A Hater’s Recap Of “Girls” On HBO: Season 5, Episode 2

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Episode two’s house of horrors begins with Hannah suspecting a “home invasion” at Fran’s house. My initial reaction was that the two were sleeping at Hannah’s house, which prompted me to wonder who the hell would want to break into her place. Like, what would they steal? A bunch of stupid fucking trinkets and chachkies? Unfortunately, it turned out to just be Fran’s weird roommate who was outlining a body on the ground like their apartment is a murder scene. Hannah, thinking what we’re all thinking, tells Fran, “Fran, your roommate is fucking crazy,” before the roommate tries to turn the fake murder scene into a real one by losing his shit on her.

He proceeds to scream relentlessly at her (something I’d like to do, but, oh well) about not being “crazy” — a move only crazy people do. He also tells her that her “bush is blowing in the wind” like she’s at a Bob Dylan concert. That sentence (and subsequent thought) alone amplified my Scaries to another level and caused me to dry heave. But just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, Hannah copped an attitude with the crazy roommate and pulled her shirt down in an attempt to “cover her bush,” only to reveal her boobs for an early version of this week’s obligatory viewing on Lena Dunham’s boobs on Girls.

All of this culminates with Fran moving in with Hannah which sounds like my personal hell. I mean, first off, Hannah lives with Eli. When she leaves for work in this scene, they literally start making out in front of Fran. Like, sure, Eli’s gay, but it’s still fucking weird nonetheless. Second of all, living with Eli just sounds miserable in itself. He’s a total diva and oblivious to everything around him, but that sentence can also be said about the rest of the entire cast, minus Ray.

Just when I started to recover from Hannah’s bush/boobs fiasco, they cut to a scene where Adam’s disgusting sister is breastfeeding her child in the middle of Laird’s fucking kitchen. As much as I like Laird, I just can’t get behind him being involved with Adam’s sister, who appears to model her aesthetic off of Eastern European refugees. But for whatever reason, Laird tries to convince Adam to have a baby (horrible idea considering he’s a sexual deviant) which launches into a weird-ass conversation surrounding Adam’s make out with Jessa.

When they cut to Ray and Eli at work together at Ray’s coffee shop, Ray tells Eli that he’s not allowed to buy coffee from their competitor anymore. The scene cuts short, and that sucks because any time Ray is on the screen means that it’s time other insufferable characters can’t be on the screen.

Thankfully, we’re taken to a rehab meeting where Jessa and Adam rendezvous. Adam wants to talk about their make out from last week’s episode, and Jessa clearly wants to avoid it and pretend it never happened (which is exactly what they should do). Jessa goes on to explain that they must not discuss it because of Hannah, yet Adam persists because I guess he wants Hannah to kill herself? I’m not sure, but either way, I don’t really care.

They cut to a scene at Hannah’s work, a school where she’s teaching middle-schoolers about Philip Roth and birth control. I could launch into a whole diatribe about how Hannah should never be able to shape young minds, but that’s another discussion for another day. Luckily, one of the girls in the class questions whether or not they should be taught about birth control (valid question). The conversation is interrupted by another teacher notifying Hannah that there’s an emergency phone call for her in the office. It’s her now-out-of-the-closet dad crying. He explains that he’s at a Marriott in Times Square, and every fiber of my being says, “I don’t want to know what’s going at this Marriott in Times Square.” Fortunately, they delay the inevitable by forcing Hannah to have a meeting with the principal where he tells her she can’t teach Philip Roth anymore, a move which I could not be more behind. I mean, I read Portnoy’s Complaint as a 24-year-old and it was too raunchy for me. Unsurprisingly, Hannah doesn’t understand this concept at all. She explains to the other teacher that she has to leave to go check on her gay dad who is crying in his Midtown hotel room, and the scene cuts.

Enter: Ray. Ray rolls into the competitor coffee shop across the street to confront them about how they don’t use lids, which in return, causes their customers to enter Ray’s shop and steal his lids. He suggests they begin putting lids on their coffees only to have two baristas begin laughing in his face with a miserably uppity tone. Ray, who is getting increasingly frustrated and clearly needs to move out of Brooklyn, confronts one of the gender-bending baristas by calling her (?) “sir” because, well, she looks like a dude. Ray then gets a ton of lip from her (?) before getting shamed out of the coffee shop by them for not respecting her (?) gender.

We then get taken to a carnival with Jessa and Adam. I can’t fundamentally grasp why they have nothing better to do with their lives than go to a carnival in the middle of the week, in the middle of the day. Jessa yells at a carnival worker saying that he owes her $30 from some previous engagement, and then they launch into a stupid, heartfelt montage of Jessa and Adam seemingly having the time of their lives at this stupid fucking carnival. I can’t explain why, but it ranked as one of my least favorite scenes in Girls history. That is, until they cut to Hannah visiting her dad at the Marriott.

Her dad, who lives in Ohio, expresses to Hannah that he “came to the city to meet someone.” He was clearly meeting another man who he found on “gay.com” — a gay dating site. Apparently their meeting went horribly as the man Hannah’s dad was meeting looked nothing like his photo. Sound familiar? Anyway, he describes their meeting in detail before getting interrupted by Hannah who tells him she doesn’t need to know every detail. Thank God. But as it turns out, he’s crying because he forgot his fucking wallet at this catfisher’s sketchy apartment. Her dad further explains that it must have fallen out of his pocket while taking his pants off, and Hannah has the same reaction as I had — I don’t need to hear about him taking off his fuckin’ pants. He pleads to Hannah to go back to this catfisher’s house and get his wallet just before Hannah gets a call from her mom. Thankfully, their phone conversation is light-hearted. You know, just Hannah’s mom asking Hannah to tell her dad that she wants a divorce. Real light stuff. Hannah smartly does not relay that message.

They arrive at this dude’s place to get her dad’s wallet, and anticipation is at an all-time high for me because shit will clearly hit the fan. Hannah explains to the old gay man who she is that she needs the wallet before he invites her in. Keith The Catfisher tells Hannah that he got her dad’s name off of his ID and has officially friended him on Facebook, and I’m officially wildly uncomfortable with the situation because both of these men are old and awkward with one another.

But speaking of awkward with one another, Jessa and Adam reappear having a conversation on a street in Brooklyn. Jessa is still trying to be reasonable in saying that they can’t be together, but Adam maintains that he wants to have some type of relationship “without touching each other.” Naturally, being the logical person that I am, I assumed he meant a platonic relationship. But no. I could not have been further off, because they then cut to a scene where Jessa and Adam are sitting on a couch masturbating next to each other. I did that whole “squint while looking at the screen thing” again in an attempt to not see anything I didn’t want to see, only to have the scene cut to Hannah at lunch with her dad who is clearly still in shambles because he just had unprotected sex with a stranger. Fuck.

Hannah calls in Gay Expert Roommate Eli as reinforcements, a move I wholeheartedly applaud because this is clearly a situation that’s tailor-made for Eli. Hannah is forced to tell her dad that her mom wants a divorce, which weirdly shocks him. Like, bro, of course she wants a divorce. You’re having sex with people that aren’t her. That’s not how marriages work. Eli sees them having the discussion from afar and decides to avoid it altogether, another move I wholeheartedly applaud.

When Eli arrives at a different restaurant, Peter Russo from House of Cards buys him a drink. Apparently Peter Russo is a local news man in the Girls realm, so Eli is taken aback by his receiving of the cocktail. Peter Russo approaches Eli and the two seemingly hit it off before parting ways and ending an episode I never want to relive ever again. .

Image via HBO

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Will

Will (Twitter / Instagram) is the host of The Sunday Scaries Podcast.

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