Girls - Season 2 Episode 5 - Recap and Review - One Man's Trash

“One Man’s Trash” was the closest Girls has ever coming to Tiny Furniture, the film that sparked Lena Dunham’s career and collaboration with Judd Apatow. As an episode better experienced than read about, I’ll do my best to explain the sentiments and purpose behind an episode that was entirely Hannah (Lena Dunham) centric. The other ladies were nowhere to be found this week, as Hannah experienced her first ever taste of a stable adult life.

The preview trailer for this week’s episode made the material seem more comedic than dramatic, but the final product was actually very quiet and even poignant at times. Of course, even Lena Dunham’s more serious moments are written with a certain humorous edge that has become the signature style of Girls. I’m actually surprised Dunham didn’t direct this episode, which largely featured Hannah exploring a big fancy house. Maybe it served her better to focus all of her efforts during “One Man’s Trash” on her acting, because we’ve never seen Hannah Horvath like this before.

The episode opened with Hannah listening in as Ray (Alex Karpovsky) and a patron at Grumpy’s Coffee butted heads over where the business had been dumping its trash. Apparently, one employee (Hannah, as it turned out) had been dumping the café’s garbage in their neighbor’s garbage cans. The man kept it together, albeit angrily, while Ray shot off one of his classic bombastic tirades. Now that we know more about Ray’s living situation, wasn’t the explosion a little sadder to watch go down?

Knowing the man was right, and that she was the one using his cans, Hannah made up an excuse to storm out of work and decided to apologize to the man in person. The beginning of the episode also featured a lot of talk about casual sex, so we’d already assumed she had ulterior motives. After the neighbor answered his door and invited her in, Hannah cleverly noted that she could be walking into a death trap of sorts. This man was a total stranger.

Hannah: "I could be putting myself in like a Ted Bundy situation. He also looked handsome, clean and also probably had a brownstone."

Whatever, she wanted to explore and experience, as she always does. Inside, Hannah made the usual cutesy small-talk magic she usually works on strangers. After confessing the truth about why she’d been dumping trash on his property (because she lost her dumpster key, and Ray’s scary), Hannah made her move and went in for a kiss. To her surprise, the much older man was into it. The casual sex did happen, but we’re used to that on Girls at this point. What happened after was more important. Hannah was invited to stay.

After getting better acquainted with Joshua (Patrick Wilson) over steaks, Hannah learned of his recent separation with his wife, who’d moved to California, and that he was a doctor. Suddenly entranced by the idea that she’d caught herself up in some grown-up affair, Hannah let things snowball. Never fearing to push the envelope, Hannah took things a little far when asked to stay over that night. She asked him to beg, which he did, only to fall back into more sex. The sex scenes in this episode were more romantic than any we’d previously seen on this show. There wasn’t any awkwardness to it all.

The next morning, Hannah continued to enjoy her temporary life in Joshua’s beautiful home; playing naked ping-pong, followed by ping pong table sex. A lot of what made “One Man’s Trash” a great episode by its midway point, was that much of the time spent centered on Hannah’s focusing and studying. She’d spend some time watching Joshua read his newspaper, she’d look at herself wearing his clothes in his expensive mirror, etc.

HBO "Girls"

However, things took a strange turn once Hannah decided to take a long shower. After finding her passed out in the steam, Joshua cared for her in his bed. We haven’t ever seen Hannah with a man who adequately takes care of her emotionally, and things just seemed to overwhelm her. We’ve seen Hannah cry and we’ve seen her be self-deprecating, but we’d never seen her break like this before. After spending two days with Joshua, she realized that she too wants to be truly happy. She’s spent her entire life experiencing as much as possible. As she put it, she “just wants to feel it all.” Still selfish in her ranting, the moment still proved important, as we now have a deeper sympathy for a character that is oftentimes inappropriately egotistical yet simultaneously very charming.

HBO "Girls"

Even that screencap is reminiscent of Tiny Furniture.

What was also interesting was that Hannah realized her fling with Joshua had ended the moment she vented her emotions. They shared one last kiss, and like a good man, he invited her to stay over. The next morning, Hannah milked a few more quiet hours out of her imaginary life in the world of wealthy, stable, New Yorkers. Overall, I’d say this was an unexpected yet pretty fantastic episode. The episode closed with Hannah, donning the same outfit she’d arrived in two days prior, walking back to her life as a twenty-something “almost getting it kind of together.”

What did you all think of Girls Season 2 Episode 5, “One Man’s Trash”? For those of you who’ve seen Tiny Furniture, did you make a connection cinematically as well? Did you expect Girls to put up an episode that worked like this?

Thanks for reading my Recap and Review of Girls Season 2 Episode 5, “One Man’s Trash”!