Girls Season 5, Episode 2 Recap: “Good Man”

Well, now that we've got Marnie and Desi's wedding out of the way... "Good Man" opens with Hannah and Fran in bed. They're awakened in the middle of the night by a sound in the living room; Hannah wants Fran to go investigate. When they venture out of the bedroom, they find Fran's roommate having what appears to be a manic episode. Hannah manages to make it worse by audibly calling him crazy, at which point he tosses a chair in her direction and we get a bush-and-boobs shot. And so begins the episode — and Fran's extended stay with Elijah and Hannah in Brooklyn. (That's definitely going to be weird for Fran, given the extreme co-dependency between the roomies, who apparently engage in a romantic lovelock right after breakfast every morning). Behind happy couple door number two, Caroline and Laird are forging ahead in their new lives as parents. It appears to be going...okay. And by "okay," I mean: Caroline has a lot of semi-reasonable/totally insane personal demands stemming from the fact that she pushed a real live human out of her vagina and Laird seems pretty browbeaten. But the baby is really, unbearably, perfectly adorable? So at least they have that going for them.

While Fran is watching Elijah and Hannah smooch goodbye upstairs, Adam is on the ground floor visiting his cherubic niece and sister. But he's also pretty into the baby, which is cute and doesn't shut the idea down when Laird suggests that he have one of his own. They launch into a conversation about what's going on in Adam's love life lately — i.e., all things Jessa. Later that morning, Elijah and Ray are at work going back and forth about the new coffeeshop that opened up across the street. The place is more popular than Ray's, which has clearly put a bee in his bonnet. Also, the coffee is better (just ask Elijah), but they don't supply lids, so people keep coming over to steal lids from Ray's shop. Eventually, Ray marches over there and demands that the two coffeeshops find a solution to this lid issue, which does not go well for a multitude of reasons, including a gender-identity misspeak on Ray's part — he calls a barista "sir," but this person is actually a "they." The times, they are a'changing. Somewhere else in the 'hood, Jessa and Adam — fresh off his baby visit — are at the same A.A. meeting, 'cause apparently they just don't have to do anything work-related on this particular weekday, lucky shits. Adam corners Jessa after the meeting to talk about the wedding kiss. "Nothing can ever happen," she says, ensuring that of course something is going to happen. Adam presses her to spend time together as friends, and she gives in.

Let's play a little game of two truths and a lie about Jessa and Adam's day together: 1. They went to Coney Island together, where Jessa confronted a magician who owed her $30 for some unexplained reason. 2. Adam is on adorable I-wanna-be-your-boyfriend-mode all afternoon and wins her a fish, which he ultimately murders on the way home. 3. They do not end the day sitting on opposite ends of a couch, looking each other in eyes and furiously masturbating — but not touching one another. GUESS WHICH ONE THING DID NOT HAPPEN? While her best friend and her ex-boyfriend are probably simultaneously climaxing, Hannah is at her day job, teaching eighth graders about the literary disappointments of Philip Roth's Goodbye Columbus. Mid-lecture, she gets called to the principal's office: Her dad is on the phone, in NYC without explanation, and weeping in his midtown hotel room. Somehow, Principal Toby still hasn't fired Hannah for being completely inappropriate and flakey, and she takes a leave of absence from work for the afternoon to go see what's going on with her dad. When she gets to her dad's hotel room, Hannah finds out that (obviously) he was in town to meet up with a dude he met online, and (obviously) freaked out about discovering that said dude did not look like his online dating profile picture. Not only that, he left his wallet at the guy's place — it fell out of his pants when he was taking them off, because despite the aforementioned profile pic ish, they had sex — and he wants Hannah to go get it. While they are talking about the retrieval request, Hannah's mom calls, not knowing where her dad is. When Hannah tells her that her dad is in New York, her mom asks her to give him a message: "Tell him I want a fucking divorce." Hannah doesn't relay that message. But she does head to pick up her dad's wallet at the guy's (Keith! His name is Keith.) apartment. He's sort of adorable when he comes to the door — and he actually looks a lot like Hannah's dad, pre-coming out. They hug. It's the least weird part of this whole situation. Hannah heads back to the hotel to hand over her dad's wallet and they go have lunch, at which point he confesses that he not only had sex with Keith-the-fine-boot-dealer, he had unprotected sex. Hannah calls Elijah, who's still at work with Ray, and tells him that he needs to come have a real talk with her dad. Much to Ray's dismay, Elijah hightails it on out of there as though "Hannah's having a gay emergency with her gay dad" is a totally valid reason to skip out in the middle of the day. Right before Elijah arrives at the family powwow, Hannah reveals to her dad that her mom wants a divorce. Her dad — who clearly thought this was something they were going to work through together, despite the fact that he's being insanely selfish and sneaky — is shocked. Father and daughter begin ugly crying in the restaurant. When Elijah walks by and sees them in the window, he decides to skip out on the drama and hit up a bar, instead. (Can't blame him. What a mess those Horvaths are.) Also, it was a good thing he wound up at this particular watering hole, because almost as soon as he sits down a cute dude buys him a drink — a cute dude named Dill.

Dill — played by Corey Stoll, who you may recognized as the coke-addicted-but-interminably-magnetic Peter Russo from House of Cards — is a high-profile journalist, we're led to believe. Anderson Cooper-style. Dill and Elijah work up a nice little chat at the bar before parting ways outside. There's clear chemistry there, but they part without exchanging information. While Elijah is beating himself up about that fact on the sidewalk, Dill pulls up in a sleek black Suburban and hands Elijah his card. Clearly, we've got something good to look forward to between these two.

At the end of this very long day, Hannah walks her dad toward the train so that he can head back to the Midwest and face the music. They both look sad and lost. "I'm here," Hannah tells him. "I'm always going to be here." The parent-child role reversal would almost be complete, if only Hannah would commit to growing up a little bit.