This week’s episode featured Hannah caught between the reality of having a stable job and following her aspirations to be the voice in her generation.
“Girls” opens with Hannah wandering into the world of GQ, a glossy, corporate magazine. She finds instead of writing the things she would like she is making advertisements that mask as stories. In her first meeting with the rest of the team, Hannah is met with supportive feedback (except with from the one guy who can’t stand her face because she reminds him of an ex he hated even while they were dating) but Hannah considers this position temporary much to the chagrin of her fellow writers. Hannah believes that she is “a writer writer, not a corporate, advertising, working for the man kind of writer.” Her fellow writers understand, having considered themselves “real” writers, but a stable job and a health plan (not to mention the free snacks which Hannah is taking full advantage of) is hard to deceive.
Meanwhile Marnie and Ray are awkwardly between a full-fledged relationship and friends with benefits. They don’t necessarily have a full-fledged relationship but they are not really “friends with benefits” anymore. They have awkward sex, call each other in the middle of the day, watch “Real Housewives” and yell at one another in the middle of Chinese restaurants – they are essentially a couple. But the fact that their first instinct is to hide upon running into Adam and Hannah is disconcerting. It would seem that the two will be embarrassed in front of their friends down the line, but for now as Ray explains, “They both deserve each other because they are both broken.”
Jessa is barely a character anymore, more of a minor character to Shoshanna’s minor character. We see her working hard at the children’s clothing store as mentioned in the last episode, but not by the average person’s standard – Jessa successfully sells a black toddler’s dress to a mother seeking a white christening gown, even after insulting her and her daughter. Shoshanna is trying to get back on her 15-year track but not without drudging up old emotions of Ray. She is clearly still obsessed with him as she purposely reads reviews on his coffee shop, “Ray is being written about in popular surface publications and my life is a mess.” She picks up the first guy she can, although his mental capabilities are questionable. The relationship reaches its climax when they are both having sex, while Shoshanna is further trying to define their relationship. Shoshanna calls it quits — but not before she tells him to finish.
This episode leaves Hannah dealing with the concept of having a job outside of her created reality. Her cubicle has little-to-no items and her doorframe is only a piece of paper taped to a side bearing “H. Horvath.” It is safe to say that this is far from what she imagined herself doing. Even Adam is getting acting jobs and he never has a job, and she can still write in her spare time, at least like her new cohorts have noted. But if her first full week of work ends like it did this week – with her falling asleep before she can start her three-hour scheduled writing time – she won’t get much done. All of the girls have to deal not just with growing up and taking responsibility for their actions, but figuring out how to balance their personal and work lives. The girls are struggling with working and with playing and the world isn’t going to slow down for them to figure it out.
“Girls” airs on Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.
