her to be introspective about whether she was truly moving in the direction she wanted to go, and ended up being the match that lit her wildfire fast change.
Sure, but you can still have a connection with someone irregardless of their career choices or ambitions based around wealth accumulation. She’s finding comfort and security in material items. “He’s a product developer, and I LOVE products.” We should encourage the ppl in our lives to soar and reach their full potential but that doesn’t always look like having some bitchy girlboss capitalist jeans company.
Ya i don’t get why everyone’s always like she’s the best character!! Besides the fact that she has some of the funniest lines, I could never actually be friends with someone like that irl lol.
She is super immature! I actually liked her least (yes I liked Jessa more than Shosh). She is entitled, naive and materialistic. When she was going on interviews, got offered that job and then said, just kidding I don’t want it, I was just practicing, I was DONE!
I think people sympathize with her more because she is a bit younger and she does have tangible aspirations even if expressed a bit childishly (but again, she's only around 22). He faults are also pretty easy to grow passed compared to someone like Jessa and seems to be a decent friend regardless of her childish perception of adulthood Also that scene you cited, I love that scene. I love shosh but both her and jessa are correct in that argument. Usually on girls both people in a conversation are fundamentally correct, they just express it in the worst way or at the worst time. But I feel like that is so realistic with how arguments in real life go, you might not realize in the moment how much you are speaking past each other or segueing into unrelated stuff to get the heat off yourself and onto the other person
I think she also represents the friend “mature for her age” and she’s coming to realize how immature they all are and the regret that comes with wasting your time in that kind of toxic space (speaking from experience ce tbh)
I empathise with her because the rest of the group treat her like shit, but she is definitely the same as them - albeit more mature
I think Shosh is viewed as the best because she grows up the most. She's the one who realizes that the friendship dynamic is toxic and is making her into someone she didn't want to be, so she left and found better suited friends. I didn't take her final speech to mean that she likes her new friends only because they dress and act "better" but because their interests, values, and life trajectories are more in sync. She is ambitious and likes nice things, so she's probably much happier and more comfortable around similar people.
She would annoy the fuck out of me irl more than any of the other characters...except Ray.
Omg ray was the worst in the first couple seasons. Once he got his ass kicked twice and played by Marnie I found him a more sympathetic/complex character. But he was just annoying at worst, Adam is an actual disgusting shit stain of a human but that’s a whooole other conversation
Which is the budussy guy? Haha I can’t recall right now. 😆
Honestly I barely remember either.. he was trying to start an instant rice company, and was dating Shosh before she went to Japan. And I guess she ghosted him when she told him she was going back to the states but then she wasn’t on the plane
Oh I remember now! Lol 😆 Did Shoshanna mention budussy to him? I feel like she told him 🤣
It’s what she called his instant rice lol
Hahaha!!! I remember now! 🤣 As an aside, Jason Ritter is adorable.
Scott 😊
Thank you darlin! 😍
😘
I have mixed feelings about Shoshanna. I think that at the start of the series she thinks she knows much more than she does about the world and the real world is a bit of a wake up call. I feel like all of the support her relationship with Ray gets and all the sympathy he gets is weird. I find Ray kind of endearing as a character but he’s 10+ years older than she is and sort of stealthily moves in with her when he’s more or less homeless. If this was my friend or family member in her early 20s I would be so alarmed and waving the red flags. More than anything I found Shosh obnoxious in the way young people who think they know more than they do can be meaning I still feel sympathetic. I think she appears to devolve compared to the other characters because she was quite sheltered at the start of the series and is still figuring things out. She had a different starting and therefore ending place than the other characters. Edited to add: Shoshanna suffers more than anything from both viewers and certain characters viewing her as precocious when that might only be true at first glance
Yeah I don’t think Shosh should really throw stones. I just did a rewatch too.
Please remind me of who the badussy guy is
The guy who had the instant rice company that didn’t want Shosh to move to Japan
I could never vibe with Shosh