‘Girls’ Recap: Go With the Flo

by Maggie Carr

 

Even with all of the almost-there-but-not-quite Ellen jokes and the most transcendent acceptance speech in the history of acceptance speeches, we still found time to sit down with the latest episode of Girls. Or least I did. 

Hannah’s grandma is dying, so she eats a salad in the middle of the sidewalk. This confirms that she is the kind of pedestrian that deserves all of the pigeon shits.

At her mom’s urging, Hannah shows up at the hospital. This is nice, but then her mom and her aunts perform the first of many deleted scenes from August: Osage County in the hospital hallway and it’s time to de-escalate with a quick lunch break.

Mid-sandwich, Mrs. Horvath asks Hannah to tell her dying grandmother that she’s marrying Adam. In theory, this is to make Grandma Flo happy–but at the end of the day, it’s a kinda shitty ploy to call dibs on Grandma’s engagement ring. Yikes, Mrs. Horvath. Seeing Hannah’s jaw-dropping selfishness projected a) onto a character that has been mostly selfless and loving this entire time and b) thirty years into the future is Not. A. Good. Look. 

Meanwhile, Hannah goes out for a drink with her nasty, self-important cousin Rebecca. Though Rebecca’s killing it in med school, she seems to find it difficult to be a person that doesn’t suck. She goes to a bar, but pointedly refuses to drink. She’s dating a dude, but only on Wednesdays. She thinks writers are yucky people that have weird eating habits. Maybe she heard about the sidewalk salad. 

TL;DR: Rebecca’s a less caffeinated, more world-weary version of Shosh, who doles out the Real Talk while stone cold sober. “You’re not funny,” she tells Hannah point-blank. Uh, okay dude.

Hannah wishes that they could be, like, Lifetime-movie cousins–what with the jumping in the lake and the sharing a bed in the summertime and (for real though: trigger warning) getting molested by the same creepy uncle–but waaaaait it looks like Hannah made them touch their “chachies” together when they were little and so I guess she’s the creepy uncle? In a way? They yell and and text while driving, which of course leads to the gnarly fender-bender of our anxious what-if day dreams. 

Nobody’s really hurt, but Adam shows up anyway, sweaty and panting and in full knight-in-shining-armor steez on his hunky cast-mate’s borrowed motorcycle. Though their earlier, horrendously awkward conversation led all us all to believe that they will never speak of this marriage thing again, Adam tells Grandma Flo that he and Hannah are, indeed, betrooooothed.

Though Adam did this super-nice thing, Mrs. Horvath doles out some really kinda mean quote-unquote advice to Hannah. “I don’t want you to spend your whole life socializing him like he’s a stray dog,” she says. THE MOTHERLY SHADE.

Guys, I am not on Team Adam as a rule. I like my men nose-breathing and not prone to hysterical rages and ticklefests, and he’s pulled some really not-cool shit in the past. But even so, it ain’t right to say that Hannah is too good for him. He may be odd, but he also holds Hannah’s soul like a baby bird, and that is the kind of thing I’d want for my own daughter. So maybe I am on Team Adam after all? Please pause for my internal crisis. 

Her grandma makes it through the night! Hooray! Except then she dies hours later, and Hannah schlumps on back to Grand Central in her woefully inappropriate mourning attire, lost in the crowd and in the transience of human life or whatever. I teared up. Did you? Gawd.

The next episode promises outrageous wigs, drunk Jessa, an obscenely good Shosh hairdo, and the phrase “he treats me like an ottoman with a vagina,” so BUTTER YOUR POPCORN, FOLKS.

 

 

Photos via HBOgo.com

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