“I’m about to make some big choices” Hannah’s mother said. It sets the tone for this episode because not only is she trying to figure out how her life will look like now that she knows her husband is gay, but Shoshanna, Jessa and Hannah face some big choices.
Hannah and her mother
Hannah, from the moment the episode starts, is cynical about her mother’s idea to go to a woman’s retreat called “Spring Queening”. I’m not sure why she so easily rejects the place and the people in it. Maybe it’s her way of rejecting the idea that her parents aren’t people that she thought they were as she grew up. Perhaps she’s too preoccupied by the big choice that she has to make of possibly breaking up with the “seemingly good” Fran. As the series goes on, Hannah seems more out-of-touch with the people around her or maybe she’s just confused to the point she doesn’t know how to interact with the world around her. By the end of the episode, she shows a hint of self-awareness by changing her statement made at the beginning of the episode from “You didn’t fuck me up” to “I think you fucked me up”.
Hannah’s mother, Loreen, on the other hand seems more open-minded in contrast to her daughter, but this may be because she feels thrown into it without a choice. The big choice she was referring to was whether or not she can stay married to a gay man. After hearing the stories told by other women at the retreat and having her dilemma dismissed as a “non-issue”, she decides that she rather stay married to her husband. Do we know why she chose this? Is it because she loves him and want to love him for what he is or is it because, after decades of marriage, it’s a lot less scary than being single? Will we even find out as the season progresses or will she be forgotten so that the main “girls” have their stories addressed? She is a character that has had more exposure lately than the early seasons.
Jessa and Adam
Last episode we finally saw what could be the two most screwed-up characters of the series hook up. I remember saying last episode that they’re both so screwed-up that their relationship may actually work. Although, Adam seemingly changed as a character over the course of the series, we are shown that he’s still the creepy weirdo that we met in the first season. Jessa initiated the sort of sexual roleplay that he enjoys.
The big choice of choosing Adam seems to pay off for Jessa as he promises to pay for her education after one of his fumbled speeches of how passionately he believes in her. I’m sure his words sounded poetic and inspiring in his head instead of the tangled mess he spit out. We have yet to see what Hannah thinks about this new relationship because she’s conveniently out of town for this episode.
Shoshanna and Abigail
I don’t know how or when it happened, but I’m starting to like Shoshanna. She used to annoy me almost as much as Adam. Her time in Japan seems to really complement her cartoonish character and she seems to not only blend in, but does in such a way that it seems natural. Her decision to stay in Japan seems to have worked out for her. It’s only when Abigail visits and she tries to convince her how enjoyable Japanese life is that cracks seem to form on her outlook. For the most part, it seems unnoticeable until the near the end of the episode until Yoshi says how they’re going to lose their virginity to each other. At first, I thought it was because Shoshanna was upset that she hasn’t told Yoshi that she’s not a virgin. She ends up confessing that she’s homesick and the episode ends with her in an empty Japanese street. It was the first time she looked out-of-place lately. If she does move back to the United States, I’m going to miss it because the Japan scenes have been refreshing change of scenery compared to the rest of the show.
Girls has strange habits with dealing with transitions. Most notable for me was the transitions to sex scenes with either sex or the mention of sex. Watch for it. In this episode, Hannah mentions she can sleep through sex to cue a scene between Jessa and Adam. The word orgasm is mentioned just seconds before Hannah tries to help a woman reach hers.
It was an entertaining episode. The Jessa and Shoshanna scenes seemed to almost balance out the tightly-wound Hannah scenes. I’m not sure what it was, but Hannah seemed even more uptight than usual in this episode.
1 comment
I am really disliking Hannah this season! She has just been such a bitch to everyone and she is so self involved. It’s gone from hating Marnie to hating Hannah which I never thought would happen. She’s always been highly strung but this is taken a sharp turn into being a cow. I hope she comes full circle.