Girls – Old Loves

By: Ruth Anrep

The most recent episode of “Girls” titled Old Loves opens up with Fran (Jake Lacey) correcting Hannah’s already graded assignments. Catching him correcting the children’s grammar, Hannah (Lena Dunham) explains she asked the class to focus on being creative rather than being grammatically correct. Fran doesn’t think this is a good teaching method at all and continues to circle all the mistakes, criticizing the student as he goes. You’ve got to side with Hannah on this one considering Fran disregards what she says and basically dismisses Hannah’s teaching method as stupid – which leads to a further argument and tearing of a student’s poem. The break up of these two is so close I can practically smell it.

Now the next day, Hannah is faced with the confused student who’s poem appears to be destroyed for some reason. To prove a point, Hannah disrupts Fran’s class so he can explain why the poem is so criticized and ripped. This just adds fuel to the fire, as Fran doesn’t apologise and blames Hannah for the now even more confused and upset state of the eighth grader.

Leaving the Fran and Hannah poem debacle, Marnie (Allison Williams) and Desi (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) have returned. It’s very clear the honeymoon is over as Marnie steps into their apartment to find Desi and other construction workers assembling a huge wall in their already tiny home. Absolutely filled with rage by the fact that she wasn’t even asked about this, they engage in a huge first marital fight. Marnie wanted a bigger place and Desi thought she wanted more privacy. Apparently, they haven’t worked out that communication is key in a marriage at this point.

Meanwhile, Adam (Adam Driver) is still following Jessa (Jemima Kirke) around, but she’s chosen to seek woman-only meetings in the hope she won’t run into him. Adam waits outside the building for Jessa where he confronts her again about their situation. However, Jessa shuts him down for what seems like the 100^th time, saying her relationship with Hannah would be damaged. But Adam is having none of that saying that Hannah would not show their friendship the same respect.

After this, Hannah, Jessa and Marnie catch up in Jessa’s apartment, but Jessa just wants to be left alone to study. Ignoring Jessa’s annoyance, Marnie and Hannah continue talking about their relationship issues as Marnie gives the advice for Hannah to figure it out with Fran because, in her opinion, he’s the best boyfriend Hannah has ever had. In this interaction between the three, we also learn that no one wants to end up like Cher. Cher is simply not life goals.

After her chat with Hannah, Marnie realizes that she’s going to have to compromise and communicate with Desi if she intends their marriage to work. Going back to her apartment, she finds Desi smashing down the wall with a hammer as he thinks all his ideas are useless. Marnie successfully calms Desi down, which shows a little taste of character development and keeping with the theme of the season, that the Girls are growing up.

As night begins, Elijah (Andrew Rannells) has his first date with Dill (Corey Stoll) over dinner in Manhattan. These two seem to hit it off, though Elijah is waiting for Dill’s friends because he thought he was meeting them tonight. It becomes clear after this conversation that Dill intends to keep Elijah a secret, but it’s just a trick to show Elijah he should have more self-respect. Dill’s friends show up now and Dill kisses Elijah in public view after dinner in front of many on lookers. These guys are the cutest.

While Elijah is enjoying his date, Hannah drags Jessa out for some rice pudding so they can talk and Hannah can avoid Fran some more. Hannah picks up on Jessa’s bad mood, asking what’s going on with her. Jessa just replies in more horrible ways, criticizing Hannah in every way possible. Hannah storms off and this fight appears to have ended their friendship. You can’t help, but think this was done on purpose so Jessa could see Adam without feeling guilty.

Leaving the rice pudding, Jessa goes to see Adam and explained what happened with Hannah. The two then kiss and later attempt to have sex on the couch. Sadly, it looked like the most awkward sexual experience to ever happen. It’s unfortunate because we know they both really wanted it to be fireworks, but it just wasn’t. We leave the episode with a passed out Adam on the couch and Jessa looking as though she’s questioning what this relationship (if that what this is) is going to be like.