Hey there Girls fans! Rhea and I are back, to answer that immortal question: if the Germans like us, how sweet could we be? Answer for yourselves on Twitter, Facebook, or in our comments section!
GIRLS: SEASON FOUR EPISODE EIGHT: TAD AND LOREEN AND AVI AND SHANAZ RECAP & REVIEW
Rhea: Out of all the little predictions we’ve been making in these recaps, I’m pleased to finally be right about one of them! Tad is gay. Remember how I said that everytime he talks to Hannah I feel like he’s going to announce that he’s taking off for Kokomo with his lover Raul? Well, he is gay… but nothing so fabulous as all that is happening for poor Tad. Instead, the shocker of the episode is not that Tad prefers men, it’s that his wife, Loreen, has been having an affair with their friend Avi.
While Hannah’s parents are dealing with some very adult, long-term-relationship, identity shit, Hannah is off acting like a teenager… with her new BFF, who is one of her students. Cleo, played perfectly by Maude Apatow, regales Hannah with stories of 14 year olds having sex in Auschwitz, and proffers her preference for Shia LeBeouf with the statement, “I don’t even like Mark, he has HPV.” The way Hannah clings to her is totally gross and inappropriate, but the two of them dancing on the street corner is still so full of YES.
Desi has finally done something to make Marnie legit mad, which is spending $2000, their entire advance, on a cardboard box of guitar pedals. He tries to defend this in true Desi-speak manner, making me want to erase the word “stoked” from my vocabulary, which, being a Californian, is a harder sacrifice than you may think. Desi makes it up to her, however, in a proposal that references his “gay cousin Destin”, causing Marnie to squeal in acceptance. I’m kind of excited to see how horrible this wedding planning and ceremony (if they get that far) is going to be — it will be the hilarious side of terrible, I just know it.
Cut to Shoshanna tweezing her minge in a fashion turban, which is perhaps the best lead-in shot of any episode in the entire series. After receiving bizarre relationship advice from Jessa, she goes off to campaign for Ray (which I also called, a bit less dramatically, in a previous recap — I’m on fire), and we get the return of the million-bobby-pins hairstyle, turning that into a definitive Shosh Look. Perhaps it will catch on, and Goody will see an upsurge in their stock portfolio. Ray lets loose that he is still pining for Marnie, which is heinous, but he also utters the truest statement ever said about Shosh, “The fact that you’re not already running a Fortune 500 company is baffling to me.” On her date that night with the Soup Dude, she does refer to her “slimy vagina” as a part of her attempt to talk dirty, so maybe poor judgement is the answer to that conundrum?
Hannah closes out the episode by having another awkward encounter with the guy she went on a botched first date with last week. Ben/Bran/Whatever-his-name-is quotes Mary J Blige and sees right through Hannah, so they are obviously trying to sell him as the perfect human. He tells her she’s too much drama, which she calls to check out with her parents. She talks over her mother (whose acting this entire episode is EMMY WINNING LEVEL — her crying over the Reisling being too sweet is the ultimate example of tragicomedy), who takes that moment to scream into the phone, “YOUR FATHER IS GAY.” How Hannah will turn this into something that further victimizes her is left to next week’s episode, which is presciently titled “Daddy Issues.”
Victor: As we race towards the end of the season, I remain impressed that we are still able to learn new things about these characters. For instance, who knew that Hannah even HAD a frenulum?
Well, my gaydar seems to be somewhat less effective than my privelegedar, because I had no idea that Hannah’s dad was gay. I assumed he was dying, so this was a much better turn of events.
I also would have assumed that if Tad ever realized he was gay, he would have stayed in the closet forever, so I suppose it’s nice to be a poor judge of character on two counts.
Spending this much time with Tad and Loreen gives me an insight into their marriage I don’t know that I had before. Loreen seems as Hannah-like as we’ve seen her here, “It’s not not about me” being a particularly familiar sentiment (Also, notice they both jump straight to calling their Tad and Fran misogynists when they hear something they’d rather not accept)
After all these years of barely concealed disappointment towards Hannah on Loreens’ part, we find that the apple has not fallen all that far from the tree in the first place.
(Though it occurs to me that Tad was probably not that Elijah-like in their youth…)
Elsewhere, Shosh and Jason Ritter (who may or may not have a character name, but let’s face it, that dude is Jason Ritter) make a cute couple, slimy vaginas, comparing cocks to pickles, and all the rest. Their geeking out over the cast of The Good Wife being at that restaurant was an episode highlight, particularly Shosh’s startled “That’s Josh Charles! He died…”
(Uh, spoilers for the Good Wife, I guess…)
Also, a very special thanks to Rhea, who already answered what Shosh was doing sitting on that toilet, thereby freeing me up to ask her some other question this week…
Moving on to “This Week In Desi Bums Me Out”, how DARE he drop a reference to My Bloody Valentine! UNACCEPTABLE!
I’m trying to figure out exactly what the takeaway from all this Marnie and Desi stuff is supposed to be. As painful as it is to admit, I think we haven’t spent enough time with them. For a regular cast member, zero effort has been made to flesh out Desi, leading to a sameness in all his scenes: Desi does something unbearably douchey, Marnie calls him out, we go to some other scene without any kind of resolution; lather, rinse, repeat. They’ve given Marnie the backbone she’s been missing since her slide in sad-sackery last year, but are still failing at giving her actual things to do in the story.
Of course, all of this has made my mission of getting Rhea to love Marnie that much more difficult. But there are still two more episodes left. Which is plenty of time to turn around a near pathological aversion, right?
Similarly, I’m wondering if the rule is that Jessa gets one humanizing moment per season now. Because from her admittance to Adam that she needs a friend to her gloating that she has four suicides under her belts, she’s been relentlessly horrible almost all season now. And not quite in the endearingly obnoxious way she was last year, but in the sort of way that seems to indicate that Lena Dunham can only make two of her leads empathetic at any given time.
Happily, for every character that’s stuck in stasis or trending downward, there’s Hannah, who is always able to find new variations on the same destructive patterns.
Reverting to being a teenager is such a Hannah thing to do, as is taking others down with her (Poor Maude, in the most enjoyable/wince-inducing piercing sequence I’ve ever seen). Active denial is Hannah’s co-pilot, so there’s something weirdly cathartic about IMMEDIATELY losing her sense of self when Second Jim From The Office (you use your references, I’ll use mine) called her out.
In an episode that thematically is all about the identities we try (and fail) to create for ourselves (with a weird runner about crazy ex-girlfriends), there’s something wonderful about the idea that the only one who is getting it right is Tad…
RHEA’S QUESTIONS FOR VICTOR
1: Are you surprised that Ray used eharmony as his online dating service of choice?
Kind of, actually. I would have pegged him for a Zoosk user.
2: Shosh refers to her pals as the “Failure Friends.” Do you have a name for your close friends, preferably alliterated?
Not alliterated, no. But in high school we were known as “The Goon Squad,” if only to ourselves.
3: Desi + Destin: let’s imagine it. What was childhood like for Desi and his “gay cousin Destin”?
Well, obviously they never wore shoes. And they would spend every summer together. But honestly, they weren’t that close. Desi was too busy teaching himself the riff from “Naturals Not In It” to ever pay attention to Destin. But when Destin announced he was gay at his parents’ “re-commitment ceremony”, Desi gave a very rousing speech about how special Destin was to him…
4: Jessa dressed as the Little Match Girl for Ace: creepy, sexy, or simply a cry for help?
Are you kidding? The secret to Jessa is that everything she does somehow manages to be all of the above.
5: Were you happy to get a break from Adam and Mimi Rose (but remember, no Elijah this episode either)?
Fuck! Yes! I was beyond happy to have to not deal with those two for a week! It was like a tiny little vacation! And oddly enough, Elijah’s charms have been waning for me. I don’t know if it’s too much of a good thing or what, but in the past couple of episodes he’s been more obnoxious and rude than his usual hilarious, lovable self.
VICTOR’S QUESTIONS FOR RHEA
1: Which body part (non-ears division) would you get choose to get pierced with your B.F.F.?
If I was sure that I would never need to breastfeed again, I’d say nipple. But since my reproductive future is a mystery to me, I’ll have to go with a gum piercing.
2: What item that everyone in your life would consider useless would you be willing to drop two thousand bucks on?
A ridiculously low cut, wide legged Yves Saint Laurent jumpsuit.
3: You find yourself at a country style buffet with the entire cast of Orange Is The New Black sitting four tables down from you. How do you react? Play it cool, or freak the fuck out?
I am absolutely terrible at playing it cool. I just either am cool, or I’m freaking the fuck out — I can’t fake cool. So I’d freak the fuck out. If there were music playing, (the more terrible the better) I’d dance my way over to them and challenge the one that was least trying to ignore me to a Vogue Off.
4: What, after decades of marriage, is the best way to come out to your spouse? Did Tad basically handle it right, timing aside?
There’s no right or wrong way to come out. It’s such a personal choice. It’s good that he did it in person, it makes sense that it happened right after therapy, and that he did it when something really good was happening for Loreen. However, in the privacy of their own home would have been kind.
5: Are YOU the person you think you are?
Of course I’d like to think so, but I never cease to surprise myself, so I guess not.
Tune in next week to see if Hannah deals with the coming out of her father and the engagement of her best friend like a rational human being. Hope springs eternal, y’know…
