SPOILER ALERT, so proceed with caution, Girls fanatics…
Season Three, Episode Four: “Dead Inside”
Written by Judd Apatow & Lena Dunham; Directed by Jesse Peretz
This week, we are gifted with a variety of deaths, both literal and metaphorical. The collective and individual revelations therein? The Digital Age, with its constant deterioration of traditionally tuned attention spans, has produced two opposing extremes in terms of how we as a society “deal” with death.
Quick Breakdown
It comes as no tremendous surprise to anyone (other than Adam, it turns out) that Hannah doesn’t exactly deal with death in a traditional or even remotely compassionate way. We learn early in this episode that David (Hannah’s e-book editor, whom we last saw drunkenly brawling with Ray at Hannah’s birthday party) has suddenly passed away. The cause of death is not exactly revealed, but we are treated to a scene in which Hannah flippantly reads aloud a Gawker post deeming his death to be “worthy of a Bret Easton Ellis character.” Adam, who immediately and tenderly attempts to comfort Hannah when she informs him of David’s death, is thoroughly disturbed by Hannah’s alarmingly disconnected state of emotions. In a matter of hours, Hannah goes from simply and reactionarily telling Jessa and Adam about David’s death to, somewhat humorously, questioning aloud the fate of her e-book in the wake of said death.
Elsewhere, Jessa sparks a conversation with Shoshanna (who is beautifully organizing her impressive bandanna collection) on death, prompting Shoshanna to admit (with seemingly no self-awareness) that she was somewhat relieved upon the death of one of her childhood friends, given that her passing allowed Shoshanna to swiftly take over her role in the friends circle. Jessa completely ignores and immediately forgets Shoshanna’s story, instead focusing aloud on her loss of a childhood friend. Shortly after, Jessa places a call to find the location of her former friend’s gravesite. In a remarkable turn of events, Jessa’s friend — poetically named Season — had actually faked her death to omit Jessa from her life. Upon confrontation, Season calls Jessa an enabler and insists that faking her death (including a fake funeral invitation to Jessa) was the only way to get sober. Jessa, of course, takes this opportunity to berate Season’s new life of sobriety and denies any former or current “enabling” behavior.
Marnie, still not exactly directly involved with the major plot points of this season of Girls, experiences the opposite of death. In a satisfyingly honest argument with Ray following another viewing of Marnie’s now infamous “What I Am” Charlie-leaked video, Marnie announces her resignation as a frustrated barista and appears to be rising from the ashes, so to speak. Marnie, the phoenix, might very well (finally!) rise again in a future episode with some maturity-promoting, post-Charlie emotional knowledge.
As the episode comes to a close, we are manipulated into thinking “Hey, maybe Hannah is actually going to console Adam and admit that her coldness with regards to David’s death was a justifiable source of bewildering anguish for Adam.” However, what we’re given is Hannah directly lifting a made-up childhood death story from Adam’s sister Caroline. Adam seems to absorb this moment as something real, while Hannah willingly (?) dives even further into her selfish disconnect. This display of twice-removed plagiarized emotions will likely have an unfortunate ripple effect on Hannah and Adam’s relationship.
Rating
A +
Though quite unsettling in numerous scenes, this episode highlights the re-arrival of Hannah’s life-altering selfishness. The writing allows for sympathy surrounding this fact, but such sympathy or the capacity for anything even closely related to “feeling sorry for” is quickly destroyed with the last scene (Hannah’s plagiarized death story). As previously stated, this episode is likely indicative of future relationship troubles for Hannah and Adam. Also, Marnie’s phoenix-rising status is of note, especially to fans of the character who have felt somewhat underwhelmed by her participation in major plot points thus far.
Now for some random thoughts and my favorite moments of the night…
“I feel like my bandana collection is, like, my most developed collection. My array of bandanas is insane.” — Shoshanna
“Why don’t you place just one crumb of basic human compassion on this fat free muffin of sociopathic detachment? See how it tastes.” — Ray to Hannah
“If you died, the world would blur. I wouldn’t know what a tree was.” — Adam to Hannah
“When you die, how would you feel if a bunch of judgmental creeps, celibate against their will, snarkily reported on every fuckin’ detail of your body decomposing?” — Adam’s opinion of Gawker to Hannah
