‘Girls’ Recap: Just Stay Out of My Emotional Way
Ladles and gentlebeans, I don’t know about you but I cried at the end of tonight’s Girls season finale. Genuine human tears rolled down these cheeks. I know that says way more about me than it does the Girls season finale, but so does everything ever, and luckily you’re the kind of person who reads Girls recaps and as such probably has some tolerance for these things. I cried, of course, at Hannah and Adam‘s late night street fight, at their bittersweet debate about who’s lovable and how to be together and the crucial significance of moving in together. “You love yourself so much, so why is it so crazy that someone else would too?,” Adam shouts. “You’re the fucking worst.” Oh Dunham, you got me again! You always do.
In addition to making me weep, the finale was also hands down my favorite episode of the season. Bar none! My heart thrilled when I realized the girls had arrived at Jessa‘s secret surprise wedding, not just because that wacky Brit deserves a plotline that didn’t involve her mopey boss, but because something undeniably important was happening. Jessa’s marriage is almost certainly going to be in next season’s premiere episode, guys, I can tell you that! I was less thrilled that her groom was Thomas Jane, Chris O’Dowd’s unsettlingly shrill finance consultant from that aborted threeway, but it did make for some excellent vows. “If I ever saw that crazy bitch again, I would make her my fucking wife,” Thomas Jane reminisces to the dearly beloved. “When you came to my apartment, with flowers, I was prepared to call the Special Victims Unit,” Jessa cooed in return. I’ve never looked forward to a three-week marriage and painful divorce with more exhilaration!
Speaking of just being so happy, Marnie had her full Brooke Shields face on at Jessa’s nuptials, which helped cover up her other regular face in conjuncture with alcohol and wedding cake and SNL‘s Bobby Moynihan. “You don’t have a plan,” Hannah points out as Marnie moves all her stuff out of their apartment following last episode’s epic fight. Why do you notice the speck of sawdust in your roommate’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own, girrrrrrl? One question about that . . . question, though: did Hannah not know Marnie was going to stay at Shoshanna’s place? Or did she somehow think Marnie was just . . . driving off into nowhere with her loaded U-Haul? Does her question make sense in either scenario? Despite Charlie‘s overt attempts to screw her in the bathroom of the wedding, a drunken, liberated Marnie gets up on Moynihan’s nervous, chatty officiate instead. Making out with Bobby Moynihan with a bra full of cake is a dream I’m having as soon as I finish this recap and go to bed, so good on you, Marn. Maybe no longer shouldering the weight of Hannah’s financial irresponsibility has permanently shifted her focus away from her role as Girl Mom? Or possibly she’s just cake horny.
Shoshanna also broke out of her suffocating shell tonight, most importantly in the zing department. “Totally. Everything you own is in trash bags in my kitchen,” Shosh riffed on an optimistic Marnie. Today is a weird day, you guys! As we all suspected, eventually Ray takes Shoshanna home and makes an astonishingly neurotic woman out of her. Remember when Ray was the worst? He really came through in the end. “You are the strangest person,” he tells Shoshanna softly. “You vibrate on a very strange frequency.” Muses Shoshanna, “Are you Punking me?” Ah, sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found thee! “Just stay out of my emotional way,” she warns Ray. It will be interesting to see how Post-Virginity Shoshanna brings her strange energy to bear on anything other than losing it. Or maybe she won’t; maybe she’ll get hung up on this one event, Miss Havisham-style. Either way, I’m laughing!
Elijah, The Backhand Avenger is also in attendance at Jessa’s surprise wedding (again, to a guy that really kind of a deranged nutjob the one time we saw him), and admits to Hannah that it was he who gave her HPV after all. YOU GUYS. This episode is filling so many voids! Right to the brim! Luckily Hannah is in a let-bygones-be-bygones mood (“We’ll just consider it water under my vagina,” she laughs), Elijah also happens to be looking for a roommate until his boyfriend George‘s kid graduates (. . .from his PhD program?), thus solving the problem of who will replace Marnie’s place in their apartment/our hearts. Excited, Hannah tells Adam they won’t be force to move in together after all, which turns out to be a big mistake. Huge.
“I’m like the most scared person who’s alive,” Hannah explains as Adam fumes on the sidewalk. “You don’t have the right to be,” he tells her. I feel like this entire episode was like a great, witty therapy session. Actually, all the episodes could be, if we didn’t have to expend emotional energy picking up and putting down plotlines we never visit again (though again, I thank you again for addressing that whole HPV thing). “I am 13 pounds overweight and it’s been awful for me my whole life!,” Hannah cries in desperation. This argument was just perfection. On one level, there’s Hannah’s dawning realization that being paralyzed with sarcasm and self-loathing doesn’t excuse you from the requirements that come with caring about other people; on the next, there’s her gut understanding that pursuing a dream and fostering a happy, functional adult relationship require emotional commitment, and that no matter how you slice it, it’s hard to date someone when…actually, you know what? It’s just hard to date someone. Period. Imma leave it at that. “I am a beautiful fucking mystery to you,” Adam tells her . . . then immediately gets run down by a truck. “Don’t let her in here,” he warns the EMT loading him into the ambulance; Hannah peers anxiously through the window. “She’s a fucking monster.”
Not that the universe is done punishing her for her arrogance/low self-esteem, of course. After falling asleep on the F train on the way home, Hannah’s purse gets stolen, and she gets zinged yet again, this time by a stranger on a roof (“Does she have a green belt on, or am I tweaking?”). After walking around for hours (as opposed to just riding the F train back . . . good lord, did she go all the way up to Jamaica-179th Street and back to Coney Island? She must sleep like the dead! Oh no, wait . . . I guess if she was trying to switch to the G . . . nevermind.), Hannah settles for eating her little tinfoil package of cake alone on the beach. Does watching the sun come up near the ocean just confirm the sad, absurd state of her life? Or is she born anew like her friends are actively trying to be, a tiny sassy baby with a mouth already filled with cake? Ah, but when you saw one set of footprints, it was me carrying you on my back while you ate some cake. That’s what Jesus said on that poster, right? At least we’ll always have cake-other, Girls, and if nothing else? This really will make one hell of an essay.
Previously: It’s All Material