Girls Season 6 Episode 2 Recap: “Hostage Situation”

Marnie and Desi are doing it, again, because of course they are. It’s the gross, messy, emotional kind of sex that happens between damaged people looking to repair their damage through sex. “If you don’t believe in your own goodness you can’t expect anyone else to,” Desi tells her. “Do you? Do you believe in my goodness?” He might not. Marine and Desi have been doing it for two weeks. Ray has no idea. All of this is privileged information that Hannah feels comfortable sharing with Elijah, her secret keeper. “I’m a great secret keeper,” she says — decidedly not true. In any case, she’s packing for a trip to Poughkeepsie to help Marnie with..something. She’s a part of it, complicit to the deception, though the fact that she’s centering herself is no longer cute, fun or endearing. It’s irritating. Full stop. Anyway, Hannah also seems to be getting work. Apparently she didn’t get fired? She’s leaving for the weekend and Elijah and Shoshanna will be hanging out alone this weekend — a first. This weekend away looks like it’s going to be just as irritating as a weekend away with two people who shouldn’t be having sex but somehow are can be. For starters, the convertible, thanks to his boy Alessio. Marine’s scarf/sunglasses combo. The fact that Desi calls Hannah “bella” and forces her to hop in the back like a shih tzu. Shoshanna and Jesse are cousins, in case you’ve wilfully blacked out the first five seasons of this show and are merely watching this one out of a sense of obligation ad nothing more. The scene in which they film a birthday greeting for their grandma that you and I certainly forgot is nothing more than a segue for Shosh to job-brag. She has a job. She’s a junior marketing associate at a branding agenc,because of course she is. She’s a real person, with a schedule and things. Jessa, my favorite Girl if forced to pick one, is weaselling her way into the networking event that Shosh and Elijah are attending. “Hannah, if you’re going to be such a bitch, why did you even come?” a love-struck Marnie asks Hannah as they stroll through the streets of what is decidedly not Poughkeepsie. Hannah walks into an antiques shop, knocks over a pile of books, and tells the proprietor, “Wow. I have never felt such an intense need to just, lie, Instagram a stranger.” That stranger, by the way, is Joy Bryant. She’s very pretty! She should be a model in Dubai! Her story is simple: she worked in the city, her life was bad, it made her sad,. She fainted onto the subway tracks, was fished out by Chris Noth — she hit the third rail and survived—and then bounced, to live in a cluttered antique shop in what is not Poughkeepsie. The tea set that Hannah desires is free —Joy Bryant is psychic, by the way, and she can tell when a woman needs a tea set. She needs..a little more than a tea set. I’m pretty sure. Their cabin is actually pretty cute. Hannah hides herself upstairs, which is the best move. Marnie, on the other hand, has feelings. She feels guilty about Ray, but is somehow so in thrall of Desi’s awful, bearded aura that she can’t turn away. They deserve each other! They are both bad! Shoshanna is the only person trying to get her life together in a way that feels correct. She and Elijah, two people who should hang out more often, are headed to this mixer thing, where Shosh will have to see her friends from college that she used to hang out with before she started hanging out with Jessa, Marnie and Hannah. They started a company called “Jamba Jeans” and WeMun — Women Entreprenuers Meet Up Now — a kind of nebulous shell company that touts #squadgoals feminism and posits that women can be interested in rompers and politics at the same time. It’s a space. It’s a club. It costs a lot of money. Is it The Wing? Shoshanna made Elijah pretend to be her “executive assistant,” and it’s clear that her former friends see right through this nefarious trick. Shoshanna is doing her best to look happy, but she’s not very good at it. But, the news of her job at the branding agency inspires a logorrhoea of startup buzzwords like “Snapchat” and “floor to ceiling” and “visionary.” Jessa’s not paying attention. Back in Poughkeepsie, Hannah’s somehow hard at work at her wife-swapping story — I don’t care if it’s bad, I’m just happy to see her doing something. Marnie and Desi are downstairs, acting like a tired, old couple who has fallen into a loveless marriage and can’t find their way out. She went into his “private briefcase” and found a loose pencil and a jar of “mints.” Loose mints, in a Mason Jar. Mints that Desi is very, very protective of. Guess what! It’s not mints, dude! It’s Oxycontin. He’s got an Oxy problem. He’s been taking it for a year! He was high at their wedding! What in the hell is this show? Marnie smashes the jar, stomping on the mints and the broken glass. Because we have now learned that Desi is a drug addict, he’s snorting the crushed Oxy — and what I assume is crushed glass— from the floor itself. He’s a mess, but even in his extreme messiness, he still sees Marnie for what she is - -a vapid, self-absorbed narcissist who wouldn’t recognise someone with a problem if she were married to him. For the record, Desi is too. Hannah responds to Marnie’s cry for help and they both sort of drag Desi out and leave him there in the woods. There’s an awful lot of windows in that house to lock and shut, but Desi takes the easy way back in: after running a slow lap like the monster in “It Follows,” he punches a window, whisper-yelling “Bitches and cunts, let me in!” He breaks the teapot. At WeMun’s mixer, Shosh tries to ingratiate herself back into the good graces of her very successful former friends, but they’re not having it, either. They’re still mad that she ditched them six hours before they were supposed to to go Aruba on spring break. That’s when Jamba Jeans was born, but they felt rejected. They don’t trust her. Here’s the lesson that every episode of Girls has been building up to: everyone on this program is selfish. No one can see the forest for the trees. Back in Poughkeepsie, the pot and the kettle have a nice conversation. Marnie is taking stock of her life, sitting on the floor and ugly-crying about how she had no clue that Desi was a drug addict (the second time that’s happened, folks.) In response, Hannah says, “It can be pretty hard to have observations about other people when you’re only thinking about yourself. I would know.” Hannah rushes in to fill the silence, saying that she’s done judging people, done feeling superior and ready to admit that she doesn’t know shit. Hannah will still be her friend, despite Marnie’s breathtaking selfishness. She’ll help her get out of the mess she’s made. Shoshanna and Jessa, having left the thing, are trying to get a cab. Elijah has a bone to pick with Jessa, and accuses her of stealing Hannah’s boyfriend. Honestly, who cares? Adam is maybe the only redeeming character on this program but dating Hannah Horvath looks like a nightmare. Jessa’s no walk in the park either, but if he had to pick, she seems like the better option. It is during this moment of petty squabbling that Shosh learns that Marnie is fucking Desi, not Ray. Something in Shoshanna, my precious angel, snaps. Jessa ruined Shoshanna’s life. Jessa clocks Shoshanna for being a star-fucker, which is not inaccurate. “Grow up!” Jessa says as she walks away. “Grow up!” Not a single person on this show is a grown up. Everyone could take that advice. Hannah and Marnie are going to go home. Desi’s passed out by the woodpile, but Hannah wraps his bloody hand and helps him into the back of the car, with Marnie at the driver’s wheel.