If “Girls” could be renamed so as to better fit the show it would have to be called “The Different Misconceptions People Have About the Millennial Generation and How We are Going to Perpetuate Every One of Them. Also Nakedness.” “Girls” came on last Sunday night and showcased just how selfish the girls are.
Sunday brought David’s funeral complete with Hannah and Adam attending. Hannah was more preoccupied with the famous attendees than actually mourning, which seems odd to do when at a funeral but in true Hannah fashion it was about being seen doing something rather than actually doing it. We were all shocked when David’s assistant introduced David’s widow, Annalise. Not, but really the guy that used Grindr all night as he danced to techno pop was married to a woman and as she puts it was “a little gay sometimes.” Because the only thing worse than going for the cheap gay joke is going for the cheap fat joke (oh, but just you wait). In her three minutes of airtime (which is probably more than Shoshanna has gotten this entire season), Annalise mistakes Hannah for another girl, Paige. Paige was another one of David’s writers with Tourette’s and obesity issues, who he used to “rave” could overcome anything.
Annalise then says that all of David’s ongoing projects have been dropped by the publishing company much to Hannah’s dismay (“my book is dead?”), Hannah, the ever tactful, begs her for a name of a publisher “to keep her book alive.” Dumbstruck, Annalise then makes Hannah the proposition that in return for the name of publisher if she will leave, which Hannah gladly takes.
Later on while Hannah is talking to a new editor on the phone, we are treated to another Adam-Caroline fight. When Hannah goes to share the good news that this new company wants to discuss purchashing her manuscript, she can’t be heard over the fighting and proceeds to she screams like a two-year-old. Thinking that because she has seen enough Dr. Phil interventions, Hannah then decides that both siblings to have a rational, calm discussion about each other’s faults. After a lot of inner turmoil comes out between the three, with Adam and Caroline‘s being actual pent-up sibling rivalry and Hannah trying to turn the conversation and argument toward her own faults. Consequently, Caroline makes the assumption that all of their fights and arguments stem from the fact that Adam has a repressed desire to have sex with her. Adam has the same reaction that Sunday’s audience probably had – Wow, no! After Adam tackles and tries to strangle Caroline (which you can’t deny did in fact have some weird sexual tension going on) Hannah tries to turn the entire discussion back on her with the fact that because she was an only child she was extremely lonely and didn’t have the opportunity to have a sibling and share in their combined childhoods. This causes the siblings to make up or stop yelling for more than five minutes.
In between all of this Hannah gets a call from Marnie who is slowly but surely falling into the category of sad single-dom. Marnie tells her to come over and see the cutest thing ever – a kitten she just got from a boy giving them away from his backpack. Okay, I know we are all for how cute kittens can be (the content of Youtube will confirm this) but how gullible can you be to take an animal from a boy’s backpack? The kitten is an adorable ball of fluff and the fact that Marnie calls it her best friend adds to its adorable factor, but if Marnie is that desperate for company, her situation must be bad which can only be stemming from things like Hannah declining the invitation because she is dealing with tweedle-dee and tweedle-shouts-a-lot.
Across the city, Shoshanna and Jessa are spending a night in – or really Shoshanna is staying in and studying while Jessa is going through her clothing, while continuing to lament the fact that her friend faked her own death to get away from her. Fed up with her behavior, Shoshanna points out that she is sick of having a cousin that just sits around all day and watches Forensic Files and while she has kept her mouth shut, she can’t any longer because she has to study. Shoshanna, as only as she can, notes that her recent hijinks have caused her GPA to take a turn for the worst and that doesn’t work into her 15-year plan. In the best line of the night, Jessa asks what comes after her 15-year plan, and Shoshanna says that even thinking about that would be insane.
Checking back with Marnie, we see her go to Ray to find out her bad qualities through his brutal honesty for a chance to own up to them, but she gets more than she bargains for. Ray prattles off everything wrong with leading up to how she was a fake, but she is sentimental so most of her behavior is excusable. It ends with a more than intimate hug that leads to them having sex on Ray’s table. Afterwards it is extremely awkward as both try to leave. Ray asks to keep their friends-with-benefits status to themselves and Marnie replies with “Like I’d advertise this.”
Shoshanna and Jessa wrap up their barely-there storyline with Jessa wanting to get hired at a children’s clothing store they pass while out walking because she likes the idea of being bear something so innocent. But as Shoshanna points out, she has a criminal record.
This week we leave Hannah with the new issue of her book. After she visits a new publisher and her assistant Mo (who should have their own show) she gets the word that they don’t just want an e-book, but an actual hardcopy book. But when she calls her father to give him the good news (who has just had a procedure that Hannah doesn’t bother to care about), he tears down her dream when he lets her know that her cousin looked over her contract, and though the publishing company is no longer going forward with her book, they still own the rights for three more years which might as well be a million according to Hannah.
Hannah comes home to Caroline and in her own world of self-pity. Caroline tries to relate with her with her own loss of a role in Independence Day, but Hannah will have none of it. In a fit of rage, she kicks Caroline out. As Hannah storms out of the room, Caroline calls her spoiled. Adam later finds Hannah wrapped in a blanket and when she tells him that she kicked out Caroline, he is immediately upset. Although Hannah says she did it to better their relationship, Adam is distraught because he feel that he is supposed to be taking care of his sister.
This episode featured a lot of selfishness from every character, but maybe this is the overall arc of the season is the girls not trying to find themselves but finding a common ground between youth and adulthood that features some selfishness but growth as well. The girls are going to be struggling till they take a page from Shoshanna’s playbook and have a plan outside of having sex with their former boss or having experiences just to get stories out of them.
“Girls” premieres on Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.
