'Girls' Recap: I'm 100% Not Getting Weird

Hannah and Sandy disagree about politics; Marnie and Elijah disagree about whether Hannah should know they slept together.

Lena Dunham and Donald Glover as Hannah and Sandy on 'Girls'
Jessica Miglio
January 21, 2013 7:39 AM ET

I'm with George on this one. It takes a stone-cold sociopath to roll one's eyes and make condescending grunts when confronted with one's infidelity, and that's even ignoring the part where Elijah managed to sleep with his ex-girlfriend's best friend. "It was three pumps! Two and a half pumps!" he exclaims, a clarification which is understandably cold comfort to his boyfriend. "I don't want to be with someone who is confused. Or bi," George sighs. "Are you having a stroke?" Elijah shouts after him. Elijah's a purebred dumdum, right? That's the only way I can explain his befuddlement at George's anger. Sleeping with Marnie is a real first season move, buddy. We should all be past that kind of shit by now.

Luckily, Hannah has yet to find out about The Pumps. She's been too busy working out like an insane dance robot, dating Sandy and cringing in fear and disgust at Adam's . . . I don't know what you'd call it . . . shirtless web album of terror songs? "He's not going to shoot himself at the end of this, is he?" Elijah muses. "I haven't made it to the end yet," Hannah admits. If only! No, that's mean. It’s just . . . I’m kind of over Adam as a concept. Now that Donald Glover is in the picture, I've started to reject Adam like the body rejects a sweaty, weird lung. We already had a full season of that nut bar? Can't we move on?

The Power of Lena Dunham's 'Girls'

Not that Sandy is Mr. Perfect Lung himself either, what with him being a Republican and all. "You were with George for a long time and he was on Hotmail," Hannah rationalizes to Elijah. I don't know whether it's my personal bias toward Donald Glover and his refreshingly normal, not-in-any-way-glassy-eyed gaze, but I loved the bathroom banter between Elijah and Sandy. I loved it almost as much as I loved Ray and Shoshanna's pillow talk, which I mainly loved because it upset Marnie. "You'd be great at bathing a pig," they coo to each other as Marnie's life plans fall apart. After an epically bad gallery interview ("You've got that suit. Where does one get a suit like that?" her would-be boss inquires.), Marnie has finally learned that curators just don't exist anymore. (That seems like a true thing, right? I'm too lazy to Google it.) "I just don't want to be around people who don't hate everything right now," she sulks.

Hopefully Marnie doesn't plan on spending any time with Jessa and Thomas Jane anytime soon, what with their beautiful marriage and their sick apartment and their new matching tiger tattoos and the basket full of puppies he gives her for their puppy picnic. (Marnie also might not want to see Thomas Jane since he screamed at her and Jessa that one horrible night, but I guess we're forgetting that ever happened. At least until Thomas Jane reveals himself to be some kind of insane monster, that is. That's bound to happen, right? Jessa is just too happy for it not to.) "This what it's like when the hunt is over," Jessa smiles while playing with adorable little Garbage, Fucker and Hanukah in the park. "I think Sandy really likes me," Hannah brags, never to be outdone. "He's nice and funny and when we have sex, there's not a part of me that like wants to pretend I didn't exist. Which is a rarity." How I wish they would spend an entire episode exploring that perfect sentence! It’s like one single sweet crumb of cutting knowledge, like someone crushing a cupcake on top of the Empire State Building and having one single particle drift down to your brain-lips. I guess Lena Dunham would have to be the one up there crushing ‘cakes, and she's already so busy with the show, so I guess I'll take the tidbit as it is.

Jessa points out that a man who so casually forgets to read your essays is a man who doesn't read you (if you are a TV character), so the next time they are making out, Hannah inquires as to why Sandy hasn't bothered to read her essay yet. "It's just that, if you cared about me, you would have read it already," she explains. It turns out Sandy has read it . . . and he has a few notes on it. Notes such as: It's very well written; Nothing was happening; It just felt like waiting in line and all the nonsense in your brain when you're trying to kill time.

Confronted by Sandy's honest reaction, Hannah decides that their political differences are too great for their love to survive. "I'm kind of horrified by the fact that you believe people should just be able to own guns," she huffs. Sandy accuses her of dating him as part of a larger Move To New York Checklist. Buy a fixed gear bike. Check! Date a black guy. Check! Go to a dangerous part of town. Check! Which of course leads to my favorite exchange of the evening, when Hannah accused him of fetishizing white women.

Hannah: "Maybe you think of us as one white blobby mass with stupid ideas. Why don't you just lay this thing down and flip it and reverse it, because I don't think it's very nice."
Sandy: "You just said a Missy Elliot lyrics."
Hannah: "I don't know who that is."
Sandy: "Bullshit."

It is bullshit, and that's when I realized why I love Sandy so much: This is the first break up/meeting/interaction Hannah (or pretty much any of the ladies) has had with a guy that didn't end with him morphing into some kind of misogynist volcano of rage. The lines in the scene are basically the same as a dozen different scenes last season; they are just said at a normal volume, rather than shrieked while drunk or shirtless. A great second season development, if you ask me. As for the race discussion . . .  god, I hope this isn’t the last we see of Donald Glover. This scene was top-notch on so many levels, it would be a waste of they didn’t immediately get back together.

Marnie stops by in the "slutty Von Trapp" hotpants mandated by her new hostess job to argue with Elijah about telling Hannah about their hook-up (oh, I cannot wait for her to discover that hideous truth!) when Hannah returns from her break-up. "I can't be with someone who isn't an ally to gays and women," she fumes. "Thank . . . you?" Elijah and Marnie reply.

I wish we could have ended the ep with their excellent discussion of Marnie's new pretty person job ("I made a choice not to cash in on my sexuality," Hannah shames her, shoving delicious Cool Whip in her mouth), but unfortunately Adam had to break into Hannah's apartment in the middle of the night and demand a glass of milk. I enjoyed the fact that Hannah subsequently made a hang-up 911 call, then tried to lie to the police about making it. I appreciated more the moment of tense honesty after Hannah shoves Adam and screams, "Go away!" about a million times in his face. But lines like "That is space rape!" and "As a man living my man life, my desire for you cannot be repressed" just made me groan, as did the fact that Adam gets taken away in cuffs due to his "two unpaid parking tickets and a summons for public urination." Adam was already taken away by an ambulance last season, and how much yelling about Hannah do we have to hear from one character? If they get back together after this, I will be pissed. Not particularly surprised, but truly pissed. 

Last Week: I Feel How I Feel When I Feel It


Movies Main Next

blog comments powered by Disqus
Daily Newsletter

Get the latest RS news in your inbox.

marketing partners.

