Girls Season 2 Episode 4 recap
I would’ve thought the nickname for Shoshanna would be more “Shawsh”. What do I know? Fine. Show-sh.
I want to point out what should be obvious. I think Jessa is a horrible human being. It’s one thing to be honest about yourself, but that’s not what was going on – not even a little. What was happening was that she was trying to pretend that conventions of human behavior don’t matter – that she was so busy trying not to let their opinions matter that she acted like a complete asshole who made everyone uncomfortable, including herself. I hate people like this. I hate it when they pretend that being so f*cking bohemian means they don’t have to care about anyone else or how they might think or feel, and I don’t care that the show made his parents annoying former yuppies as though that would make it any better. I got to see another side of Jessa, but I still hate people who are like that.
I didn’t hate this episode, though.
Isn’t this the truth of being a certain way? You get it into your head that you’re gonna adopt a certain attitude, whether for a night or a decade, and then once you’ve committed to it you feel like you cannot back down, no matter what. So then you turn into a horror show who has to carry it through, possibly for your whole life. That’s Jessa. If she wanted to change her mind about who she was, she would have to unpick at least the last five years and, as her erstwhile husband points out, millions of her “stories”. It’s tough for her.
It’s tough for Marnie too, I suppose, but I feel like even though Hannah spends all her time talking about how irritating and childish Marnie is being, she hasn’t actually spelled out what she wants from Charlie, and maybe that’s the worst of it. If she could just once spell out what her goddman problem is, we could all call her selfish and be done with it. But she refuses, she bites her tongue, unwilling to be that girl – at least to a guy, it seems – just so nobody can straight-up call her a bitch. A crying mess who was about to open her wrists, yes, but not a bitch.
I have had and continue to have my issues with this show, but it says something that I was less engaged since Hannah didn’t have a storyline. It made me more irritated with Hannah’s interjections and making things about what expertise she has with everyone else’s emotions, but that might be because that was me at that age. Is it me? I don’t know. Are my friends secretly reading this and snickering because I’m Hannah Horvath? Perish the thought.
As for Shoshanna and Ray, I loved them (and her hair), got upset when I realized there was a 12-year age difference, and fell back in when they loved each other in the subway. I just kept thinking how hot it must have been down there. I have no complaints.
And I strongly dislike Jessa, and Hannah’s not my favourite either, but that end scene was sort of touching and really cute. Likely to be forgotten in a swath of Jessa’s don’t-care swagger which goes unquestioned by the others (because, I’ve decided, only Hannah really likes her. The other two only tolerate her), at least to her face. Still – it was really cute.
Attached - Lena Dunham won at the DGAs this weekend.
