‘Girls’ Creator Lena Dunham Responds to Season 2 Sex Scene Controversies

Not that HBO's 'Girls' didn't already court its fair share of controversy, but the Lena Dunham-scripted series took an exceptional amount of criticism this past season for sex scenes between Dunham's character Hannah and guest star Patrick Wilson, as well as those between star Adam Driver and guest Shiri Appleby. With production on 'Girls' season 3 underway, Dunham has issued her own responses to the criticism, calling one scene a "terrible miscommunication."

Whatever your stance on HBO dramedy 'Girls' and its unique approach to defining women, few would argue that the multiple sex scenes across the second season raised more than a few eyebrows. For one, largely self-contained episode "One Man's Trash" featured Hannah losing herself in a two-day sex-filled romp with a divorced Brooklyn doctor (Patrick Wilson), in an unlikely pairing many fans and critics called "unrealistic."

Speaking to the LA Times, Dunham addressed the controversy's inherent misogyny, pointing out that the either character would have been open to the experience. "Can you not imagine a world in which a girl who's sexually down for anything and oddly gregarious pulls a guy out of his shell for two days?", Dunham asked. "They're not getting married. They're spending two days [having sex], which is something that people do."

Much more controversial was a later sex scene between masculine oddball Adam (Adam Driver) and Shiri Appleby's cahracter Natalia, which had many questioning the issue of forced consent and the scene's graphic climax. Dunham insisted the scene needed a certain visceral quality that illustrated Natalia's humiliation, though not quite as non-consensually as intended.

Did what Adam do constitute rape? That's hard for me to answer. But I don't think Adam is a villain. If he thought he had even touched the R-word, he would be unable to live. To me, it seemed like a terrible miscommunication between two people who didn't know what they really wanted.

The third season of HBO's 'Girls,' tentatively set for a January 2014 premiere will surely bring its own set of controversy, but in the meantime what say you? Is Dunham right to defend some of the more questionable sex scenes of the previous season? What would you like to see from 'Girls' season 3 next year?