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| Left to right: Lena Dunham, Becky Ann Baker, and Peter Scolari |
Welcome back to the TV Recap column for the Golden Globe-winning HBO series Girls. Join me as I capture the exploits of the Lena Dunham-penned series as it ventures through another season of scandal, accidents, and life in general. Will it be another great season for the Tiny Furniture director and her growing cast of friends? Tune back every Friday to find out more.
One of the fascinating things about Girls this season is that it manages to bounce back and forth between abysmal stories and ones that really capture new highs. Last week's "Video Games" was an episode that I initially was fine with, but the further that I looked into it, the more that Jessa shouting "I'm the child" just began to bug me. I wanted momentum in the story, and now we were on the second in the season where absolutely nothing really advanced. However, with "It's Back," the series crams almost everything it should have put into other episodes into one wallop of an episode to the point that I would argue that "One Man's Trash" is officially the most useless episode the show has ever produced.
The world begins as it should be. Adam (Adam Driver) is waking up to head out to rehab. Hannah (Lena Dunham) is paranoid when he receives a call from Adam, thus forcing her to count to eight as she looks over her shoulders and runs into a convenience store to hide from him. Marnie (Allison Williams), Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet), and Ray (Alex Karpovsky) are out talking in the park when a lot is revealed. Marnie discovers that Charlie (Christopher Abbott) is a successful app creator and that Shoshanna is invited to Radhika's (Anjili Pal) party, even though Ray thinks that it is below her.
At a rehab meeting, probably the first in awhile for Adam, he opens up about his relationship with Hannah and how he wasn't quite sure if he ever loved her. He claims that he just wanted someone to teach everything to and when she turned on him, it just drove him nuts. This eventually gets out to fellow rehab member Cloris (Carol Kane), who is charmed by Adam's demeanor and considers him a nice man. She tells him to call her daughter for a date, which he nervously does while openly admitting that he is somewhat of a creep.
Marnie decides to visit Charlie at his big office. There she discovers that the app is called Forbid and is based around a call blocking system for people that they don't want to talk to. It costs money to call. Marnie is impressed until Charlie admits that it was largely based around their break-up. Of course, this gets Marnie all bummed out and contemplating why she is failing and Charlie, who doesn't have anything together, is succeeding. After a conversation with Ray, her desire to become a singer becomes known, and Ray wants to help her live her life accordingly.
Meanwhile, Hannah is meeting up with her parents (Becky Ann Baker and Peter Scolari) for dinner and a performance by Judy Collins. Hannah is acting all paranoid, and her parents suspect that she is relapsing into OCD behavior from her childhood. She denies it, but still counts to eight whenever something happens that seems odd. During Collins' set, Hannah runs to the bathroom and does numerous procedures involving the number eight. This eventually convinces her parents that she needs to see her therapist.
Adam is out on a date with Cloris' daughter Natalia (Shiri Appleby). The two are getting along and even though Adam is somewhat of a creep, he is having a fun time. Meanwhile, Shoshanna goes to Radhika's party only to lose interest when Radhika complains about something very mundane. As she leaves, she begins talking to the bellhop in the lobby Steve (Kareem Savinon) about how she isn't a party girl. Just like that, she is making out with him.
The episode ends with the Horvath family taking Hannah to see her therapist (Bob Balaban). Everything begins to make sense. Hannah has had this condition since she was very young. She would stay up late moving everyone's toothbrushes 64 times and going to bed at 3 AM. Hannah is so stressed out that almost everything she has done in the episode has been done in increments of eight. She eventually tries to side with the doctor to just tell her parents that she is all right in order to get her parents off of her back. The Horvaths leave on the subway, not entirely revealing what will happen next.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
What is with this show? Some weeks, it is spot on and moves the story in far more interesting directions while others see it just meander? I really feel like if there is a fault to this season that wasn't apparent in the last, it is consistent momentum forward. Where "the Return" felt like a novelty episode, which even then had continuity in the last five minutes, "One Man's Trash" was meant to establish Hannah as this desperate young soul who needed help. However, since that incident, we have better understood why Hannah is so stressed out, and it didn't take 30 minutes to tell us that.
The world begins as it should be. Adam (Adam Driver) is waking up to head out to rehab. Hannah (Lena Dunham) is paranoid when he receives a call from Adam, thus forcing her to count to eight as she looks over her shoulders and runs into a convenience store to hide from him. Marnie (Allison Williams), Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet), and Ray (Alex Karpovsky) are out talking in the park when a lot is revealed. Marnie discovers that Charlie (Christopher Abbott) is a successful app creator and that Shoshanna is invited to Radhika's (Anjili Pal) party, even though Ray thinks that it is below her.
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| Adam Driver |
Marnie decides to visit Charlie at his big office. There she discovers that the app is called Forbid and is based around a call blocking system for people that they don't want to talk to. It costs money to call. Marnie is impressed until Charlie admits that it was largely based around their break-up. Of course, this gets Marnie all bummed out and contemplating why she is failing and Charlie, who doesn't have anything together, is succeeding. After a conversation with Ray, her desire to become a singer becomes known, and Ray wants to help her live her life accordingly.
Meanwhile, Hannah is meeting up with her parents (Becky Ann Baker and Peter Scolari) for dinner and a performance by Judy Collins. Hannah is acting all paranoid, and her parents suspect that she is relapsing into OCD behavior from her childhood. She denies it, but still counts to eight whenever something happens that seems odd. During Collins' set, Hannah runs to the bathroom and does numerous procedures involving the number eight. This eventually convinces her parents that she needs to see her therapist.
Adam is out on a date with Cloris' daughter Natalia (Shiri Appleby). The two are getting along and even though Adam is somewhat of a creep, he is having a fun time. Meanwhile, Shoshanna goes to Radhika's party only to lose interest when Radhika complains about something very mundane. As she leaves, she begins talking to the bellhop in the lobby Steve (Kareem Savinon) about how she isn't a party girl. Just like that, she is making out with him.
The episode ends with the Horvath family taking Hannah to see her therapist (Bob Balaban). Everything begins to make sense. Hannah has had this condition since she was very young. She would stay up late moving everyone's toothbrushes 64 times and going to bed at 3 AM. Hannah is so stressed out that almost everything she has done in the episode has been done in increments of eight. She eventually tries to side with the doctor to just tell her parents that she is all right in order to get her parents off of her back. The Horvaths leave on the subway, not entirely revealing what will happen next.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
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| Left to right: Allison Williams, Zosia Mamet, and Alex Karpovsky |
Since "One Man's Trash," we have had the book deal and somehow that has lead to her OCD of counting things out eight times. I will forgive "Video Games" on account that we needed to write off Jessa somehow in order for her to take care of her pregnancy. Still, this fascinating experience more explains why Hannah is a loopy writer than a whole episode built around Patrick Wilson. It is fascinating and may be her best performance of the season so far. It is kind of sad in ways that "Boys" was, but unless the show regresses back to non sequitur episodes, I am hoping that somehow this is addressed by the end. I also get the vibe that her parents aren't going anywhere.
While I initially felt like Shoshanna's plot for the rest of the season was going to involve care taking for Ray, I am at least enthused to see that Ray is bettering everyone else. He is giving Shoshanna advice that is essentially helping her grow up. By leaving the party, I feel like Shoshanna is on her way to maturing as a character, and her growth this season, as minimal as it has been, is a welcome change from season one. Also, I just love to hear Ray motivate people through their troubles.
Marnie opens up in what essentially I already knew by the end of last season. She is frustrated that she has everything together but is still failing. However, the reason that I feel like Ray is an integral character now is to be the motivator. He motivates her to sing and live her life. There is infinite possibilities, though I feel like maybe Ray will lack his own direction when all is said and done. He is just too stubborn and fine with living in other people's buildings. I just wonder if Charlie will be coming back, as every time I am sure this series write off its characters, they return a week later.
Speaking of, Adam seems to be integral to the plot somehow. I figured that the story was around Hannah and her friends, and that once Adam left that circle, he was done. I admit that it is nice to see him advance and go on a date. I even love seeing Carol Kane back on TV. He almost seems more normal, and in a sense, this could all be established to show how Adam starts and ends relationships. The exposition in this episode is amazingly long and reveals almost everything that we need to know about these characters. Adam's whole rant, while familiar to the one in "Boys," gives us a further understanding to how he saw Hannah. The question is if Natalia is doomed to the same demise.
I also wonder if it was intentional or if the show is genuinely great at world building. Going back to "Leave Me Alone," Marnie talks about Hannah's masturbation techniques as a little girl. This is then addressed in "Video Games" in the guise of being hypoglycemic, or low blood sugar. Masturbation raises blood sugar, and therefore explains the earlier incident. It is finally addressed with her therapist that she does everything in increments of eight. Were the seeds planted in "Leave Me Alone" possibly seeds for this plot? Either way, it is fascinating to see Hannah as vulnerable in a mental way as opposed to just complaining about everything.
Really, this is a great episode because it advances the story in ways that it should have been doing gradually. It continues to make me excited that this season ends on an odd yet hopeful note. Maybe things will be too dour to solve themselves, but I do get a sense that whatever comes will be building towards a season three that is even darker and stranger. I worry that this is only taking the show into Soap territory, but we'll see in time.
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