Girls - Episode 2.03 - Bad Friend - Review

If I'm speaking earnestly, I think that tonight's episode of Girls may be that one episode I would recommend to friends who've never seen it if they wanted to watch just one episode to see what it was like. For the record, I always tell people to watch every series from the beginning, but if someone had thirty free minutes and I wanted to show them an episode, this would be it. It's not just that I particularly think "Bad Girls" is one of the series' greatest episode. Though, I do, in fact, think it is one of the more funny ones. It's just that, given its slightly broad humor during tonight's half hour, it's a more approachable episode. And thus, it's aptly entertaining for regulars and newcomers, alike.

It's no surprise, since I happen to think that "Welcome to Bushwick (aka the Crackcident)" is an episode where Girls is sort of actualized. That episode serviced all of the characters and each of their individual storylines at once, while this episode is more focused on Hannah and Marnie, but to that extent I really didn't mind. While most of the episode is done for laughs (not a complaint), it sort of helped pushed their arcs into the rest of the season.

On one hand we have Hannah, who we've established believes that manufacturing life experiences then makes inspiration for her writing. In this episode, she's hired as a freelancer for a website (that for some reason I thought was a Jezebel gag/reference) in which her new boss tells her to try cocaine for first time for a helluva article. Of course, Hannah is interested right off the bat because she's direly desperate, but also because she believes that these sort of sensational pieces will give her some sort of notoriety or credit, as we've also seen in past episodes. She and Elijah decide to try cocaine, which mostly ends up being played up for the humor. But as aforementioned, I'm not exactly mad at the idea. In truth, Hannah and Elijah's whacked out journey tonight was captivating in its hilarity and outlandishness. It's no surprise that Lena Dunham would agree to basically being nude for 20 minutes of the entire episode. ("Oh! A shirt!") But it's not just for throwaway gags; it also allows for Elijah to confess to Hannah that he and Marnie sort-of-kind-of-maybe-not-really slept together.

Which brings us to Marnie, who is getting comfortable with Booth, from season one. At some point, Booth was a person that Marnie fantasized about and seemed to be the epitome of what she wanted. That is to say, he was the antithesis of then-boyfriend Charlie. And what once worked for Marnie, isn't exactly working for her this time. This is the second time that acting adventurously for Marnie (or out of her comfort zone, which seemed to be the theme) has ended less than ideally. In season one, she was ushered out of Jessa's now-husband's home with frightful yelps. Now, she's realizing that reality is not better than fantasy. I think it's a bit fitting, seeing as that Marnie sort of projected all of her faults onto Charlie before and figured that someone like Booth may have been a better match for her, even just sexually.

But by the time it's all over, Hannah stampedes on her night to tell her that the insinuated roles they share — Hannah being a bad friend, and Marnie being a good friend — may, in fact, be reversed. And it's true, something Marnie realizes almost immediately, as she has blaming others for her own faults. In fairness, Hannah has been doing this as well. So it's no doubt that the seesaw of their relationship will continue to teeter as long as it continues. And it all ends with Hannah deciding to go the distance with her ex-junkie lower-level neighbor Laird. Once again, just for tonight — and just for her job.

And just like that, a perfect and memorable episode that sort of exemplifies everything Girls is and can be.

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