Girls - Season 2 Episode 9 - Recap and Review - On All Fours

Here’s what; I’m not sure any previous episode of Girls has ever done the paradoxical nature of each of these characters justice as much as “On All Fours.” As a twenty-something myself, I can attest to the fact that learning to live by your own terms is often frustrating when you find yourself surrounded by people who seem to have discovered some secret map to ideal fulfillment by twenty-five. Then again, the concept of living life by someone else’s map seems interminably boring. It can be a time in life when you feel empowered by the mere will to search for purpose beyond getting hitched a.s.a.p, but it can also be a hell of a pain to have to take the splinter, one you got from slipping across the floor of your dingy one-bedroom apartment, out of your own ass. My personal fear will always be choking to death on a dumpling while eating dinner in my boxer briefs, only to be discovered when the rent is weeks past due. They'll pry the rent check from my stiffened grasp. Then it's all, who's the corpse? Eh, I'll take it. I'm so happy that I don't want to have kids in my twenties. Still, there are a few moments where I wish I wasn't, if that makes sense. What if your idea of a good time isn’t hanging out with the type of girl who "has girlfriends who get engaged,” as Hannah (Lena Dunham) noted?

Shoshanna:  Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) spent the episode eating herself alive following her fling with the doorman during the episode prior. It’s interesting, now that she’s sufficiently screwed up for the first time during her run on the series, to see her oscillate between guilt-ridden and fed up. The reason she cheated on Ray (Alex Karpovsky) was because his lack of passion in anything other than her had begun to drive her crazy. Still, it does seem, in a sense, strange to punish someone for loving you above all else. We saw something similar develop between Marnie (Allison Williams) and Charlie (Christopher Abbott) last season.

Inevitably, Shoshanna began to come apart at the seams and admitted to “holding hands” with the doorman.  I liked the moment between Charlie and Shoshanna, at Charlie’s celebratory work party, when the two saw eye to eye on Ray’s sapping bitterness. Just a thought; Shoshanna is still young, but what’s her intended life direction? It's easy to assume you'll have life figured out by thirty-three when you're twenty-two.

HBO "GIRLS"

Marnie: Charlie continued to find himself in a position of power this week, accidentally scorning Marnie following a ditched lunch date. Still, could anything feel better to Charlie in that moment than legitimately missing a lunch date with Marnie, who continues to leech? Unless, of course, he did intentionally miss lunch to burn her. Either way, Charlie invited Marnie to a work party in honor of twenty thousand monthly app subscribers

Marnie, with the help of Ray’s Garage Band skills, tinkered away at her wonky attempt at having a dream. I enjoy watching Ray and Marnie continue to interact, as the two of them have become seemingly more alike than we’d ever noticed prior. Marnie decided to debut her first track ever, live, and at Charlie’s party. This scene received the award for “Cringe Worthy Moment of the Week,” if you ask me. That’s not to say that Marnie’s a terrible singer or that her sad attempt at a coffee-shopped “Stronger” by Kanye West was intolerable, it was just that the intention behind the act was twisted. As a partygoer, one might have assumed that her bold statement was some cute act of unrequited love for Charlie. She certainly didn't seem like a performer in the making, so you'd have to write it off like that. The other general reaction seemed to be secondhand embarrassment. As a viewer, or as Charlie himself, we knew that this was an act of confused desperation. We know that Marnie is nearly incapable of having a laugh at her own expense, in any case. She's too rigid to selflessly act a fool to make an earnest statement, at least for now. Charlie pulled Marnie aside afterwards, attempting to shake her out of her “manic” state. In the end, the only move he could make to protect her was that of sex. This was probably Marnie’s intended outcome, but to me, Charlie still won out. That was an act of utter pity, rather than straight-up lust.

Adam: Adam (Adam Driver) continued his seemingly satisfying and gratifying relationship with Natalia (Shiri Appleby) this week. Healthy adult relationships just don't function on Girls. There’s nothing more interesting than watching these characters interact with “normal” folks on this show. In a lot of ways, these sort of interactions are very “New York City,” in that NYC tends to attract a wide variety of individuals, from those looking to build a personal legacy, to those simply looking to keep on chugging, and on to those who are just completely lost. The characters on this show tend to flip-flop between striving to achieve personal greatness and feeling like complete and utter failures. That’s the burden that comes along with dreaming. There isn’t a right or wrong answer to any of this. It’s just that someone like Natalia, who we know nothing about aside from the fact that she’s simple enough and very pleasant, when contrasted with someone like Adam, who is endlessly strange, inevitably brings out the beast in him. I appreciated that Dunham didn't paint Natalia as "Mary Poppins" perfect, though. She'd sneak in that, say, she was the kind of "Mother Teresa who gave a blow job to her friend's cousin." The point is, that we all have weird things, and then we all have weird things. Getting a little drunk and hooking up with a friend's cousin at a party is one thing, Adam's brand of kink is something else. Still, I think we've all experienced that feeling of "these people couldn't handle my whole truth."

Adam had run into Hannah on the street outside of one of Natalia’s friend’s engagement party. Hannah’s not the type of “girl who has girlfriends who get engaged.” Oddly, I totally understood what she meant there. Adam’s not that person either. Still, the interaction between the two, in conjunction with his square-peg role at the event, sent Adam back to the bottle. After a night of what seemed like innocent drunken shenanigans, Natalia got her first glimpse at Adam’s apartment. I liked when she offered to organize, noting the place as too dark for someone like him. Adam, as we’ve become privy to though, has a somewhat sadistic side. In his own domain, the as of lately gentlemanly side of Adam slipped away, and he conjured some of his signature “On All Fours”-type of sex on Natalia. I realize I wrote "on Natalia," and I think that's fitting. These characters tend to project their own flaws onto others. She went along with what was maybe the scariest sex scene we’ve ever seen on this show, but afterwards, it was clear that something had switched off. Adam isn’t just the dude with the “face of an old-time criminal.” There’s much more to it than that. That's the real fear right there, though, right? To expose yourself fully, only to watch the fire snuff out in a snap? Even if Adam was longing for Hannah, that still bites. Here's the catch; Natalia did everything he commanded. What does that say about her?

HBO "GIRLS"

Hannah: I was happy to see that Lena Dunham carried Hannah’s OCD into this week’s episode. I was worried it was going to be written out as a one-off plot point, but this worked so much better. Things escalated this week, as Hannah’s publisher rejected the stories she had submitted for her book as juvenile. Hannah and Adam worked because they both have a vulgar, self-deprecating side to their personalities. This season, much of Hannah’s arc has surrounded facing the fact that she has this detrimental side to her that takes a toll on her wellbeing. Experiencing life is one thing, but hurting yourself is something different. The anxiety got to Hannah so much so this week that she ended up digging a q-tip so far into her ear that she was forced to visit the hospital. The doctor pulled out the bloody tip, and Hannah asked to keep it. It was an experience, after all. Realizing that her stress was indeed beginning to harm her, Hannah closed the episode by digging the same q-tip into her other ear.

We’re so used to seeing Hannah as purely comical, reveling in her shamelessness and basking in her own self-worth, that it’s almost difficult to watch her unraveling. When I watch Lena Dunham scream over a q-tip being jammed into her eardrum, my gut reaction is to laugh because she’s a funny lady, and that’s what we’re used to. In reality, we’ve become so numbed by Hannah’s resilience in the face of extreme degradation that it takes me a moment to process that she’s actually floundering now. Like Adam, we were first introduced to many of Hannah’s unlikable qualities, qualities we as viewers grew to find, dare I say, endearing, that exploring her vulnerable side has become a truly uncomfortable and exciting adventure over the past few weeks.

What did you all think of Girls Season 2 Episode 9, “On All Fours”? Do you like Girls better when its purely fun, or do you enjoy the heavier turn it's taken over the last few episodes? What will become of Jessa, who was notably absent yet again? Do you sympathize with characters like Hannah and Adam, or do you find yourself lacking the will to empathize at this point?

Thanks for reading my Recap and Review of Girls Season 2 Episode 9, “On All Fours”!