Things were looking pretty bleak for the guys and gals of Girls at the end of last season. Hannah was having a full-on, ear-damaging meltdown. Marnie’s on-again, off-again relationship with Charlie was decidedly off again. Jessa was nowhere to be found. Ray and Shoshanna were no longer an item. But then there was a light at the end of the tunnel as Adam arrived like a urine fetishist knight in tarnished armor, seemingly saving Hannah from what threatened to be some real, actual insanity.
Season three starts right where season two left off: with Hannah and Adam back together and enjoying a relationship that is, on its surface, sickeningly sweet. This is Girls, though, so if you thought that was going to last for long, then you probably have some catching up to do with previous episodes. After some establishing shots of the characters we’ve been missing for the past eight months, reality comes roaring back in as Hannah and Adam come face to face with Adam’s ex-girlfriend Natalia and her confrontational friend Angie (played by a scene-stealing Amy Schumer).
By the way, Amy Schumer’s performance in this episode makes a strong case for there being a lot more Amy Schumer on TV. She is fantastic, and if the writers of Girls could somehow find a way to write Angie back into the show as a recurring character, the show would only be better for it. Schumer has other stuff going on, though, like her own TV show, so that probably won’t happen.
But I digress. The confrontation between Adam and his ex, both of whom seem reticent to have the confrontation, is the sort of agonizingly uncomfortable scene that Girls does best, mixed with some of the best lines of an episode full of some pretty great lines. “You’re not going to get any milk out of those tits!” Natalia yells at Hannah when she finally snaps, and it is glorious.
The title of the episode, “Females Only,” comes from a sign Jessa is forced to wear around her neck during her stint in rehab. That’s right, Jessa, who disappeared at the end of episode seven of last season after dealing with some seriously deep-rooted daddy issues, has reappeared to kick off the new season. We find her in media res during a rehab group session, and she is certainly not making any friends.
Well, strike that. She makes one friend. After pretty rudely calling out a member of her group (played by Orange Is the New Black‘s Danielle Brooks) for being a lesbian, Jessa makes it up to her in a very Jessa sort of way: by going down on her. That is the straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back, and Jessa finds herself kicked out of rehab, which it seems was probably her plan all along.
When the episode ends, one must imagine Hannah happy. She’s back together with Adam, and he managed to not only be civil to her friends but also to cheer Marnie up from her post-Charlie funk. Her writing career is back on track. Her therapist is Bob Balaban. (Seriously, how great would it be to have Bob Balaban as a shrink?) And now she has a purpose, surely to be explored in episode two: to save Jessa. It would seem that for now at least, Hannah is back on track.
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