Girls: Season 2 Finale

People may not remember what you said or what you did, but we will always remember how the season two finale of Girls made us cringe, grip our ears, and count to eight.

This season of Girls came across as last season’s weird dark OCD cousin, but a cousin I love nonetheless. All of the characters are in a completely different place than where they originally started, which is perhaps a metaphor for the bizarre direction the entire show has taken.

In the season two conclusion of Girls we find our beloved Hannah (Lena Dunham) in a heap of pillows on her bed. Upon closer examination the dingy pajama top she’s wearing is one of those corny Life is Good t-shirts, an ironic nod to the self-destruction she’s actually in. In the wake of her book deal, the stress of producing the pages for her sassy editor has manifested into her apparent underlying OCD disorder.

Hannah has ostracized herself from her New York City support system, which is based primarily on her best friend Marnie (Allison Williams). Perhaps she is too ashamed to face the people closest to her so she calls upon Laird, (the downstairs recovering drug addict, played by Jon Glaser), to assist her in a Britney Spears-esque hair catharsis.  The name Laird gets me every time.

Jessa (Jemima Kirke) is my favorite character on Girls so when I realized she really wasn’t making an appearance in the finale I felt like crying and calling her to leave an enraged voicemail of her betrayal. Luckily Hannah beat me to it, but Hannah went on to refer to Marnie as “that anorexic bitch,” which hurt my feelings. I really wished their friendship had been reconciled in the finale; I was expecting Hannah to find comfort in her relationship with Marnie rather than Adam (Adam Driver).

It was also interesting to see such a role reversal between Adam and Hannah. Adam, who was once a complete sex fetish weirdo, evolved into an endearing and dare I say, sexy gentleman. During his brief relationship with Natalia (Shiri Appleby) we saw a different, more human side to him, so when he reunited with Hannah I was genuinely happy.

One of the most surprising parts of this episode was the fact that I wasn’t completely annoyed by Ray (Alex Karpovsky). I usually can’t even deal with his pretentious character but I really felt for him when Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) ended their relationship. Don’t get me wrong; I couldn’t be happier about Shosh’s sexual awakening and pillbox hat phase. Get it girl.

To be completely honest, I didn’t see Marnie and Charlie (Christopher Abbott) getting back together. This season, Marnie really spread her wings and she was surprisingly one of the funniest parts of the show for me. However, as soon as her life didn’t fall directly into place she ran back to her comfort zone, albeit, very handsome comfort zone. Still its nice to know a girl can find love after giving a completely misguided performance of Kanye West’s Stronger to a room of hipsters.

One of the reasons why I love Lena Dunham and her series so much is because she does such a great job at capturing the experience of twenty-something girls in this generation. It is not to say that Hannah’s downward spiral was just as fun and easy to watch as last year’s wedding between Jessa and Thomas-John (Chris O’Dowd), but she’s still painting an accurate picture. I am a twenty-something female and I’d be lying if I said the majority of my friends weren’t in therapy or being medicated for anxiety. I can certainly understand the mental instability that can come after graduating college; everyone is trying to find their footing and we all need a prescription to do so.

Although I had mini anxiety attacks every time Lena touched her ears, I know she once again succeeded in making us think, “I’ve been there,” which is what made us all love Girls in the first place.