2. Pistachio

3. Pecan

4. Almond

5. The rest

If only someone died. I don't mean this as a condemnation of last night's season 2 finale because it was a wonderful episode if you like resolutions and damaged romance and crazy people the way I do. But this season has been so fraught with insidious darkness stalking the series' major characters that a death seemed inevitable. Like a cool Brooklyn death off a fire escape during a roof party, a real consequence for the foolishness of youth. But, no one, died, thankfully, and instead Shoshanna gains her independence; Jessa's off to find a better universe beyond Brooklyn; and Hannah and Marnie are rewarded for their awfulness with true love.

These girls are so lucky.

Tonight begins with Hannah, still stricken with OCD madness and e-book writer's block. Her editor is angry, waiting for her pages, and threatening to sue her for the advance if she can't deliver something soon. She's deserted her friends. Her father won't bail her out, either, and now she's all alone with her madness, waiting for the rest to fall apart. While Hannah self-immolates, the rest of the gang is struggle-fucking through their own issues. Adam and his new girlfriend are in missionary position while he spews his dirty-whore-weirdo babble trying to reach orgasm. She endures it for a bit but then she starts adjusting his heaving mass sideways and forwards to give herself some pleasure in spite of his nonsense. Ray is seen side-dogging Shoshanna tenderly, completely unaware that she's too fixated on dumping him to enjoy his efforts. Then we cut to Charlie face-deep between Marnie's legs, and she's yelping like a drunk poodle since it appears Charlie's learned the Mandarin alphabet. "When did you get so good at that?" she asks. Probably when she was off boning pudgy wedding singers, homosexuals, and It-boy artist assholes. She's so stupid.

And Marnie's hooked on shiny new Charlie, with his evasive cool, his entrepreneurialism, and his ninja cunnilingus. They have brunch and she wants to know what's up. "I can't believe you and I are having casual sex!" she barks at him from across the table. Charlie won't budge because he's Steve McQueen. Marnie causes a scene in the restaurant because UGH. "Do you want to date me or not?!!!" Amazingly, Charlie doesn't beat her with his shoe on their way out of the restaurant. Nope, he still loves her. He can't help it. He says these things in the way that make him both happy and dejected. But he's certain, the poor guy. They hug like old lovers do in the parking lot, all tears and full of relief. They're back together. So after Marnie's year of living stupidly, things finally start to make sense because here's Charlie. Hello Charlie; farewell Steve McQueen.

Now here's Ray, sitting across from Shoshanna, trying to convince himself and her that his dismal promotion at the brand new Cafe Grumpy's in Brooklyn Heights will solve every problem past and future. Shoshanna's not impressed enough or happy enough and she tells Ray that their relationship is no longer working out. Ray acts stunned but he's not. He pushes back but Shosh won't budge. His negativity is draining and she starts rattling off all a checklist of things he hates. "You hate colors! You hate pillows, You hate ribbons, You hate everything!" 8-ball. Corner pocket. Rack it. They're done. Farewell Shoshanna; hello Steve McQueen.

Hannah's wasting away at home, hiding from the world, cutting her own bangs, poorly. She gives up, gets her junkie neighbor Laird to help her fix the mess she's made of her hair. He does a fantastic job because now Hannah has a bowl cut any 1st grade boy would be happy with on picture day. She cleans up the hair with a dustpan and broom while kneeling on the floor. She's about to go dark.

"You know when you're young and you drop a glass and your dad says 'get out of the way' so you can be safe while he cleans it up..."

The shade is going down.

"Well now no one really cares if I clean it up...."

Down.

"No one cares if I cut myself with glass..."

Down.

"No one says let me take care of that."

Dark.

She lies on the floor, she's acting crazy. Laird tries to help but she makes him feel awful instead. He pushes back, calls her "self-involved and presumptuous." She knows this, she apologizes, Laird accepts, but its still too dark. Later that night she's wigging out by herself, in her bed, when she calls Adam. He's at home just breaking his weird wooden raft, acting crazy, falling apart. She accidentally calls him using face time. He sees her struggling, her weird hair, her OCD twitches.

She says she's fine, but Adam knows it's time to run over to her apartment and save her. Shirtless. The music swells. He arrives at her apartment, can't find a key, and just kicks open the door. Hannah hides under the covers in shame but she can't hide from Adam. He picks her up and cradles her just in case she drops another glass.

Caye Caulker, Belize —

On my 21st birthday I was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct outside the Rockin Robin bar in Bethlehem, Pa. I spent the night in a small cell next to my other drunk and disorderly friend and listened to him vomit all night. During my release the police officer wished me a happy birthday and issued me a summons for $170. "Try not to spend another birthday in jail," he said. On my 25th birthday I was working in a restaurant in Jersey and I think the waitstaff bought me a cupcake and watched me blow out the sad candle at the bar that night. My 26th birthday was my first one living in New York City. I think my girlfriend at the time took me to La Bernadin. She got drunk and ornery, though, stumbled out in an expensive dress and stuck me with the bill. I had two credit cards declined before I paid for it all with the overdraft account. I think my 33rd birthday was the year the dominatrix showed up to a party at The Magician. I was wearing a robe. She told several people at the party how she tied up my dick and spit on me in her dungeon the week before. That night she just bought me a shot of Jäger. I think those are all the ages of the major characters on Girls. Close enough.

So today is my birthday. I'm finishing this series from the back deck of this cabin I rented on this tiny island. Farewell and thanks for everything. XO, AJ.

Caye Caulker, Belize—

When you feel yourself crumbling, fading out, you usually react in an impetuous, flakey manner, and succumb to your id, despite the protests or concerns of those close to you. It's a dramatic, selfish shriek for help because it's dark where you are. Hurry, someone trip the circuit breaker before someone gets hurt or, you know, jams a Q-tip into their brain.

Three characters in this week's Girls are shrieking:

1. Hannah
2. Marnie
3. Adam, oh, Adam

Fuck Shoshanna and her Ray problems cuz this swim is for young adults only.

Hannah struggles with her e-book and visits her editor for guidance, OCD still in full bloom. Her first draft is dreadful and much too safe, he says. She's crestfallen by his reaction but understands. "I fucked a teenager last week," she says, offering a solution for the dullness. The editor's eyes light up the way all editor's eyes light up when a writer courts danger. Hannah's on it. Yolo.

She goes home, sits on her wood floor, begins to stare at her laptop in search of the perfect opening sentence. (How about, "I fucked a teenager with a weird haircut in a graveyard last weekend?" That's grabby.)

But first she needs to stand up to yank on her vagina 8 times. She sits too quickly on the old wood floor and gets a splinter in her ass. It's that kind of day. She takes it upon herself to get it out, though, Rambo-style, with Tweezers, some rubbing alcohol, Band-Aids, and Q-tips. The Q-tips are too tough to resist though and she sticks it in her ear, searching for wax, missing buttons, loose change, what have you. She pushes too far. Pop. Hiss. Shriek. She calls her parents for help but they don't, so she heads to the hospital alone. Her attending doctor plucks the Q-tip out with great exasperation. Go home, he tells her, it'll be fine. Now stop shrieking.

I've moved locations to write about Marnie because she's so stupid. So the rest of this recap comes to you two beers in this morning with this as a view.

I'm fine, thanks for asking. All the locals are nice and accommodating, especially all the ragamuffins down by The Split. They call me "Albert" because that's what the name on my credit card says. They pronounce it "El-Burt" and I'm okay with that.

Yesterday I got lost three times on the way back to my cabin and almost pissed myself twice. One time I cut off into the bushes off the sandy path, away from as many people on bikes as possible. It turns out I pissed on a grave site. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to the ghost of this Belizian baby. Sorry, baby. XO, ELBURT.

Speaking of pissing on baby's graves, dim Marnie is still serious about this singing thing and decides that her first live performance will be at a work party thrown by Charlie's new company. She stands up in front of a roomful of Charlie's new employees and sycophants and dedicates this song to them. "This is such a big deal, this premature success you've all had." Then she sings the song she wrote, a spastic, Lana Del Ray crooner, of which a certain NBC news anchor would most likely pan. Charlie's also not impressed. He grabs her arm and marches her back to his office for some real talk. He asks her what's wrong. Things are tense. Charlie says she's flailing. Marnie yells she's not. Before they can make a mockery out of Bell Day, Charlie grabs her close and kisses her hard. They fuck on the desk. Bell Day is saved, but Marnie is most likely not.

And now, Adam. We last saw him, reasonably composed, gleeful, even, after he begins a new romance with the daughter of a woman he met in AA. Things have progressed nicely with Natalia, and when we first meet them this episode they're about to have sex. She gives him specific instructions on how she likes to be done and he's impressed, relieved even. "I like how you're so clear," he says, right before they start to bone. But, of course, it can't stay so clear forever. Later, Natalia brings Adam to her friend's engagement party. He senses a bubbling, familiar discomfort inside himself at this party. He's introduced to one of her friends and she says this: "Take care of this girl, she's our Mother Teresa— that is if Mother Teresa blew one of your cousins." Ha. Ha. Ha. "It was a long time ago," the friend adds. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Like it MATTERS.

Adam falls off the wagon. Natalia doesn't seem to mind. He drinks like an alcoholic full of rage would drink the rest of the night and, yet, she still agrees to go back to his place even though things are bound to get weird. "Get on all fours," Adam commands her. She does. "Now crawl to my bed." Reluctantly, she does. Before she reaches it, Adam grabs her and begins fucking her from behind. He has no patience to wait for her instructions this time. He pumps her and commands her to say pleasant things about him . In under ten seconds, he's flipping her over. "No not on my chest!," she protests. Too late cuz here comes the jizz bomb. He wipes her down with his shirt even though she didn't ask him to do so. "I didn't like that all," she says. He's scared her. He knew he would. "So is this it?" Natalia just stares, makes a face that doesn't seem promising.

Good. Both of them should run right now. Before it gets too dark.

Memories of past love are tough to contemplate at young ages, but it happens to most of us because we are all made of guts and mush that liquefy like meat left out in the sun if they go unused. In your 20's you drink too much or ingest too much of something or overthink yourself into catatonia. But it sometimes starts even earlier: your loss, your heart's wonder, regret. When I was 11, the first baby I ever held hands with was a peppy blonde girl with knee socks and pink Keds who lived up the street. Her name was Christie. She moved too fast for me at the time, but once I turned 12, I was ready. I hit puberty, so did she, but she'd already moved on. So I was too late for the first time and in order to sublimate my small pain, I wrote her a love song.

It's called "Christie":

(A minor- G-F-G if you'd like to play this tune at home)

Christie was a girl I knew in school, we went out in Junior High
I loved her but she'll never know, because I always said goodbye
We were destiny but you could never tell,
cuz I always let her go and gave her hell

pre-chorus:

Now that she's gone foreve-r,
And going out with Chris
I never told her but I said to myself
somethingthatgoeslikethis....

CHRISTIE! CHRISTIE! (CAN YOU HEAR ME....)

She never came back. No wonder. XO, AJ.

Sometimes there are losses in life that come along unexpectedly, especially when it comes to misguided romances; in this week's Girls episode, "It's Back," we have three of our main character's relationships excavated. The two relationships currently on the disabled list (Hannah/Adam; Marnie/Charlie) have the best chance of survival, oddly enough. Yes, Shoshannah and Ray, although technically together, are super-close to implosion. But their doom awaits. For now, let's sift through the ashes of the others.

The theme of missed opportunity and regret is strong throughout, most prominently on display when Hannah, whose maddening OCD has returned with a vengeance due to her breakup with Adam, the pressure of publishing her e-book and her inabilty to embrace YOLO. She's confronted with it during a Judy Collins concert at a dinner theater with her visiting parents. She's lost in the lyrics from the wise lady strumming the guitar on the tiny stage:

Sometimes I remember the old days
When the world was filled with sorrow
You might have thought I was living
but I was all alone
In my heart the rain was falling
The wind blew, the night was calling
Come back, come back I'm all you've ever known.

Hannah averts her eyes from the stage, drowning in memories of Adam being weird, pounding wood, pounding her, so she runs to the bathroom because her OCD is suffocating her body like a plastic bag over her head. She sprints to the bathroom to make herself feel right again.

Meanwhile Marnie finds out that Charlie — spineless, rudderless, Charlie— has secured funding for an app he created called Forbid, and is now a budding mogul with an office in Chelsea and 11 employees. This is not how it's supposed to happen for Marnie, as we later find out she thinks. "I had him pegged for six years of being broken." SHE, on the other hand, had her shit together, yet is still promenading around in a goony outfit as a hostess in the city, rolling her eyes enough for someone to notice. Ray, resident sage of lost dreams and inertia, intervenes: " What do you really wanna do with your life?"

She wants to sing. Ray goes eyes-wide-mouth-closed because she can't be serious. She's serious. She croons some Norah Jones for him because she's stupid. It's an adequate rendition, all electronic cigarette dreamy, but she's still stupid.

Back to sensibility. Adam woke up in the morning and drank a glass of rotten milk next to his dirty bed because he's still so twisted by the loss of Hannah. He's consumed by her and her many contradictions. Something has to move forward in a positive way so he heads back to an AA meeting and avoids the sinkhole. The meeting is about to close but before it does he stands up to change the things he can before they rearrange the chairs:

"I had this girlfriend who at first I didn't like very much or I guess I didn't take her serious very much. She just seemed like, uhhmm, a piece of ass. But she was perrr-sistent man and she just hung around and hung around and showed up at my place and gradually it started to feel better when she was there. It wasn't love the way I imagined it. I just felt weird...I didn't know what she was up to or whatever. I liked knowing that she was just going to be there and warm and staying the night. And she acted like I was teaching her everything! About...fuckin history. About sex. She didn't know what street Central Park started on. Or how to use soap. And showed her! And I wanted that chance to show someone everything. But she changed her mind and it was (snaps) that fast."

Chews lip chews lip chews lip.

"I was so exhausted."

Thanks for sharing, Adam. At the meeting, an older, pushy, possibly-wacko woman (Carol Kane) is touched by this soliloquy and wants to introduce him to her daughter. This is a set-up for disaster but Adam goes along with meeting her anyway. Turns out the goofy mom created an angel just for Adam and their eyes predict enchantment even before they sit down at the table.

The dinner conversation is effortless and Adam smiles like a human throughout while the girl's wings grow and expand after every sentence uttered. He's on his way.

But Hannah, poor Hannah, continues to disintegrate so her parents make a pit-stop at a shrink to keep her OCD in check.

Hannah placates the therapist with her history of OCD. It's been going on since high school but she freed herself from it after some medication. She stopped the medication.

"Why?" the therapist asks.

"It made me tired," Hannah says.

"How tired?"

"Very tired."

So now what?

And FUCK you.

Skinny Drew is a pretentious fuck sometimes who now thinks he's handsome even though he's a cross between what I'd imagine John Candy's corpse looked like after a month and the lead dude from Homeland with the face like a small child's penis . And if Drew takes off his shirt he appears to be wearing a suit made of shar peis.

This episode of Girls is called "Video Games" but don't get too excited, geekboys, because it's actually about Jessa's relationship with her estranged father. Jessa, fetishized by most as the wisest of all the Girls, takes an impromptu road trip to Manitou to visit her father after receiving a mysterious text from him that, after Hannah's deduction, was probably a butt-text. "That's really mean," Jessa says to Hannah. They're cooped at the train station for hours, because Jessa's father is always late. Hannah has to piss, but the Manitou train station has no toilet. We also learn that Hannah has a UTI. Hannah is skittish about pissing in public but oh the burn.

"I heard the best way to treat it is to stick garlic up your pussy."

This may be true for women, but the best way to get rid of a UTI for a man is to stick your penis into three or four pieces of soft white bread soaked in cranberry juice.

When Jessa's father finally arrives, we find him scraggly haired and aloof, the station wagon is stuffed with old computers. He refuses to throw them away because he's afraid people will steal his ideas. So he's that guy. Or is he?

The purpose of this episode is to give the audience some background on why Jessa is so w/e about life. The answer: Daddy Issues, which most girls of a certain age find themselves spending a good portion of their lives trying to overcome. His new wife, Petula, is played by Rosanna Arquette, who is all hempy and spiritual, the type of role it feels like she's played in every movie since Desperately Seeking Susan. Jessa's not a fan of Petula. Not really an issue, though.

Throughout this episode, for all his odd vagabond foreign-ness Frank, is actually blameless. Jessa, it turns out, for all her bottle-dropping hot-pussy chaos and flowy sundresses, does not have her shit together at all. This is hinted at throughout but here's the pivotal interaction on a rickety swingset in the backyard between Jessa and her father that seals it:

"Everything. You disappearing for months on end and. Why you couldn't do one single thing you say your gonna do? You act like you want me here. You don't even know how to have a conversation with me."

Frank defends himself. Says something squirmy and accusatory about Jessa's own flakiness. But Jessa counters, whines, almost sobs, even:

"I'm the child. I'm the child."

I haven't spoken to my father in a productive way in months, since my mother got sick, and I don't know why. Throughout most of my childhood, he was the enemy, just a towering presence whose sole function was to intimidate and dictate on his non-work hours. He was gone most Friday nights all of my life and it didn't dawn on me to ask where he was, ever, because it seemed off-limits. Still haven't asked. He was probably just out, doing his thing, taking the allotted time away from jobs and parenting and the suckiness of life. He was the enemy, my mother, the hero. Somewhere about halfway through college the dynamic shifted, and the man I'd feared for most of my life somehow became my best friend. We were no longer father and son, but humans, accepting of differences but always cautious of toeing the line between father and buddy. We've been at odds with one another since about October. I took time off from Gawker to go home and help him out with my mom, to do the dutiful thing and circle the wagons like a family does during a family crisis. Most of the time was spent hanging out with him. We played a lot of golf while my mom sat in a chair staring at the television, waiting for us to come home to tell her what to do next. Halfway through my stay I realized how shitty everything really was. Not just with her illness but the full significance of the insignificance of my time spent there. One day my father and I went out to lunch together at a tacky suburban Italian restaurant trying very hard not to be one. "I've never loved your mother more in my life," he said to me. Then something inside me snapped. Because he was lying.
Because he was just trying to pat himself on the back for doing laundry for her. Because he heard that line probably in a Nicholas Sparks novel. At least that was my interpretation. Whether he meant it or not it felt so hollow and self-serving but the soup came before I could stab him with the butter knife. Instead, I cut my sabbatical early. I was supposed to see them again for Thanksgiving. I bailed and went to Cairo. They found out when I landed, just like practically everyone else in my life, including most of the staff at Gawker. I called him when I got back, safe and sound. He told the rest of my family I was in Los Angeles. We spoke, cordially at first, but then the tone in his voice flatlined and there I was, 12 years old again, getting scolded. So I unloaded on him then ended the conversation with this line: "And if you ever say that you've never loved her more in your life ever again I'm gonna knock you the fuck out." Then I hung up, like a child. We've had sporadic awkward truces between us but it came to a head last week after this farewell piece put the stuff out there that was meant to stay under wraps. My father left a voicemail message. I only heard a portion of it before I deleted it, because, again, I'd heard that voicemail message so many times before so fuck that melodrama. And fuck you guys, too. I'm about to take a hammer against a tree to sweat out this boozy anger. XO, AJ.

But that's the thing about Jessa, what we realize and she realizes, is that the daddy issues can only last for so long before they can only become Jessa issues. Her father's estrangement is no longer the cause of all this drama. It's just an excuse. As Hannah sits on the toilet, writhing about as the dagger-pee leaks out of her, she's calling out to Jessa that her UTI, is most assuredly, back. Hannah is all packed and ready to go and calls out to Jessa that it's time to go but there is only a note left on the bed:

"See You Around My Love, X"

Jessa, just like her father, decided to bail early because that's who she is and, you know, YOLO. At the train station, Hannah calls her parents. After a weekend of watching the kooky, sad relationship between Jessa and her father, Hannah feels compelled to call her parents to thank them for being, well, parents. But Hannah's mother doesn't buy this sincerity and interprets the call as manipulative — because she's a parent and knows better. On the other end of the phone, Hannah squats in pain on the railroad tracks, still pissing daggers with no one else around.

[Image by Jim Cooke]

The title of this week's episode is "Boys," and focuses on sad-sack Ray, still ill-equipped for love and life, but with major supporting roles chipped in by Adam and Booth Jonathan. This is "Boys" and these boys are animals disguised as humans, remember, so either bring your daughters to the slaughter or stay far away.

First, let's explore the boyishness of Booth Jonathan, whose macabre works of art and downtown It-boy sleaze have continued to seduce dim Marnie. We find them in bed, where Booth is naked as a jaybird and Marnie covers herself in many blankets of shame. Marnie's phone rings and Booth bitches because anytime a cell phone ringer trills before noon he gets cranky since he's a churlish asshole. Marnie looks at her phone and, hey, it's Hannah. Booth doesn't care because he's only interested in humans he can mortify in person. In walks Booth's assistant, an attractive young Americasian girl named Su Jin (Sue Jen? Su-Jin? IMDB if it's bothersome) with the day's events. Marnie pulls the covers up closer, Booth rolls over to acknowledge her presence, almost giving his assistant a ballsack show. Neither one of them blink. Same ballsack, different day for Booth and his assistant. Marnie notices this weirdness and pulls the covers closer. The Americasian assistant blah-blahs about what job duties Booth Jonathan has on tap for today which will require him to wear clothing. But before she exits, he confronts her about a spoonful of goat's milk ice cream she'd eaten without his permission. This is the final straw for Xiu Gin, who angrily chucks the Crackberry at the disgusting hellbound couple in front of her and quits on the spot because New York City which is still recognized as part of a free country except within the borders of Booth Jonathan's bedroom.

Booth is hosting a downtown It-boy sleaze party that evening but Ztsu-Xing wants freedom so now what? Annex Marnie.

"Marnie, do you want to hostess this party tonight?"

She says yes, excitedly, because daydreams do come true in this town if you nuzzle the right pimp.

Meanwhile, in a less sinister enclave of Brooklyn, a ridiculous set of circumstances has befallen the gang at Cafe Grumpy in order to keep Ray fast-tracked to Loserville. This happens: "Hannah do you still have my copy of Little Women?" he asks. " I left it at Adam's," she says. Of course she won't go see him, she sent him to jail remember? So if Ray really wants his Little Women back he'll have to trek over to Adam's apartment and get it himself. Shoshannah chimes in and tells Ray that it's his "duty as a man to go." Like a termite choking on a splinter, he goes.

Once Ray finds his way to Adam's glorious shitbox, his life's journey is about to become more fraught. Adam answers the door wielding a hammer and interrogates Ray to make sure Hannah didn't send him over to spy. Ray enters, marveling at how masculine Adam's abode is with all its dusty wood and stray oars and hammers and noise.

But where's Little Women?

In the bathroom, probably, Adam says, and then he remembers there's an angry dog behind that door. This dog is super-aggressive because it turns out that Adam stole it from a Staten Island dog owner who neglected it at a coffee shop for too long, in his opinion. Ray is aghast; he demands Adam return the dog to its rightful owner. Adam describes the dog's owner as a intimidating, big face, bald, big everything.

"Will you come with me in case I need back-up?" Adam asks Ray. Ray's honored but terrified. He still says yes.

Two boys are now on a quest for manhood to Staten Island. They take a ferry ride together and begin to talk about the women in their lives while bobbing on the river. The stolen dog barks wildly. A female passenger confronts the two boys talking about their women:

"CONTROL YOUR ANIMAL."

They ignore her, willfully, and continue to discuss relationships. Thirty-three-year-old Ray attempts to rationalize his relationship with 21-year-old Shoshannah to Adam. No need to, though, because:

"I don't think it's weird. Young girls and older ladies. It's the in-betweens that are a problem."

Ray has an ally. He goes on to describe his theory about why dating younger women or older women is the best move by far.

"They don't have these bullshit expectations about what a relationship needs to be. Or doesn't need to be."

[PICTURE ME MAKING AN OBNOXIOUS BUZZER NOISE RIGHT NOW]

Wrong, dude. Women have expectations about relationships the minute they figure out what the word bullshit really means. So let's say age 7.

"Yeah, my best relationships were with a 17-year-old and a 54-year-old," Adam chimes in. The sex was fantastic. She exercised compulsively, he says, and they would fuck upside down on a trapeze because who needs the bullshit. Ray now sees Adam differently. He's a prophet who stole a dog from Staten Island. Ray takes a seat next to Adam and the stolen dog.

"You know you and I are not so different.... Maybe it's because we're both honest men."

From there, the two men continue their philosophical musings about relationships while walking around Staten Island to return the dog. But the bro-down derails the minute Ray asks Adam what he sees in Hannah. Adam has answers for Ray's rude inquiries. He describes her lovingly, still awestruck, a true honest man. Adam starts to wonder why Ray's so curious about his relationship with Hannah and accuses Ray of fucking her.

"No, I don't find Hannah attractive," Ray says. Adam's switch has flipped. He drops the leash. He shoves Ray away. Ray staggers and grabs the stolen dog's leash.

"What you're doing with Shoshannah is not real. She's just some kid you feel safe with because you know it won't work out. You're just babies holding hands." Adam kidney punches the truth, a real honest man. "You don't know what the fuck you're talking about," Ray says but he's lying, you can tell, just look at the way he tugged so hard on that leash.

Then, at the very moment where spirited agitation should transform into lifelong friendship, Adam goes Audi 5,000.

"Fuck this, I'm out." Adam high-tails it from Ray's mess and jumps up in the air to smack a parking sign without looking back even once.

Ray is on his own with a muzzled dog and forced to navigate his and Staten Island's hopelessness all at once. The two animals commence wandering. He finally tracks down the address for the dog. He's confronted by the owner's teenage daughter outside the dog owner's residence. Relieved, he attempts to hand it over to her. She refuses.

"I hate that thing it fucks up the house it scares my friends. Keep him." Staten Island lady. Ray's beside himself.

"Look, you can't just throw this dog away that's not how it fucking works," he yells at her, like an honest man should.

"Fuck you, dicklicker!" She shoves Ray away. He holds on to the leash tighter.

"Fuck me? Fuck you. You have no morals and you live in a fucking trash heap," Ray says, honest as usual.

Then it all comes crashing down.

"WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU? WHY AREN'T YOU AT WORK OLD MAN? PROBABLY CUZ YOU DON'T HAVE A JOB YA FUCKIN' LOSER." The teenage girl begins to walk away victorious. Ray tries to counter with more honesty.

"You don't know that. Maybe I work nights. Maybe I'm a creative type who does't abide to a 9-to-5 schedule you don't know...."

She turns around. Here comes the killshot.

"YEAH? YOU PROBABLY STILL LIVE WITH YOUR MOM, FAGGOT. DID SHE BUY YOU THOSE FAGGOT PANTS? YOU'RE A PIECE OF SHIT WHO HAS NOTHING BETTER TO DO BUT STEAL MY DAD'S DAWG AND USE IT AS YOUR OWN PRIVATE FUCK TOY. GO BACK TO YOGURT TOWNE, KY-IKE."

Ray yells back that he's Greek-Orthodox. She gives him the finger without turning around.

"I live in Brooklyn."

Meanwhile, the It-boy sleaze party is bumpin'. Marnie invited Hannah to the party even though this is not the type of party Hannah has any business being invited to. They were friends once, though, and besides Marnie bought a new weird dress to wear for the party she's hostessing. Hannah watches Marnie navigate through the It-boy sleaze party with great ease, as Hannah slouches behind her.

"Why didn't you return my text?" Hannah asks, even though she knows why.

Marnie doesn't have time to give a real answer because one of her new friends, Sketch, has arrived. SKETCH!

She runs to him. Sketch hoists up Marnie. Hannah doesn't get an answer from Marnie while she's being twirled around by Sketch.

"You're an animal!" she says to Sketch. Hannah will exit the party early without saying goodbye to her friend. Sometime later, Marnie will share a moment with Booth Jonathan in his wine cellar where he casually offers $500 for hostessing the party. "But I'm your girlfriend," Marnie says. Of course, Booth Jonathan didn't realize he had a girlfriend. She starts to cry.

"Usually when I think someone's my boyfriend they're my boyfriend. I'm usually not delusional. I like spending time with you. I feel stupid." She is stupid. She's no longer pretty on the inside and now this. Booth Jonathan begins knocking over bottles of wine in his cellar because somehow, after all this, he feels used. Marnie attempts to cheer him up despite what just happened. She is still stupid.

Next we find Ray sitting on a bench in Staten Island, stolen dog still by his side. The two stare out at the city. Ray asks if the dog thinks he's a kike. He answers for the dog.

"I'm not. I'm nothing." He begins to weep. The stolen dog pants next to him. They're like two baby animals holding hands.

[Image by Jim Cooke]

This week's episode of Girls features only one major character, Hannah, who's basically snapped at this point in her young life. There's a brief snippet of Ray, crabby as ever, perhaps even more so now that he's decided the only way to save himself from the quicksand of life is using 21-year-old Shoshanna as a vine, which means that romance is nothing short of doomed. Other recurring characters featured in the episode "One Man's Trash" include Hannah's left breast (Lenny) and her right breast (Squiggy) who both get more airtime than usual. This week's special guest star is Patrick Wilson, cast as a handsome 42-year-old doctor named Joshua who lives in a perfect brownstone just around the corner from Cafe Grumpy. You may remember Wilson from his role as the Prom King in the film version of Tom Perotta's Little Children but I'm sure the reason he was cast in Girls this season is because he's the only son of Heart guitarist Nancy Wilson and 28th president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson. Not a fact.

Moving on: Joshua infiltrates the Girls' universe after he heads over to Grumpy's to complain about the person who keeps throwing soggy coffee grounds and old pastries into his garbage can on several occasions. He politely asks Ray to solve this problem and to control his employees from doing so since it's pretty annoying. Ray's not having it, though, because he's miserable and has no time for yuppity haranguing today or any day. They bro-off a bit inside the shop without a sound resolution. Joshua storms out. Hannah bore witness to this whole exchange and made numerous facial expressions throughout indicating that she knows who keeps fucking with Joshua's trash. Instead of confessing to Ray she seizes this opportunity for self-immolation, quits her job, and storms out. Ray's still in macho mode so he lets Hannah go and makes sure the door wallops her in the ass on her way out. The customers stare at Ray and he feels their eyes. "Go back to watching your panda videos!" he commands. He knows his customers so this is a sick burn.

Hannah decides to begin her new jobless freedom with an apology. She toddles over to the brownstone with the garbage cans full of Grumpy detritus and rings the doorbell. Oh, look, it's the handsome guy in the doorway. Hello? Hello. He does not remember her from Grumpy's. Anyway, would Hannah like to come in? Better judgment takes a backseat and Hannah marches in and, wow, look at all this grown-up stuff this guy has: shiny wood floors, coat racks, nice couches, mantles full of vases and busts, a fruit bowl with real fruit, and a piano tucked away in a corner that's most likely there because it helps even out the room or for when old rich people want to show off their "Greensleeves" renditions at cocktail parties. There is not a speck of dust.

She admits she's the one who kept stuffing his precious garbage cans full of Grumpy shit. She did this initially because she kept forgetting the key to the dumpster at Grumpy's and needed to dispose of the trash. Then she began to do it habitually because it made her feel rebellious. "The moment you drop it in, the moment you run away," she says. Deep. For some reason this makes sense to the handsome man and he offers her a glass of lemonade which sounds delightful. She follows him into the kitchen. He stares, she averts her eyes, begins to mumble, looks up, silent flirting, game on.

Hannah kisses. He kisses back. Then he picks up her by the armpits and plops her onto a countertop or a kitchen island. Grope-fest. They exchange names before the real boning begins. He's Joshua. She's Hannah. Lenny and Squiggy burst through Hannah's top. HALLO.

They spend the whole day in perpetual dream state, snuggling and fucking and eating steaks. Joshua shares that he's separated. Hannah presses for a reason why, but it's boring. Upstairs Joshua takes his shirt off and flops on the bed. He tells Hannah to make him come/cum. Hannah's super-confident by now and says no you make me come/cum. She's on her back. Lenny and Squiggy assume the position. Joshua shows off his finger-bang technique to the delight of everyone. HALLO. They continue their days of guilt-free adventure because the end of the world starts in Greenpoint brownstones. Ping-pong is played in Joshua's fancy ping-pong room, topless, in their underwear. Hannah sucks at ping-pong but uses self-deprecation to prepare Joshua for this unsurprising reality. Joshua is at the other end of the table and he bounces on the balls of his feet to show Hannah that he's competitive and has played organized sports before. Hannah muffs the serve. Lenny and Squiggy flop away on the bench and are probably better ping-pong players than Hannah. Maybe next time, guys. Cut to Hannah and Joshua boning on top of the ping-pong table. Cut to more lousy ping-pong joy.

Let's skip to the weird stuff. Hannah takes a shower in Joshua's fancy shower full of glistening showerheads and digital temperature adjustment buttons and Hannah proceeds to press a button until it's scalding to get some steam. There's too much steam, though, and she faints. Joshua finds her, saves her, puts her in an expensive robe and moves her to the bedroom. Hannah starts to lose it a bit and wants some real talk time. "Please don't tell anyone this, but I just want to be happy," she admits, startling herself with this revelation. Joshua says something cluelessly grown-up about everyone wanting to be happy and deserving it but he's not on the same level as Hannah. No, dude, you don't understand. Hannah reveals more:

"One time I asked someone to punch me in the chest and then come on that spot," she says.

"When I was three, I told my mom my babysitter had touched me on the vagina in the bath." She may have been lying about that, even.

Joshua empathizes. "One time when I was nine I let this kid jerk me off."

So one time when I was 11 I was at a sleepover at my friend Nick Franzioni's house. (This is not his real name. But it's close enough. I'd hate to fuck up this dude's Google.) We had a sweet VHS tape of the cheap-o porn cable version of Young Lady Chatterly's Lover Part 6 or some shit and watched it after his parents went to bed. In the middle of it, I got up to go to the bathroom and I had one of those out of control 11-year-old erections that can't be tamed. I attempt to urinate as usual but due to my severe engorgement the stream just missed the bowl. I completely soaked the walls of the Franzioni bathroom. It was was all over the fancy soaps and the candle sitting on the back of the toilet. It was on the floor. It was on the hand towels which were there for decoration only and not to be used for drying. I panicked. I tried to mop up some of the piss with one of the already wet cloth hand towels but not enough. I just left it there and went back home the next day without any problems. Later that afternoon, Mrs. Franzioni called my mom and told her about the mess I made. She told my mother I was no longer allowed to sleepover anymore. My mom just stared at me and had no idea what to say. What could she say?

When I was 18 at a worked as a busboy at a restaurant in Holland, Pa. It was the first time I'd ever met real-life gay people. One of them was a creepy-ass bartender named Ricky who had a weird bouffant of black hair with a skunk patch right in the middle. I was told he was gay but he was so nice to me and didn't act gay so yeah, what's the big deal? I used to give Ricky money and he would go to the shitty bar and buy me six-packs of beer after work. Molson Ice, even. He was cool. One time Ricky invited me up to his apartment after our shifts to hang out and smoke pot. He would buy the beer this time. Cool, Ricky, sure. His apartment was small and sad and it seemed too sloppy for a dude pushing 40. I sat on the couch and we smoked pot out of a tinfoil bowl. We watched something weird on television and didn't say much. Then Ricky moved over to the couch and asked if he could get me another beer. Sure, Ricky. He tapped my leg. I was stoned. WHAT THE FUCK WAS GOING ON. I wasn't staying around to find out. I got up and ran to the door. "I GOT TO GET HOME RICKY!" I heard him protesting from the kitchen- "No, wait! Don't go..."- as I ran down the stairs. I drunk-drove for ten miles that night back to my parents' house. That was the longest I'd ever driven while hammered and was impressed at how lucky I was. The next day I tried to convince myself that I was just stoned and paranoid and a homophobe.

The following week we had a staff Christmas party which was a bus trip to Atlantic City. I sat in the back with the owner, Paul, who was also gay. He looked like the chubby magazine guy from Beetlejuice who sat around the table during the Day-O scene. He revealed so much to me that night and seemed like my friend. Paul's cool, I thought. He's gay, too. But he knows I'm not gay. Then Paul moved to the back and talked to other people because he didn't want it to seem like he was paying too much attention to me. He tapped my leg too, before he went to the back of the bus. Just like Ricky did. As soon as Paul left, Ricky moved up to take his seat. He was really drunk. "Listen, I'll give you $150 to suck your dick. You don't have to do anything. I just want to suck your dick." I moved up to the front of the bus and sat there with the old waitresses to talk about their bratty daughters and how much they hated their lives instead. I quit the busboy job soon after the trip because I couldn't take it anymore and, you know, No Homo. Ricky called and left a message on my parent's answering machine a couple days later and apologized if he was the reason I quit. I deleted it before my parents could hear the message. My dad would fucking kill him. XO, A.J.

Hannah wakes up the next morning in Joshua's giant bed alone. She stretches, looks around, takes in the opulence. She grabs the New York Times off his front stoop. She makes herself toast and jam and reads the paper on his veranda. She cleans up and and leaves in the same outfit she wore to his apartment two days ago. Before she heads out the door, she grabs a full trash bag from the kitchen. She drops it in his can, quickly walks away and makes sure that no one saw her leave because that's what made this fun to begin with.

[Image by Jim Cooke]

When you cohabitate with a boyfriend/girlfriend/manfriend, especially in New York City or any of its lesser boroughs, the best day you share with that special someone is Sunday. This is the only day of the week where a shared living space does not feel like a hostile takeover. "This is why we do this," you'll say to yourself, gazing at your significant roommate-lover, momentarily forgetting about all the excess hair caught in the drain and that the ice cube trays are always half-frozen or empty. Because it's Sunday. "To Sundays, to our Sundays" then you clink glasses of Bloody Marys and find the right page of the Times' magazine to dry-hump on top of until it's time to watch BreakingLandMenBlood. The rest of the week is spent trying to remember how to breath without screaming. Cohabitation is the centerpiece of this week's episode, titled "It's a Shame About Ray," a nod to the Lemonheads song. [The episode was directed by Jesse Peretz, former bass player for the Lemonheads and son of former New Republic owner and wealthy man-about-Tel Aviv Martin Peretz ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.—Ed.] You may remember that last week featured a Duncan Sheik song. This means that Lena Dunham is only one Cranberries reference away from becoming a bona fide 90's bitch.

But the title is misleading because it's not all about Ray but more about the pitfalls of reckless too-soon-move-ins and its impact on relationships. The big revelation about sadsack Ray's homelessness and self-ascribed loserdom is the most fascinating plotline, but there's other space-rape drama within the gang that should not be overlooked. First we have the perilous relationship of newlyweds Jessa and Thomas-John, whose fuck-it-let's-get-married union begins to unravel. We find Thomas-John on the phone finalizing dinner plans with his parents, who've still not met his new bride. Jessa whines, chicly, about the dinner plans and meat. Thomas-John comforts her. She plops out a tit. He massages it, squeezes it, like he found the softest avocado at Whole Foods. True love, you see. The dinner with Thomas-John's uptight parents should go swimmingly.

Meanwhile, back in Greenpoint, Hannah's apartment is footloose and homo-free now that Elijah the Fink has been booted for doinking Marnie that night on the couch. Now Hannah's cooking food like a grown-ass woman for Charlie and his mouthy girlfriend, Audrey.

Knock-knock, uh oh, Marnie's at the door. Wonder how this will go?

Hello. Hi. Hello. Shuddering all around.

Marnie heads to the bathroom. Charlie looks at Audrey who looks at Hannah who looks at them and everyone shares a glance and wonders who should feel unwelcome here. They all decide it should be Marnie, let's eat.

Ding-dong, hey it's Shosh and Ray. They're late. Shoshannah stammers excuses for their tardiness but Ray cuts her off and admits that they were boning. Oh Shosh.

All of them sit around the table, Hannah's proud of her feast, then intense small talk about buttholes and buttplugs ensues. Things start to get testy between Audrey and Marnie, especially after Hannah reveals that Marnie gets squeamish when she hears the word butthole. Audrey cocks, loaded: "Butthole. Butthole. Butthole." Marnie wigs. One calls the other one crazy or insane, Audrey gnashes her teeth and rips the recess lady's breast. Marnie's pissed and humiliated so she storms off. Charlie goes after her. Audrey feels jilted, possibly guilty. Aw, did someone shove a homemade jar of mustard up your butthole to make your face wilt like that, Audrey, you little shit bag? I hate her.

Up to the roof. Charlie says nice things to Marnie and they share a moment. Charlie goes in for the kiss and then a pinch of boob. CHARLIE. Marnie pushes him away, tells him she's seeing Booth Jonathan. Charlie's mad. He huffs, puffs, pivots away then flounces back to his horrible girlfriend, who probably left him because he still acts like an inverted penis even when he tries to be a player.

Downstairs at the grown-up table, the more civilized conversation has turned towards Ray and Shoshannah. Hannah asks where Ray's living and he struggles to answer. Shoshannah chimes in to help him solve this mystery because he spends most of the time at her pla...."OH MY GOD ARE YOU LIVING WITH ME?" Ray looks around the table, tries not to breathe.

Dinner isn't going well for Jessa and Thomas-John, either. "I hate this restaurant but I don't even care because I'm so excited to meet you guys." Both parents stare at Jessa, smiling politely but insincerely. Jessa dominates the conversation with her tales of heroin addiction and her trampy world travels. Thomas-John's mother appears constipated. Thomas-John's father is agog. Thomas-John adjusts in his seat but tries to remain supportive of his wife even though it's clear she detests him and that he thinks she's retarded. Thomas-John's mother attempts to save her son from this madness and asks her new daughter-in-law if she plans to ever work or will she continue to just freeload off her dumdum son. Jessa stabs her in the solar plexus with her eyes. "Now you know why we didn't invite you to the wedding!" Thomas-John says to his parents. But it's too late for petty teenage rebellion disguised as chivalry.

Jessa and Thomas-John make it out of dinner barely alive. Back at home, in Thomas-John's Williamsburg apartment, spacious yet uncluttered even though it's full of sterile, expensive things, the rift widens. Thomas-John asks Jessa why she was so salty and weird in front of his parents. Then he accuses her of being after his money. To articulate this point he says some metaphorical shit about a haystack where he's the needle and she eats all the hay. He says more asshole things, and accuses her of being a dumb hipster. This provides his wife with crucial insight into how little her new husband thinks of her. Jessa then takes this opportunity to pluck out both of Thomas-John's testicles from his scrotum. She holds them up like tiny skulls:

"I'm embarrassed when we walk down the street because you're so fucking average."

Then Thomas-John, ball-less and desperate, calls her a whore. Jessa punches him hard in the face and he bleeds. They've both had enough of this charade so now it's time to say goodbye for good. "How much do you want?" Thomas-John barks at her. He's trying to buy back his dignity by testing hers. She asks for $30k. He was thinking more like $10k. They make a deal, and the marriage dissolves along with the dignity. But to make it official-official, Jessa must break something. She picks up a heavy glass award off a shelf near the staircase, She admires it and fondles it because it's about to meet its demise . "That's my humanitarian award," he reminds his wife, the dumb hay-eating hipster whore. He pleads for temporary civility but it won't prevent the inevitable. Then comes the clunk, then comes the shatter. Jessa smiles as she watches Thomas-John stare at all the pieces of his broken award all over the floor. You can't stop rock and roll.

Now let's see how Shoshannah and Ray are dealing with the space-rape. They're sitting on a bench, waiting for the subway. Shoshannah is flustered and waits for Ray to say something that makes sense. Ray can't even look at her, he's so ashamed. Shoshannah won't tolerate this type of behavior from him at this very moment because she needs more answers. She prods him about other stuff first, like, his ambition, his future, his lazy soul. "You're older than me, you should have your own place." Shoshannah says this but doesn't mean it because hurt hurts.

Ray interrupts her before it gets any worse.

"Just say it, okay, just say it, I'm a loser, okay, just say it." Ray has preemptively smashed his own award all over the subway platform.

Shoshannah is undaunted by the loser right beside her. The subway rumbles and squeals into their station right as she admits that she's falling in love with him out loud.

And then Ray, ten years older, ten years wiser, homeless and hemorrhaging, says this.

"It's way too early for you to say something like that."

More subway noise. Ray can't even look at her because he's so spun. Shoshannah watches and waits.

"I love you so fucking much," Ray blurts out to the universe.

Now go home, Ray. Enjoy those Sundays while they last.

This week's episode of Girls is one of the most enjoyable television episodes ever, especially if you're a cokehead. The writers of this television program about young girls in Brooklyn decided to treat cocaine usage in a very adult-type way. The drug is just portrayed as a devilish, incoherent muse. There are no concerns about unstoppable nosebleeds, flukey heart attacks, or its illegality. Disregard the plot point to how Hannah goes about procuring coke (from her downstairs neighbor, Laird, beanie-wearing junkie) and coke's downsides are minimal. Instead, it focuses mainly on the yayo's ability to consummate relationships with truth.

The primary focus is on Hannah, Elijah, and Marnie, and the inevitable great reveal that Elijah and Marnie had unremarkable couch-sex the night of the party. Hannah finds out this information while high on cocaine for the very first time in life after she gets a freelance writing assignment from a women's publication called JazzHate edited by a woman named Jamie who tells Hannah to call her "Jame," which makes one wonder why they just didn't call the site "OXJame." The show's dig—if you can call at that—is that the site's fictional editrix believes true creative genius can only be mined through oversharing. Jame suggests some story ideas for Hannah to tackle for $200 a pop. "How about you have a threesome?" or "Just do a bunch of cocaine all night and write about it" because the road to $200 payment for struggling female writers goes through Bret Easton Ellis' vagina. Jame points to a wall inside her office. Above one circle it says, "this is your comfort zone" and outside of it to the far left is a small black dot that says, "this is where the magic happens." Hannah has decided that a threesome is not where the magic happens. Cocaine is where the magic happens. Wise choice.

Once Hannah has gotten "the scary part over with" (procurement) she and Elijah decide to start snorting lines during daylight hours because this is an assignment which requires the utmost vulnerability to your own self-destruction. Here come the nonsensical ideas from their brain and out their mouths, rattled off with intensity and zest for the power of those ideas. Elijah insists that Hannah start to write down all their lofty life goals about raising show dogs and wanting to visit a prison. This should be chronicled because the cocaine-fueled writing experience is meaningless unless you paint it inside a cave. Hannah agrees and scampers into her room looking for a pen and paper. Elijah stops her and scolds her for thinking so small. Write it on the wall, man, write it on the wall, ON.THe. WaLl.

ROCK.

Hannah begins to scrawl "Raise Show Dogs" in black magic marker across the pink wall above her bed in beautiful Danny Torrance-like penmanship.

I first saw this scene as over-exaggerated for effect, done to accentuate the triviality of cocaine's artistic inspiration and then remembered that one time I decided to paint the wall in my room in a similar state of mind. (This was waaay back sometime between 2002 and last Friday night, mind you, but whatever.) There was blue paint. There was orange paint. I then dipped the roller into the blue paint first and leapt off the bed, paint dripping while flying to make sure I landed sponge-out as I smacked myself against the wall. This shit looked wicked. Then I did it one more time with the orange. Then I finger-painted some vertical lines because that's what it needed. But you know what else would just make these colors jump off this fucking wall? Metrocards. Like, a zillion of them all pasted on the right side of the blue-orange streak stains.

I managed to Scotch-tape five Metrocards on the wall before I figured out that I would need a lot more coke to finish this project. Instead I went out that night and just left the wall that way until I moved out of the apartment two years later. But Magic Happened that night and then I was hired by Gawker Media and now look at me? XO, A.J.

Meanwhile, back to fiction. This episode also focuses on Marnie, who's still hot-pantsing her way through a hostess job until something better comes along. The Something Better in this episode is Booth Jonathan, the pint-sized alpha artist from season one whose attempts at seduction through rape-staring and pheromone-coated facial scruff caused uptight Marnie to run to the bathroom to pleasure herself via ravenous bean-flicking. This time, however, the run-in produces an actual sexual encounter between the two of them back at Booth Jonathan's super-awesome loft space. Booth knows he's got Marnie's libido begging for mercy and he goes in for the killshot. We see an odd, obelisk-type contraption made of televisions. It's his masterpiece at this very moment. He opens a small door at the bottom of the TV tower and invites Marnie to step inside. She hesitates, but then again, YOLO. "Don't lock me in!" He locks her in.

Inside the masterpiece all the multiple TV screens show flashing images of maggots crawling and dead animals decomposing, the types of imagery you'd find in baby's first Trent Reznor video. Only the sounds being pumped through the TV towers are not NIN but the easygoing alterna-radio strummy-strum of "Barely Breathing" by Duncan Sheik. Booth leaves her in there just long enough to make her scared but not long enough to make her too angry to be DTF right after she comes out. Marnie acts freaked out and gets all "What the fuck!" in his face and then Booth gives her a hug. She hugs back. "You're amazing!" she says. From there, their next scene together will show Booth on top of Marnie as she's facedown on his big bed as he squeezes her wrists and vigorously pumps her like she's a pretty corpse. This is a sex position Booth Jonathan probably learned from the Tantric Pussy Annihilation Methods class he took during a weeklong pick-up artist seminar. Thrust, thrust, guhhhh, magic. Still, Marnie's in love with this chaos because she's stupid.

Back to Hannah and Elijah who have escaped their apartment with lots of cocaine left and have managed to make it to a nightclub. Here we see how the dull, rusty batteries of their lives have been jump-started by Brooklyn's finest rat laxative amphetamine spice. Now they're gorgeous superheroes ready to dance themselves clean. Hannah goes first, as quixotic movements brought her to the dance floor. Elijah is still up top on the rail, watching below, talking nonsense to no one until he realizes Hannah is gone. Elijah looks down, finally, and there is Hannah dancing, dancing, dancing, yay, Hannah, hi! They finally reunite on the dance floor, Hannah has switched shirts with a man who was wearing a mesh tanktop and her breasts are exposed, finally, because there is never a party like a tit-showing party and those tit-showing parties tend not to cease. Then they want more cocaine because that's what makes cocaine so fun.

When Hannah and Elijah hit the stalls for their cocaine refuel session they decide to dice-up chunky lines on the toilet lid like seasoned first-timers always do. But it's still a social drug to them and they love shouting at each other up close. Here comes the portion of the experience where everyone projectile vomits sentiment all over each other: "I love you!" "NO I LOVE YOU!" "WE'RE SO GOOD!" WE ARE!" That.

It's okay to state the status of your BFF-ness to a person with whom you're sharing a super-intense drug experience because too much information is never enough. Yet, somehow, cocaine always manages to push it too far.

"I FUCKED MARNIE!" Elijah reveals, so happy to get that off his chest as he cuts more lines.

Oh no. Hannah didn't hear it the first time but she did and out comes the rage.

The night is ruined. The night can only be saved if they confront Marnie right this second. Hannah finds out via text that Marnie is at Booth Jonathan's and LET'S GO ELIJAH NOW. But first, let's stop at the local 24-hour pharma-dega and get some stuff we don't need and do need, like water, perhaps. Hannah and Elijah have another confrontation about why he fucked Marnie. Hannah kisses him. "When did you have jerky?" Elijah says. No Boner Yes Homo. But wait: Hannah's distracted by her downstairs neighbor, Laird, the junkie who gave her this blow and started all this. "Are you following us?" Hannah yells at Laird. Of course he is. He's a lonely junkie, you see. Anyway, bring Laird along to Booth Jonathan's so he doesn't feel ashamed and stops sobbing in the juice aisle.

They arrive at Booth's super-awesome loft and Marnie is not happy to see them. Laird goes one direction in the loft, Elijah heads another way, and Hannah is right in front of Marnie, ready to kill Marnie with the truth, anger engaged. Hannah rambles and rambles and Marnie tries to take her at face-value, ducking-and-moving the whole time until Hannah turns her voice's volume up to 12 while her eyes go big and wide to finish this once and for all:

"THAT IS WHAT MAKES YOU A BAD FRIEND!"

Hannah wins. She's already presented enough factual accuracy to prove this point to Marnie not through the petty snipes found in typical girl-on-girl disagreements, but with a surgically precise counterpoint to force her best friend to prove otherwise. Marnie can't. She felt awful before Hannah knew all this but now she's been gutted. As she sits there wrapped in a blanket at Booth Jonathan's countertop the hollowness creeps in so just walk away from this reality over to another room in the apartment because these tears are coming from a different place.

Hannah's still on coke, though, so you're next Elijah:

"AND YOU ARE MOVING OUT!"

Elijah bites back at first and says he didn't even come/cum after he fucked Marnie but then it dawns on him as well that the maniac in front of him is making too much sense to ignore. Remarkably, this is the type of super-power cocaine brings out of those who try it for the first time. It's amazing how much sense you can make so loudly without any real effort or fear of consequence. Hannah's RIGHT, right now. But at some point, if she doesn't quit while ahead, she'll start to engage in arguments much more meaningless with cokehead friends. This is my favorite:

"YOU ARE A COKEHEAD!" [snorts line]

"FUCK YOU! YOU ARE CRAZY!" [snorts line]

"BUT YOU ARE! A COKEHEAD!" [snorts line]

"YEAH WELL IF I AM WHAT ARE YOU, HUH?!"[snorts line]

"NO I AM NOT A COKEHEAD!" [scrapes plate for last line]

"YEAH OKAY! GOOD LUCK SCRAPING THAT PLATE!" [Licks and eats empty baggie which contained cocaine]

"FUCK YOU! Hey can we still get more this late? Your guy deliver?" [sits down, stares into space]

"HAHAHA YEAH WHATEVER. Let me just check." [texts dealer]

Fin.

Hannah summons Laird, because he's the only non-asshole human being left in this apartment right now. They go back to their apartment complex. They shake hands goodnight. Then Hannah, still on coke, does the old let's-make-out-if-you-want-to handshake but realizes that Laird won't take the hint. She kisses him on the mouth. He stands there like a junkie and asks permission to kiss back.

"Sure, "she says, "But it's just for tonight [kiss] and it's for work." Out comes her tongue.

Image by Jim Cooke

In last week's episode of Girls,one of the most groundbreaking boundary-pushing moments of uncomfortable realness occurred during a couch-sex scene between Elijah, Hannah's new gay roommate and ex-boyfriend, and Marnie, the ex-roommate and best friend, whose mesmerizing prettiness can no longer be taken for granted this season. This week's episode is primarily a metaphorical inspection of the couch for the cum/come stains left behind even though nobody came at all.

In the opening scene we see that Elijah has confessed couch-sexing Marnie to his older gay boyfriend, George, who does not approve. "Elijah, you're a gay man!" George shouts at Elijah. Elijah disagrees because remember, George, he's always said on numerous occasions that he might be bisexual. George yeah-yeah's him for this stupidity and demands better answers from Elijah or else. Elijah fights for survival.

I fucked Marnie. Big Deal. So what. Don't leave?

Elijah plans to make this memory disappear completely and fix everything by providing George with more specific details about the night he fucked Marnie on the couch. It was three pumps. Maybe two and a half. He lost his boner (he says boner again this week) so the fucking of Marnie was substandard but whatever. Don't leave?

"I want this." This is what Elijah tells George to convince him that the substandard fucking of Marnie will never, ever happen again. Elijah holds George's face with desperate tenderness, a move often deployed by people who don't know what they want, but who can still convince other people that they do.

That Silly Three-Pump Whatever Thing that happened that night aside, Elijah's attempts to minimize it only make old gay George grow more angry and wise. Men of his advanced age have patience and forgiveness but it is in short supply. Elijah is not a highly-evolved homosexual human and reveals that he has not told Hannah about that night he fucked Marnie on the couch. George is bewildered by Elijah's awfulness. A breakup happens but Elijah doesn't want it to happen right this minute. He would prefer to wait until the guilt subsides or the power dynamic in his arrangement masquerading as a relationship shifts back to him. Elijah's haphazard infidelity is forgivable; Elijah's manipulation is not. So farewell, you poof haircut with a young boy attached to it, and take this breakup like a man who has sex with women on uncomfortable couches. George exits the apartment with officious flair and off-camera the sound of a door shutting-not-slamming is heard.

These are the consequences rendered when you fuck Girls you're not supposed to fuck, gaywad.

Here is all the non-bisexual relationship news we find out in this episode:

We find Shoshannah and Ray laying in bed with each other thoroughly enjoying the pleasant vapidity of post-coital conversation, confident and comfortable that their love is true right this minute. We find Jessa and Thomas John in an apartment fantastic enough to overcompensate for his sublime assholeishness, confident and comfortable that their love is true right this minute. We find Hannah and Sandy making out on a couch, confident and comfortable their love is true right up until the point she asks him if he read her essay.

He says he didn't, but it turns out he did, and Hannah asks why he would do such a thing even though she knows the answer won't make her happy. She presses him for critcism because she can take it, you'll see.

"For starters it was very well-written," Sandy says, positively.

Hannah knows it's very well-written. This is useless information to her. Offer Hannah honest criticism so that she can react poorly to it even though she asked for it.

Sandy obliges. Off we go.

"I just didn't think anything happened [in this very well-written essay]. Ultimately it felt like I was just waiting in line and this [very well-written essay] was all that nonsense that goes through your brain when you're trying to kill time."

That's what Sandy meant by very well-written.

And you knew that you bitch so don't even.

But she does anyway.

It's at this point where the argument about the very well-written essay in which nothing happens ingnites the realest of real talks between Sandy and Hannah about race. Sandy accuses her of fetishizing token black men like a Brooklyn dingbat. Hannah thinks Sandy only sees her as another blob in the white blobby masses of females he takes joy in marginalizing. Then Hannah offers this fun fact she remembered and she'd like Sandy's opinion about this fun fact right at this exact moment: "Two out of three people on death row are black."

Here is a room. There is an elephant. We should talk to it now before more air escapes from this room. Again.

Too late. Shade has been thrown, for real this time. Hannah then decides to exit the relationship pronto because Sandy is also a Republican and his right-wing brain circuitry will never appreciate very well-written essays by white blobby masses of females. Also: gay marriage is good and guns are bad so GOODBYE, SANDY.

Back at the apartment shared by Hannah and Elijah, Marnie stands in the doorway, dressed in suspenders and hot pants. This is her new work outfit. After she was fired from the art gallery, she interviewed at other galleries, but she realized that there is not much money to be made in the art world if she sits behind a desk. Instead, she's chosen to become a hostess at a swanky restaurant club-thing frequented by old rich men, and expects to make $400 a night because she's super-pretty so why not and YOLO.

Meanwhile Marnie and Elijah are having a heated discussion about whether or not they should tell Hannah about the couch-sexing. Elijah just overpowers her with his super-fierce homo-ninja debate techniques and both their mouths remain shut for now.

It's perfect timing because Hannah has just returned from Sandy's and she's remarkably ha-oh-well about the breakup even though she enjoyed boning him so much. She grabs a tub of Cool Whip from the fridge and eats it with a spoon because she knows she's chubby and so what. Marnie takes a seat across from her and Hannah notices her suspenders and hot pants because she knows that Marnie's not chubby and so what. Marnie tells Hannah about her new job as a hostess.

Hannah is stunned. "A hostess?" she says, but actually means "EW YOU WHORE" and wishes her spoon were a garden shovel and that the Cool Whip tub was bottomless.

Marnie calmly defends her job choice, but Hannah says something about how she'd never work at a job where her sexuality was being exploited. Marnie exhales in a certain way which triggers this type of response from Hannah.

"You don't think I'm pretty enough for a pretty-person job!"

(But it's Hannah who thinks she's not pretty enough for a pretty-person job.)

Marnie's not rattled and retrenches. She fires a response she's probably used a gazillion times before on her less-pretty friend over the years "No, I think you're beautiful and you know that!"

(Marnie thinks Hannah's beauty is very well-written.)

At the end of this long, intense night Hannah is alone in her bed watching a YouTube video about how to trim your own bangs when out of the darnkness comes a text message from Adam. He's been sending her disquieting videos of him playing the guitar and crooning depressing songs he wrote about her. She thinks he's obsessed, even though she spent most of last year demanding his attention and girlfriend status. Once he gave it to her, surprise, she iced him. So far this episode she's described Adam as a socipath and murderous — not hot murderous, either, but real-deal axe murderous. We know that Adam and Hannah are too crazy-beautiful to live right now and that once the words of the text message are revealed nothing good can come of it:

"I'm downstairs."

He's downstairs for love, not murder, but Hannah can't diferentiate between the two when it comes to Adam.

She clicks her light off and pretends not to wait for what's next.

"I saw you turn your light off."

She tries to ignore the texts and adjusts her head on the pillow but then LOUD NONSENSE FROM A HUMAN MEANT TO STARTLE WILD ANIMALS occurs.

She screams like a girl afraid of murder-love.

It's just Adam he has a key, remember?

We see Adam in her bedroom doorway and he's so happy to be near her. He's not going to murder Hannah. Not tonight, not ever. He's lost the cast on his broken leg somehow but He probably chisled it off with a screwdriver or an old dirty fork so he could limp over to Hannah's apartment since she doesn't visit him anymore.

Hannah is annoyed and Adam is not welcome. They agitate their way through the smalltalk until Adam requests a glass of milk.

She goes to the fridge with her phone and presses 9-1-1 to make this murder-love vanish once and for all.

Adam drinks his milk and continues to be grabby and loud, all up in her face and in her space. She accuses him of raping her space. "Space rapist!," she calls him and now Hannah thinks she wants to break free forever so now's the time for her to snap:

"GO AWAY!"

She shoves Adam towards the front door.

"GO AWAY!"

She shoves Adam towards the front door.

"GO AWAY!"

She shoves Adam against the front door.

He's pinned there for a second and his heart could sure use that cast right about now.

You're stupid Adam, you took this way too far. She loves you, you giant freak, but be patient and sane. The best way to make this murder-love last forever was to stay away. Now you pressed too hard on the re-set button and it's probably ruined. So take your twisted space-raping m.o. back to your apartment, the one that's kept in purposeful disarray. You can mope in your mess until she's ready to talk to you like a human being but now or in the near future are not ...

And then the cops arrive just in time to break the spell.

"You called the Po-Po?" Adam asks her like a dope. They are standing in the stairwell looking at the two cops who've responded to Hannah's misguided call in to 911 due to a breakup emergency.

Yeah, now who's raping space? Definitely not the Cool Whip.

Hannah looks up at Adam, shamefully, hoping he'll forgive her for calling the Po-Po.

But it's too late for that now so Adam becomes unhinged and causes a scene like murderous charmers always do. He tells the two cops that he wants a restraining order against Hannah. He tells the cops she once showed up to his apartment wearing only knee socks. SHE'sthestalker! SHE'sthe crazy! SHE'stheproblem!

Hannah blushes and sighs and tells the Po-Po that she only showed up to his apartment uninvited in knee-socks one time. The Po-Po are unmoved.

The exchange between Adam and Hannah in the stairwell is ferocious but lovely because it portends a return to the terrible normalcy of their relationship. Hope is a super dynamo in Brooklyn tonight.

The cops handcuff Adam anyway because he has an unpaid parking ticket, an outstanding public urination charge and because he's being so Adam. They lead him down the stairs.

"I'm CRAZY! I'm CRAZY!" he yells with victorious defiance because he knows that Hannah still loves him in that murderous way.

"I'm sorry!" she yells from the top of the stairs like she means it this time.

"Talk to you later?" she guesses because what else do you say as Adam goes to jail.

There is no response.

But remember that two out of three people on death row are black. So the chances of Adam and Hannah's survival are still good.

Top image by Jim Cooke.

I think most critics who watch television for a living decided that Lena Dunham's second season of Girls is better simply because season one was subjected to such ferocious scrutiny. The fairness of the criticism was irrelevant, but the intensity of it must still linger. That's why when the screeners were sent to critics' homes or offices a few weeks ago inside yellow padded mailers, the contents, to many of them, were fragile. Let's revisit some of season one's real or imagined controversies and aspersions: Racism. Nepotism. Elitism. Sophism. Anti-Nazism.

What the show's detractors found most detestable was the way it showcased this notion of Millenial entitlement, born from grouchy trend-starved newspaper editors who sent reporters across America to find over-educated, yet well-adjusted, 20-somethings who chose (or demanded) a non-linear path to success and refuse unpaid internships in favor of leaching off their parent's dwindling retirement funds. So the taxpaying core of responsible adults who watch and critique television shows scolded and eyerolled Girls for this trend: How could these adult-children bequeathed with so much opportunity be so ambivalent about the responsibilities and sacrifices required of human existence? Parents shouldn't pay for their adult-children's daydreams. That's what Sallie Mae is for.

Lena Dunham, crosshaired as the most spoiledest entitledest daughter of generation unlimited Emoji sexting, had embraced and encouraged this Very Bad Notion for her first fictional HBO series. Purposely or not, Dunham's characters—her character—annoyed viewers who found her art and life equally insufferable. That is why, even though she is a 26-year-old woman of prodigious creative talent, her harshest critics sometimes dismissed her as a 12-year-old art project contest winner. From some Lake George summer camp. The contest was probably judged by nannies. Yes, the show is really good sometimes (but not quite great sometimes) so therefore it is awful. Let's just admit that Lena Dunham's art project represents America's failure to be independently progressive because, just like that fancy Lake George art camp she probably went to, Girls was devoid of black people. The nannies don't count.

Girls.

I think Lena Dunham is refreshing and talented. I like her fairytale tattoos. I applaud her willingness to go topless and muffin-topped. I like all of the characters she's created and the insincere, melodramatic, insipid, helplessly hopeful women of this certain age they represent, even if those women only exist in a snowglobe in Brooklyn. The show can only get better. Could be great, even.

Gawker recapped Girls last season. Let's do it again, but since there is a new editor, there is also a new author.

It's an honor to keep this going in a new direction. It can only get better. Could be great, even.

Intro. Outro. Skrillex.

*****

We are back in Brooklyn, borough of daydreams, and Hannah is full of sass and renewed independence because she's made it through the turbulence of her last year and now has a renewed focus in addition to a new roommate. We find her half-sleeping, half-cuddling in bed with her new roommate, Elijah, her ex-boyfriend from college who's now gay, but we can tell right away that she loves this newer, perfect, unconventional reality. She's smiling. So is he. He apologizes for his boner (he says boner) to put her at ease. No need, her eyes are still closed and she's still smiling. Hannah has changed. Hannah has figured out something. She is self-aware, and in control of this new reality where her gay ex-boyfriend is the perfect roommate. This is her bed, her gay ex-boyfriend, and she will half-sleep more content than girls in those more normal but unstable relationships. She's probably daydreaming while she half-sleeps about that one evening in the not-so-distant future when she can put on an expensive gown and uncomfortable shoes and accept an award for being true to herself. She's writing her thank you speech in her half-sleep at this time even though she knows the only one Hannah should thank is herself.

Then we're reintroduced to Shoshanna, deflowered last season by Ray, the grumpiest grump employee at Cafe Grumpy, who became enchanted by Shoshanna after she accidentally smoked crack at that infamous Bushwick loft party they both attended. She panicked and ran out of the party because hysteria had taken hold, and he chased her. He was smitten but he didn't know why. He was chasing her but she didn't know why. Then they fucked, virginity was lost, and, now, as we quickly learn from her opening scene, it didn't end up the way she wanted it to. She's chanting and burning incense things and gyrating around her room trying to curse Ray. Not for taking her virginity, mind you, but for not allowing her to feel good about losing her virginity to him because it appears, they did not become a happy couple even after initial coital engagement. Now Ray must die. There is a poster in full view in her room that says "Keep Calm and Carry On." She is not calm, though, and she carrys on in a hysterical girly way, and not in the resolute, 1939 British government way.

There is a din around Marnie, boyfriend-less still since she broke up with Charlie for being clingy and underwhelming after he put in four years of dutiful service as a professional boyfriend too good to be true. Right move, I thought, when she made it. She seems torn, but carrying onward, even though she's down on love but hey, jump in sweetheart, the water is always tepid. Cut to her walking briskly, professionally on a sidewalk after lady-lunching with her boss from the art gallery. Things are going okayish, she thinks, until her boss nonchalantly informs her that she had forgotten the main purpose of their lady-lunch: They are downsizing at the company that owns the art gallery.

"You're firing me?" she asks as a giant shoe is dropped from somewhere high above a loft in Greenpoint and onto the sidewalk in front of her where she once walked briskly. The giant shoe now lands.

Gasp now you're fired. She's not only fired, but her boss chose to fire her instead of the less competent employee who spilled YooHoo on art, something she would never do. Yes, gasp still fired. The universe is a teacher so absorb this lesson because you must or else you will never grow but for now let's smash-cut to Hannah's bedroom as she rides her new boyfriend.

"You wanted this," he says in sex voice.

"I wanted this so bad" her sex voice says.

"And now you're finally getting it," he says.

"It's about fucking time," his sex voice says.

"It's about fucking time," her sex voice says.

Her new boyfriend is black. Hey girl.

So after Lena Dunham has inserted this winking Emoji into the script to tweak her critics we can move on with the story. We see her and her new boyfriend in a small bookstore and he's giving chase, the way mad schoolchildren give chase when they are tagged and are now It. Her new boyfriend is played by Donald Glover, who is also featured in Community, and swoon, goes the internet. He is wearing a wool hat indoors because that's what people who live in Brooklyn do. I am wearing a wool hat indoors as I write this (in Brooklyn) and I will probably be wearing a different one indoors by the time this is published (on the internet). No swoons.

The next part of this scene is where expositiory plotlines are built and to let the audience know that Hannah has grown. Donald Glover says he can't run that fast because he has a boner (he says boner, too) but he finally catches up to her and pins her against a bookshelf and they giggle and stare like two people with serious crushes. But Hannah is pushing him away, refusing his affection even though it's genuine. "I love how weird you are," he says.

Hannah replies that no love is welcome here, leaned up against the bookshelf, even in a non-committal, conversational way. Poor boner. This non-committed pact is supposed to be fun and, for Hannah, love still lives at the dirty apartment of Adam, who is recovering from that time they argued at the wedding and he got hit by a truck. His leg is broken. He still needs her help. She still goes over there and changes his bedpans and sits and watches movies (possibly ironically, maybe not) with him because she feels guilty for breaking his leg or his heart or both. As they sit on his bed, Adam is still shirtless and gruff and Hannah sits on the bed next to him but at a safe enough distance to not give the wrong impression. It doesn't work. Adam still loves her, but Hannah doesn't believe this because hes still not nice to her.

"When you love someone you don't have to be nice all the time," Adam says. Hannah lets it sink in. He is not wearing a wool hat when he says this. At one point later in the show he will make her confront what a good thing they had. "You said I made your body feel like a clit." She denies this at first, then sighs, she did say that. Adam still rules. Swoon.

Now back to Marnie, who's transitioning through life and is now lady-lunching with her mother, played by Rita Wilson. (Last year Wilson would probably be referred to as "Tom Hanks' wife" in this column but this year she is "Marnie's mother." Knives in.) This conversation is important because they are drinking wine during the day. Marnie's mother attempts to offer inspirational advice and covets her daughter's friendship. Marnie needs a mother right now, for once, and isn't in the mood for her mother's YOLO attitude. Her mom is sleeping with a "cater-waiter" (right?) and insists that her daughter lighten the fuck up without actually saying that. Marnie can't handle it. She huffs. Her mom realizes her daughter is not ready for YOLO just yet. They both take sips of wine and glance sideways to avoid confrontation.

Hannah and Elijah are holding a karaoke party at their apartment that night and all the gang is coming. Hannah is thrilled with the idea. Elijah is, too, because planning theme parties is f-u-n and this is what life is supposed to be about, fuck yeah. Shoshanna arrives first and is dressed in her Audrey Hepburn hat, nervous about seeing Ray. Nobody seems to care. Elijah's boyfriend, the rich older guy who pays for everything is coming, too, and he's nervous. Nobody seems to care. The party skulks along as expected, songs are sung ironically, cool people mask insecurity by being safely aloof, potato skins and pretzels are served. Nothing moves unless it's forced or served. Marnie is there and so is ex-boyfriend Charlie and they exchange pleasantries in front of the bathroom door. Charlie blurts out that his new girlfriend is with him and Hannah said that'd be cool so I hope you don't...

"Are you waiting for her outside the bathroom?" Marnie asks Charlie, icy yet sympathetic that her ex-boyfriend's still being too good in that awful way again.

Charlie starts to stammer confidently that his new girlfriend doesn't know anyone at the party so he just didn't want her to be alone for too long....

Door flies open. Out she comes.

"I told you not to wait for me!" Of course she said that and of course Charlie didn't listen because he's just trying to be nice and girls like to be treated that way, he still thinks.

She emasculates Charlie in front of Marnie but doesn't care. Charlie reintroduces his new girlfriend to Marnie but pleasantries are not exchanged as they both are exasperated with Charlie for being so goddamn Charlie all the time.

The party carries on. Karaoke is sung. Elijah's old, rich boyfriend grabs the mic and is drunk and surly. He chastises the 20 or so people at the party for being so boring. Nobody moves. He's right about this fact, yet it still gets him thrown out of the party because his roll was in desperate need of being slowed. Later, old rich guy.

Post-party, Elijah and Marnie are chatting on Hannah's couch and trying to defuse the tension between the two of them. It's progressing nicely and then Elijah calls Marnie a bitch but not in a mean way. He also calls her pretty. New tension arises, but it's the good kind of tension, the kind that causes boners. Hard stares are exchanged and Elijah goes in for a kiss, because, you know, this tension won't break on its own. He's rebuffed at first. Then he's not. Then Marnie finds her YOLO and now she's about to fuck Hannah's ex-boyfriend who's gay but, obviously, still figuring things out and open to experimentation with girls who look like Marnie. So far on this show Marnie, even though she's the most conventionally pretty out of all the Girls, has had sex with Charlie (unsatisfactorily), her own hand in a public bathroom (passionately), the chubby guy from SNL (desperately) and now she's about to try it with a gay guy. At this rate, Marnie's next sexual encounter could be with a coatrack or a corpse. Whatever works. YOLO.

But back to gay Elijah sex. His shirt comes off. His pants come off. Marnie's top comes off and sideboob is shown because she's ready to make this shit hot. She tells Elijah to get a condom and they begin to have sex just cuz until it becomes very apparent that Elijah is still gay and Marnie is still insecure and both of their rolls need to be slowed. She puts her dress on and turns to Elijah and says, "You know, you really don't have to try to be anything that you're not," in that fucking cold-ass way that Marnie talks down to people sometimes.

A beat. He takes a sip of water still shirtless. He stares.

"Neither do you," he says. TWO-shay, bitch rag.

After all that, Marnie retreats to Charlie's because she just needs to sleep next to someone, even him, because life is hard and there safety in familiarity. They hate-cuddle.

Meanwhile, what's up with Jemima and her new banker husband, the one she married so impetuously last season? Not much. They appear to be honeymooning someplace where people don't speak English and having a fabulous time being assholes. That's it. Resolution TBD.

Meanwhile back at Donald Glover's apartment it's late at night. He's just pajama-relaxing and content, but still open to all possibilities. Later this season we will find out that Donald Glover's name in the show is Sandy and he is Republican, defying conventions, making things interesting, just cuz. There's a knock at the door. He knows who it is. It's Hannah, who doesn't want love, just fun, and he's okay with playing this game with her because he knows what she's doing better than she does.

He opens the door and she asks to borrow his copy of The Fountainhead, a handbook for young upstart Republicans, black, white, or Paul Ryan. He walks to the other end of the room to go find a copy as he's asked. He's got this all under control.

Hannah strips as he is off-camera and playing along with this silly Fountainhead game. Here is her body once again, defying convention. There are her breasts. There is her ass in a thong. Look at it for a while and then just carry on. Can you?

Resolution TBD.

[Image by Jim Cooke]