No matter how we mature, how many auditions we endure, how many deadlines we meet on time, the world remains as impassive to our pain as it’s ever been. What matters is how we respond to it.
This week, Jessa and Adam and Hannah and Shosh and Ray explore their own limitations, or, explained otherwise, what happens when they put a hole in the drywall. Jessa and Hannah, especially, deliver some of the best performances, serving up heartbreak and anguish in a bar bathroom and a diner booth. One gives in to the narrative she’s created around her existence. One, who’s always depended on other people, who’s always yielded to the fiction she’d prefer to inhabit over the truth of her circumstances, resists.
Of last night’s episode, Lena Dunham wrote on Instagram that it made her feel “the gut-wrenching sadness of being Hannah with Adam for the last time,” which suggests that it really is over for them. The drama didn’t end in romantic heartbreak or a merry happily ever-after. It just happened, the way it almost always does. And so it’s like all misfortunes; apoplectic, disastrous, tragic, final and yet…bland. Not with a bang, but a whimper.
1. Who would actually want Adam to raise her child? I know he did well with Button or Blanket or Asymptote or whatever that kid’s name was, but come on.
2. But at the same time, wouldn’t Jessa make a fantastic zookeeper?
3. Did anyone really think Hannah would get an abortion at this late stage?
4. How is it that Adam can always find Hannah?
5. Well, Adam professing his devotion to Hannah in a bodega is the perfect inversion of Elijah mauling her spirit in a crowded, grimy kitchen, is it not?
6. What doctor’s office did Jessa steal her weighted scale from?
7. Where can I find a silk robe?
8. Is “elite channels,” like, a euphemism?
9. What?
10. Oh, wow, Shosh is alive?
11. Why is Jessa wearing a furry bikini?
12. Why is Hannah doing this?
13. Why is Adam so shiny?
14. Would you rather have Adam or Laird raise your baby?
15. Would you rather live in an ugly building with a view of a beautiful building or a beautiful building with a view of an ugly building?
16. Please, tell me I’m not the only person who’s mystified at and furious with the direction this is taking?
17. Does anyone miss Giuliani?
18. Who else squinted through that sex scene?
19. So, is this romance, like, on?
20. Is it self-aware or ridiculous that a show that’s forever been associated with the gentrification of Brooklyn is probing its (pretend, play-acted) residents on how that gentrification came to be?
21. They gave it a good try, maybe?
22. What’s the most wrong-headed delusion you’ve ever allowed yourself to be trapped in? And for how long?
23. Am I supposed to root for Ray and Aidy Bryant? Because I can’t.
Follow our Girls girl and author Mattie on Twitter @mattiekahn. Photo via HBO.
