Girls ‘Welcome to Bushwick a.k.a. The Crackcident’: Adam With A Shirt

Last week, I was a little worried when Hannah’s return home provided the best episode of the series to date, worries that weren’t totally alleviated with ‘The Crackcident.’ As a party episode, I found much of last night’s half hour of fun enjoyable, although once again, most of the non-Hannah story lines began to stumble towards the end, and didn’t give us a whole lot of new stuff to chew on.

The worst of these was Marnie, whose behavior threatened to destroy the whole episode. Girls tends to get a little too overt when trying to display these four Brooklyn women as unlikable entities, and Marnie’s incessant rants at every ear was difficult at times to watch. Nothing against Allison Williams or her performance, but her character’s inability to be concerned with anything but justifying her own existence was terribly off-putting. Any woman worth her salt would recognize Charlie is just rebounding to deal with the awful heartbreak Marnie put him through… and considering how she broke up with him a few episodes ago, I didn’t even feel bad for her.

At least we know what kind of person Marnie is (unattractive as it may be), Jessa’s struggling from the same problems, but we don’t ever really get a feel for her character. She likes to talk shit and she’s just as selfish as the other three… and that’s all we really know about her. She’s been drawn in very broad strokes to this point, and a lot of the time, her motivations aren’t clear. Did she really not recognize the number… or did part of her know who was going to send her a text like that? On some level, she’s known about Jeff’s attraction to her, and she both encourages it (let’s dance and drink and talk shit together) and pushes it away (the hospital scene). Either go there or move onto another story, because the Jeff story line is a whole lot of dead weight (at least we got a scene with Elijah to fill out a little bit of Marnie and Hannah’s backstory).

But thankfully, they’re mostly left as distractions, with the attention of the episode being on Hannah and Adam. It’s funny how Lena Dunham used Adam’s nudity as his disguise (standard film technique is to use nudity as a literary device for exposing one’s inner self), and putting a shirt on him is what exposes his true character and motivation. We finally get to see their relationship from his point of view, and that he’s got a heart, too, something that Hannah’s forgot on her selfish journey through life. But its done in a way that doesn’t feel like its pounding on Hannah (unlike Marnie’s scenes), bringing out Adam’s alcoholic history and frustrations with Hannah in a number of well-written scenes. It all culminates in a powerful scene near the docks, where Adam finally asks the question we’ve all been wondering: what the fuck do you want from me? Best of all, we don’t even need to see her answer: the cab ride home explains it all.

Shoshanna doesn’t really factor into any of these character developments (more on her in the observations section), but for the three main characters, the revealing moments of their night in Bushwick work to a varying degree. It’s definitely an episode that works better as a whole than examining its parts: I didn’t enjoy most of Marnie and Jessa’s scenes, but there were a lot of fun jokes, good music (so much better than most sitcom soundtracks) and finished with one of the show’s best scenes to date, cashing in on some of the tension and uncertainty that’s been building between Adam and Hannah since the pilot. A perfectly enjoyable half-hour, hilarious in many parts, even when its still underwhelming in others.

Grade: B+

Other thoughts/observations:

– The second best Hannah/Adam scene of the episode was also great: when she shows up all ready to argue and be dramtic and Adam just starts dancing with her spoke volumes of their relationship, and the connection between them that they’re beginning to realize.

– Shoshanna on crack. There’s not much to talk about here: it was a slapstick comedy bit that’s in every party episode of TV and film in history (be it with crack, mushrooms, weed, whatever), and it wasn’t the most original bit, but it still inspired a few laughs.

– Questionable Goods is a damn solid band name, in my opinion. And speaking of names, Adam would have a female friend named Tako.

– where did Hannah and Adam meet? Is this something we’ve been told… and if not, how did she meet him and why didn’t she see him in a shirt until tonight?

– I’m not sure how I feel about the title sequence tonight. It felt out of place, and for an episode that wasn’t really all about partying, it was definitely a little weird. Odd visuals.

what did you think of ‘The Crackcident’? Leave your thoughts/comments below!!!