Girls ‘The Return’: Going Home

By putting everyone else on the sidelines for the entire episode, ‘The Return’ took us home with Hannah as she visited her parents for their thirtieth wedding anniversary. Removing some of the annoying drama between characters like Marnie and Charlie (or Jessa and the father of the kids she nannies) and taking Hannah out of NYC was just what Girls needed after losing traction in the last couple episodes, putting all the extraneous noise in the margins to focus on this extended vignette into East Lansing.

Speaking generally, there are two types of college graduates: those that stay in the general area where they came from (whether its town, country, or section of the state) and those that leave their comfort zone and try to strike their own path in the world. Being one of the latter types – and coming from a tiny, tiny town in central NY – ‘The Return’ was an episode that felt familiar at almost every angle. Upon her return, Hannah has the normal awkward exchanges between old friends and acquaintances, getting the opportunity to both examine her life to this point, and reflect on where she is and the path she’s trying to take in life.

There are really two great story threads at play in ‘The Return’. The first was Hannah’s view of her life compared to those of others, and how they aren’t really as different as she’d like to think. Heather’s character was the catalyst for this explanation, a terrible dancer whose idealistic views of her future are most certainly going to lead her down a dark path of cruel realities, and most likely will end up with her failing (a fact rectified by the actual sight of her dancing).

In many ways, Hannah is Heather: as her parents remind us, nobody really knows if Hannah is any good at writing – she’s doing a lot more talking about writing than actually writing, and those vagaries create a nice parallel between the life Hannah is leaving and the life Heather is about to embark on. Hannah’s been equally short sighted and self-centered in her attempts to succeed at her dream, and seeing her uneasiness around Heather is a stark reminder to her that she’s really not all that different than her, full of big dreams and ideas, but seemingly lacking in the execution of those dreams.

The other great story thread takes place towards the end, as Hannah reconnects with the one piece of NY that we get to see in this episode (besides the half second of Marnie at the beginning): Adam. Their relationship continues to see saw, and as much as Hannah wants to forget him and his weird sexual habits and goofy personality, she can’t. When having sex with the guy from the pharmacy, she finds it weird that he doesn’t want weird sex talk or a finger in his ass – and on some level, it kind of turns her off (as her mother reminds us, this guy probably doesn’t have enough fire under his ass for Hannah’s type).

It’s still really unclear how these two truly feel about each other, but their phone conversation at the end makes it clear that there is some kind of connection there, even if its talking about other random sexual encounters, or the crack heads talking about cashews on the sidewalk. Notice how Adam called her (after she called him numerous times, of course): he still refers to her as kid – a way for him to hide emotion under a ‘familiar’ phrase – and definitely enjoys the lengthy conversation they share. But then again, being separated from someone makes their flaws seem less annoying, so we’ll see what direction things take upon her return.

I’m a little worried about Girls being at its best without any of the other girls taking up screen time, but I’ll chalk that up to an awesome script co-written by Judd Apatow as the reason why ‘The Return’ was such an awesome escape from the realities of Jessa, Marnie, Shoshanna, and the rest of the idiot males on the show. Either way, it was an awesome episode of the show, and the first one that I’ve really felt the ability to relate to Hannah.

Grade: A

Other thoughts/observations:

– Glad to see the rumors of Hannah’s father being gay were put to rest in a hilarious shower sex scene. Their relationship was less black and white then it was in the pilot, something their dinner scene talking about Hannah goes a long way in establishing.

– there aren’t many shows with actors as comfortable as those on Girls, where nudity is used for a reason, as opposed to just an example to show some tits and/or balls. Great work.

– nice little hints as to why maybe Hannah eats the way she does: her mother’s comments in the first scenes in their Michigan home were great.

What did you think of ‘The Return’? Leave your thoughts/comments below!