TV Recap: Girls - "Triggering"

Left to right: Andrew Rannells and Lena Dunham

Welcome back to another round of Girls TV Recap. Following the amazing third season, this series will focus on season four and the perils that Hannah (Lena Dunham) and her friends face as she goes to Iowa. What new experiences will she face? What will everyone else do while they wait for her inevitable return? Come back every Friday for the latest recap including thoughts and predictions for each episode. Will it remain one of the best comedies on TV? You'll have to read to find out.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for Girls to start the season proper. While last week's episode saw a series of fond farewells, it's time for Hannah to strike out on her own. Well, kind of. She has a random guest pop up to wish her luck and things don't go quite as well as we'd hope. Then again, this is just how Girls tends to do things. It isn't a particularly strong episode, but a cautionary one of things to come. Will this Iowa student survive the season? We'll just have to wait and find out.

The episode opens on Hannah buying her apartment. It is a nice, big one. It makes her happy and she immediately contacts Marnie (Allison Williams) to talk about Adam and see how things are  back home. She claims that everything is fine. She goes on to buy supplies and spends the first night scared by a bird who has gotten into her apartment. She is a little scared, but ready to start the next day as a grad student.

Things go well. She meets a student (Desiree Akhavan), who insists that Iowa is a free spirited state that doesn't need to have their bikes chained up. She goes into her first writing session and discovers that people don't like her story, which is about a privileged being taken advantage of sexually. This causes some backlash and eventually leads to her confronting another student at the Foxhead Bar. This one has an uncomfortable childhood and the story triggered her memories of being raped. 

As things are beginning to go downhill, she loses her bike and has Elijah (Andrew Rannells) showing up. They're going to a rager to forget about their problems. Once there, Hannah and Elijah begin to cause havoc. Elijah makes out with straight men while Hannah disposes bad advice to impressionable young girls. There's some mud wrestling and drinking thrown in. They leave in the morning, ready to start whatever their life in Iowa is going to have.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Left to right Dunham and Desiree Akhavan

If there's anything to be taken away from this episode, it is that things are about to go horribly wrong for Hannah in Iowa. While she initially saw it as a new beginning and a reason to start over, she hasn't exactly had the most confident of starts. She is stealing stuff and drinking all night. She wants to be a better person, but this is usually sidetracked so that she can party with Elijah. The question is if Elijah is going to be a regular in town or if he is just by for the weekend. With his growing disinterest in New York, one can see this as a sign of terrible things to come.

Things have rarely worked out between Elijah and Hannah in the long run. "Bad Friend" saw them take drugs and break up relationships in the process. They are toxic. In fact, there's a strong chance that the good intentions of Hannah are about to diminish and she is going to grow pointlessly defensive over garbage material. We'll just have to wait and see. Still, the episode was pretty basic in introducing a lot of elements that aren't necessarily interesting as a stand alone episode.

However, the one interesting thing to explore is the writing group. It is what she has been striving for. She wants to be accepted. However, it also serves as a commentary for those that made fun of her memoir "Not That Kind of Girl," which saw her have questionable sexual encounters with her sister. In the episode, she uses a more broad subject that is described as being very "50 Shades of Grey." It is a discussion on the blurred line between fact and fiction and what passes as entertainment. Also, it explores subjects such as bringing personal baggage into the assessment. It is broad, but a subject that seemed like an inevitable exploration that the show would do.

There's plenty of interesting new supporting characters in the bunch. Continuing the show's genius ability to find great indie artists and give them roles, there's Desiree Akhavan as the first colleague she meets. While there hasn't been too much significant with her character to happen, she is one to look out for. If for no other reason, she has an interesting movie currently out called Appropriate Behavior that is very touching and funny. It's hard not to see why she seemed like a perfect fit for the show.

The only loose end here is that Hannah is kind of a jerk in this episode in ways that she hasn't really displayed in the past. In a noteworthy yet throwaway moment, she tells an impressionable young girl to not worry about her boyfriend who is far away and just have fun. What does this say for Hannah and Adam's relationship, which was admittedly falling apart by this point? There's concern here that only adds to the evidence pile of the potential split of a very baffling couple. 

Still, it was a decent episode, but one that doesn't necessarily bode well for the future of Hannah as a grad student. She wants to be taken seriously, but the results are already starting to prove regressive. I feel that she is just going to fall into a downward spiral, or at least become more of a desperate writer. Again, I am not entirely sure what to expect from the writing of this show, but it is my hunch going in, especially as the show has formed more of a continuity over the past few years.