Girls Recap: Hannah and Shoshanna and Jessa and Marnie Marie; Females Only
Road trip! Adam is driving while Hannah and Shoshanna are singing and instead of doing what he clearly wants to do—steer the car right off the road—Adam just punches the stereo till it turns off. He takes advantage of the relative quiet by telling Hannah, “You’re not doing her any good by taking her out of rehab.” Hannah insists that Jessa asked to be taken home, and that Jessa said everything was fine. Adam spits out, “Oh wow, when was the last time an addict lied?” Which is interesting when you think about the fact that, well, Adam is an addict. Maybe it just refers to how Adam probably needs to lie about how crazy Shoshanna drives him solely in order to not kill himself or others. Like, it’s pretty clear that Adam shows some major self-restraint when Shosh asks him what his favorite utensil is, and when he says fork, she responds, “Why would you want cold metal prongs stabbing you in your tongue when food could be delivered on a cool, soft pillowy cloud?” Adam holds it together, and, I’ll just say, it’s fucking admirable.
And while Shoshanna and Adam share a missed opportunity to recognize the spork as being the clear ruler in the utensil kingdom (kidding, it’s the knife, obviously), Hannah calls Marnie to tell her about the road trip. Marnie, being Marnie, is an ass and questions why Jessa even needs someone to pick her up because doesn’t Jessa, “have, like, a magic carpet?” And because it’s Marnie, and because her mom is there, the conversation is on speaker phone and so Marnie’s mom laughs. They are both the worst and pretty much deserve all the terrible things happening to them. This is the truth.
Meanwhile, Jessa is still in rehab purgatory, spending time with the older British guy who has a daughter whom he has abandoned because it’s “one of the ways I protect her.” Of course, for Jessa, this seems respectable because it is also a sympathetic rationale for why her own father has abandoned her. Which is why it’s actually a sign of Jessa’s relative health when, later, she rejects the advances of this douchebag and maybe comes a little bit closer to realizing that her problems with her father (and probably her mother…WHEN WILL WE MEET JESSA’S MOTHER???) are not her fault.
And since Jessa’s rehab center is apparently in Maine, or somewhere else so far away that it involves a stop at a motel for our motley roadtripping crew, we get to find out a few fun facts about everyone. Namely, Adam believes that “boredom is bullshit” and for “boring people” and that he needs to come before he can sleep and that Hannah is his best friend and that he hates Halloween and has never played Truth or Dare. All of this makes perfect sense. We also find out that Shoshanna will “never be bored as long as there is Halloween” and that she’s never heard the Rolling Stones song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and that she’s pretty laid back about leaving a motel room so that the “come parade can parade on by” and that she thinks Jessa’s life is perfect because Jessa is “so pretty and guys love her.” We learn that Hannah is constantly applying to grad school and thinks that life was never better than it was in college and that she recognizes that while Jessa is beautiful, Jessa also suffers from deep feelings of loneliness and insecurity. So, good road trip overall! Also, we learn that Jessa had a kidney infection while at Oberlin, and I will avoid making dirty hippie jokes, but want to take this opportunity to remind everyone that kidney infections are no joke at all, and are unbelievably painful and you try not crying when all your friends leave you to go take their finals because it is no fun being alone when you’re getting better after having been peeing blood.
But so, the trio finally reach Jessa, and Hannah finds out that Jessa was kicked out of rehab for “fraternizing and distributing a zine with provocative cartoons” and that fraternizing does not mean that Jessa “joined a frat,” we also find out that Jessa could have left rehab on her own recognizance and that there is actually a (very) small airport nearby. It’s fun to see Adam nearly rage cry at this news. Hannah isn’t going to let this lie go, though, and confronts Jessa about it and many past issues, including the time when they were in college and Jessa told Hannah to meet her at the Free Palestine party, even though Jessa was hanging at the Israel House. Jessa insists that while none of that was on purpose, she won’t do it anymore and will be a better friend. And it’s easy enough to believe that Jessa wants to be that better friend, but harder to believe that she’ll be able to. Not because it’s impossible to break out of old patterns, but because it’s very, very hard. One promising sign, though, is Adam telling Jessa that he’d be happy to take her to a meeting if she wanted. So maybe, Jessa won’t revert to type, and maybe Hannah and Adam won’t be feral animals fucking in their urine-soaked lives, and maybe Shoshanna will pull herself together and sleep with someone who doesn’t live in a dorm anymore, and maybe Marnie won’t be such a terrible human being who isn’t happy with herself and needs to make everyone else around her miserable by doing gross things like letting unchewed fish tacos fall from her mouth. Aaahhh…who’re we kidding? Marnie will never change. But there’s hope for the rest of them. There has to be.
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