Girls: Season 2 Finale Discussion Post

For the last few months, we've been sold on the season's tagline, "Almost getting it kind of together," supplemented by that New Year's resolution ad campaign. More or less predictably, we now find ourselves one episode away from the end of the season with a cast that hasn't gotten it together at all.

Let's begin with Hannah. Her first scene in this episode shows us that her book is not going well. "Did your hymen grow back?" her publisher asks, not having finished reading it of his own volition. "Where's the sexual failure? Where's the pudgy face flecked with semen and sadness? What I'm getting here is a lot of friendship. It's very Jane Austen." In what he calls an "epiphany," he suggests that she make it a novel if she's not currently having sex. Hannah looks dumbfounded

Ray is feeling sick, and Shoshanna is acting like a "geisha" (Ray's words, obviously), making sure he has white sugar, brown sugar, and artificial sweetener for his tea. Her guilt after cheating on him is taking its toll on their relationship, and he notices. Marnie, meanwhile, is pursuing her singing dreams and desperately needs GarageBand help.

Hannah is making no progress with her book, and we see her fidgeting on the floor of her apartment with her laptop until she gets a splinter in her ass. And because Girls is Girls, the next beautifully composed shot is one of Lena Dunham's ass with a very large chunk of wood in it. After pulling it out in the bathroom, she creates another problem for herself while trying to clean her ears with a cotton swab (something at least dozens of Web sites peddling medical knowledge tell you not to do). She scratches the inside of her ear. She cries. She calls her parents. We would pity her if we didn't think she was such an idiot. To Becky Ann Baker's credit, Hannaha's mom sounds just like mine when she yells into the phone: "Nothing smaller than an elbow in there, ever!" Hannah winds up having to go to the hospital, where a doctor with no bedside manner whatsoever asks if she was digging for gold, and suggests she frame the cotton swab.

Marnie, having been stood up at lunch by her ex-boyfriend Charlie, gets invited to his start-up's party celebrating 20,000 MAUs (monthly average users), which sounds like something to crack open beers over on a Friday night, not something to blow out with a live DJ, catered pizza, and "shitty beer" (according to the ever-quotable Ray, who attends with Shosh). While Ray goes to get himself a shitty beer, Shosh puts her foot in her mouth as she tries to pay Charlie a compliment: "You could have sex with any girl at this party, including me."

Meanwhile, Adam seems to be doing better. He and Natalia are now officially a couple. She's having sex with him and taking him to her friends' engagement parties and everything. At the party, her friend pulls Natalia aside and warns her that Adam "has the face of an old-timey criminal." Natalia, more astute than she realizes, replies: "What are you talking about? He looks like Peter Pan."

Adam, needing fresh air from a party at a bar where he's the only one not drinking, encounters Hannah outside, walking back home from the hospital. When she explains to him what happened, he calls her "kid" and tells her to be careful. The sentiment isn't lost on Hannah, who looks surprised and maybe just a little hurt when Adam tells her that he's at this bar with his girlfriend. There's no way for the conversation to not be awkward, and Adam cuts it short, heading back into the bar while Hannah tries to tell him about her book. Once inside, Adam promptly orders a Jack and ginger for himself. Natalia looks worried at first, but they drink and dance for the rest of their time there.

Back at the start-up party, Marnie, still nervous about her singing abilities, nonetheless resolves to perform a surprise version of Kanye West's "Stronger." Of course Marnie can't really sing. Not really. No one applauds but Ray (who probably does so more out of contempt for the party's crowd). After an intense conversation wherein he tells her she needs to get her shit together and she tells him she doesn't want his pity, Marnie and Charlie have sex on his desk.

Ray finally confronts Shoshanna about how strangely she's been acting around him. She quickly admits that she held a doorman's hand, and — because Ray is a blind fool — he laughs it off and gives her a hug, and Shoshanna makes a terrified face.

Back at Adam's apartment, Natalia tells him that she thinks his apartment's a mess, but when asked, says it doesn't change the way she feels about him. And then he tells Natalia to get on all fours. More perplexed than anything, she complies, and when he tells her to crawl toward his bedroom on a dirty nail-ridden floor, she does that, too. When she asks where it's leading, Adam lifts her off the ground, deposits her on his bed, and informs her "I want to fuck you from behind, hit the walls with you," pulling her panties down before she says anything more than an uncertain "Okay…" Natalia never tells him no, but it's clear that she doesn't want it to be happening, and after what cannot be more than thirty seconds, Adam attempts to finish on her dress-covered breasts, which Natalia has to bare for him if she doesn't want to look like she just got ejaculated on. Adam takes his shirt off (ironic, no?) and uses it to wipe the semen off of her breasts. On a show that portrays bad sex in almost every episode, the whole sequence stands out as scarier than anything we've seen thus far.

"I don't think I liked that," Natalia says simply as she ties her dress back up behind her neck.

"I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over me," Adam says, unable to look at her.

"I, like, really didn't like that."

"Jesus, I feel dizzy," he says. And finally meeting her eyes: "Is this it? Are you done with me?" We'll presumably find out next week, but it doesn't look hopeful.

This was an episode and a season of regression. As soon as we see the characters take a few inching steps forward, they seem to about-face and dash in the other direction. Marnie's trying to find herself but is again in the arms of a guy who doesn't actually care about her. Shoshanna is in a relationship with a great boyfriend but her own insecurities caused her to cheat and lie to him. Many of Hannah's problems could be solved if she would just take some responsibility and be more careful cleaning her ears. And Adam just started drinking again.

The episode ends with Hannah, again sitting in her bathroom, again with her OCD tics. She stares at the used cotton swab that she used earlier to pierce her ear, and, as the camera zooms slowly closer to her, proceeds to stick it in her other, undamaged ear.

These kids just don't ever learn.