What I’m Watching: Girls

Girls: Season 2, Episodes 5 and 6 “One Man’s Trash” and “Boys” (B+)

The first of these two episodes was such a uniquely captivating standalone installment that felt in many ways so in tune with the tone of this show while taking a definitive departure from its usual format. Hannah wandering over to Joshua’s home to confess that she did in fact deposit trash in his bins was a peculiar but fitting segue into their dreamlike night together, which involved a whole lot of honesty and much compliance from his part regarding just about everything. Without being too enthusiastic or charming, he really was a willing participant in perpetuating Hannah’s fantasy escape from her life, which ended less than cinematically with Hannah quietly wandering out, presumably never to see Joshua again. Scoring that exit to music was repeated at the end of the next installment, which saw Hannah and Marnie not being honest with each other over the phone about their nights and drifting more and more apart. Hannah getting her book deal was huge, but needing to write in just one month diminishes the excitement considerably. Marnie, unfortunately, got the rawer end of the deal, when she broke down and realized that she wasn’t even dating Booth Jonathan, a situation he quickly turned into a conversation about his own misfortunes. I was absolutely thrilled by the unprecedented interaction between Ray and Adam, whose highlights included their discussion about dating only younger and older women and Ray’s conclusion that they’re both honest men, to which Adam responded that they’re both weird-looking. Ray reacting to Adam’s use of the word “coy” was especially fantastic as well.