Connie: "Last Girls roundtable of the season, you guys."
Connie: "But — and I feel like some sort of kind of parent here — the girls have grown so much, although grow probably isn't the right word. Compare how Hannah, Shoshanna, or Marnie are now to where they were during Episode 1 of this season. But, of course I wouldn't say that they've all been growing positively. It's one step forward, two stumbles backward for the most part."
Annie: "Hannah is such a mess right now. Marnie is back with her longterm boyfriend, which is sort of circular, even if she has had a lot more life experience."
Nathan: "Jessa's gone back into hiding."
Connie: "And, Adam is shirtless again after a few episodes of wearing shirts in public."
Connie: "True — they've all started this season out with a goal of some sort…"
Annie: "…And then failed."
Connie: "They've not only failed at their goal — but their pursuit of their goals unraveled them. Hannah's OCD returns, Jessa's gone MIA, and Marnie becomes the kind of girl she used to make fun of."
Annie: "All except Shoshanna and Marnie's boyfriend."
Connie: "All it took was a different haircut!"
Nathan: "And throwing away his turtlenecks. The turtlenecks were restricting his progress (along with his blood flow). Anwayyyyys."
Annie: "Hahaha."
Nathan: "So yeah, Marnie goes back to Charlie after basically failing at everything. Now that he's successful, has a ton of money, and is better at sex, she finds him attractive again."
Connie: "Exactly. It's obvious that it's not even HIM that she really wants. She wants a successful guy that wants to be with her. Even when she's rattling off her list of why she loves him outside of Roberta's, she could have replaced his name with anyone's, and it would have still made sense..."
Connie: "She was so set on being an independent career woman in the beginning of the season. She went on the interviews she felt like she needed to go on, she had sexual experiences outside her comfort zone that made her excited in a way that Charlie never did. She moved out of Hannah's apartment to lose that burden. She even pursued singing. All it did was made her insecure."
Nathan: "Yeah, it's the opposite of what is supposed to happen."
Photo: Courtesy of Jessica Miglio/HBO
Nathan: "One person that actually did end up growing up was Shoshanna. She knows what she needs, and she does what she has to do to grow. Cheating on her boyfriend may not have been right, but I think she needed to experience that. And she broke up with him for reasons that made sense."
Connie: "I mean, that's something that happens for a lot of couples. After their honeymoon period is over, it's impossible to sustain a relationship when all you have is affection for one another. When she said, 'I can't be the only thing you like,' that was really powerful. Although, I feel a lot for Ray."
Connie: "No matter how lame a person he is, he was always honest with her."
Annie: "And he WAS willing to change."
Nathan: "Yeah, that's sort of the sad part. He cared enough about her to actually get his stuff together to some degree. And his hopping between a PhD in Latin to a manger position shows that he doesn't really care about what that change is, but I suppose that's also Shoshanna's point. He's only doing these things for her and their relationship, not because he cares about the topics in and of themselves."
Annie: "I don't think her sexuality was what led her to break up with Ray, though."
Nathan: "Yeah, we definitely need to talk about the sex scene. Last week, a lot of comments discussed how they thought that Adam's encounter with his new girlfriend wasn't appropriate. Some called it rape, even."
Connie: "Rape is rape even if you consent to having some sort of sex. And with Shoshanna and Ray, it would have become rape as soon as she said to get out of her. But he listened to her immediately."
Nathan: "But I do think it ties into how badly these couples communicate."
Annie: "Agreed. It should probably be obvious when your sexual partner keeps on her sweatshirt, it's enough of a 'honey, not tonight' kind of thing you should probably have noticed. When you're having thoughts about your partner's shortcomings while having sex? Not a good thing at all."
Nathan: "I think it's probably even muddier than that. If she had felt like she couldn't communicate that, but still felt abused, that's terrible. But anyway, agreed, sweatshirt sex probably bodes poorly for a relationship."
Connie: "This sex scene was positioned right before Adam's second go with Natalia, who is probably the most communicative sex partner I've ever seen."
Nathan: "Totally."
Annie: "It's true."
Connie: "Not saying that there's anything wrong with what Adam wants. Some people like being dominated."
Connie: "But he's receptive when she says it verbally."
Nathan: "Yeah, I suppose that's true."
Annie: It might be that Asperger's again, right? We talked before that he seems like he is mildly autistic, and he has problems reading signs.
Nathan: "Although, he destroys his house after he has communicative non domination-style sex, which makes you think that, like, maybe he's not taking this new sensitive sex stuff very well."
Nathan: "I think you can see this as a sort of inversion of that. It's two people embracing their worst traits set up as a romantic comedy cliché. I think you can really see Apatow's writing in this episode. He's a big fan of traditional romantic comedy tropes, but here you have Hannah, who is melting down, has failed at her book deal, and has basically gone insane, and Adam, who has been dating a girl who by all accounts seems sort of great, and then he goes back to the girl he has an unhealthy hero complex with. She needs her weird succubus boyfriend to feel Okay, and it's never implied that this is going to help her write, or do anything she says she wants to do. It's not, like, a 'happy' ending, even though it has a guy running through the street."
Annie: "Exactly! This is the other end of Carrie dying her hair brown in Sex and the City."
Nathan: "Nice foreshadowing, by the way, from earlier this season."
Connie: "She should have YouTubed it! Otherwise, she wouldn't have ended up with a Dorothy Hamill / Robin Hood and his Merry Men haircut."
Annie: "Going to Laird was probably not the right way to fix it."
Nathan: "I like that Laird gets to chew her out, too. Good job, Laird."
Nathan: "What do you think about the tone of the show as a whole? It's gone from a comedy with some drama to a drama that's often funny. I thought last week's episode, "On All Fours," was possibly the strongest one ever. It was also the darkest."
Connie: "I get what you're saying, and I think that's what I'm trying to get at. Like, yes, this show isn't like The Wire in that it's a story that desperately needs to be told."
Connie: "But it's a set of problems that's been birthed by this over-protected, over-privileged, over-medicated, over-pampered part of our world. I feel like the darker side is much more interesting than the slapstick side — although the funny parts of Girls are definitely some of the highlights of the show."
Annie: "Should we talk about predictions for next season?"
Connie: "Does Jessa ever come back?"
Annie: "Yeah, of course, but who knows how much her character will be in it? From interviews I've read, Jemima Kirke seems sort of disinterested in acting."
Connie: "Does Hannah get sued?"
Nathan: "I think next season is going to show some actual success for her. It has to, I think. I mean, she may actually get sued, but she's also going to actually publish something."
Connie: "And she'll have to deal with that success — it'll go right to her head."
Annie: "Charlie's going to cheat on Marnie or dump her this time."
Photo: Courtesy of Jessica Miglio/HBO