Shoshanna Shapiro

Shoshanna is Jessa's younger cousin, a chattering NYU student whose bedroom is a shrine to self-help books and Sex and the City reruns. She talks in fast, run-on bursts, narrates her own life like a magazine quiz, and is navigating her virginity and her twenties with an anxious, eager-to-please brightness.

She's the show's jolt of manic optimism, dropped among cynics who've stopped believing effort pays off. Mamet plays her chatter with real comic precision, so the motormouth reads as nerves rather than shtick. Shoshanna says the naive thing out loud, and the writing lets that naivety occasionally be the wisest voice in the room.