Part 2: “She’s not crazy, she just wants to feel everything.”
Click here to read Part 1 – “And I see … red. All I see is red.”
Another show that recently gave us a bottle episode, “Girls,” will have no such problem – it can do (and has done) standalone and plot-advancing episodes with equal aplomb, without raising questions about its creative well-being. But just like with “Clear,” “One Man’s Trash” gives us an ultimately disquieting vision, in this case one of unattainable dreams, the difference between naive idealism and assured practicality, and the indecipherable mysteries of attraction and love.
Lena Dunham’s character, Hannah, visits Joshua, a patron of the cafe where she works – one who’s pissed at the c afe’s practice of dumping trash in his garbage cans. Hannah is the guilty party responsible, and apologizes. He accepts. They banter. They sense a spark. They kiss. They fuck.
What happens after that is what makes this episode fascinating. The literal and emotional games they play – naked ping-pong and Hannah’s demands that Joshua beg her to stay, respectively – make for charming fiction, but are also fascinatingly indicative of a fundamental divergence of perspective. Joshua is late 30s, put-together despite being separated from his wife, living in a swag-as-fuck apartment that he clearly worked to earn. He lives the life that Hannah seems to aspire to, but he’s too confused and neurotic to feel worthy of. Hannah is 25, a basket case, living with whichever one of her friends will share her rent and tolerate her brand of crazy and seemingly unaware of what’s actually required of her in terms of realizing her literary ambition. (That sounds disturbingly like my life.)
She faints in the shower, and that is the turning point where their fling sours. Her monologue about wanting to feel everything is heartfelt, heartbreaking, naive and infuriating all at once. But then she can’t help but make herself seem hideously self-serving, per usual. I don’t feel like she is inherently bad, by any standard, but she’s addicted to over-analysis to a point that is dangerous and maybe even fatal to her mental health. The mere fact that her bad decisions infuriate me so thoroughly is proof of how deeply real and affecting this show’s characters are. Joshua is certainly possessed of his own flaws, but he appears to have worked hard to have them not define him. (That said, his reticence about discussing his separation seems a strong sign of demons repressed.) Hannah is more interested in having all flaws define her, represent her and make her name as a writer.
She is unable to believe that a man like Joshua could be someone whom she’d be happy alongside, and as a result she pushes him away so completely through caustic sarcasm and self-attention.
I feel like the desire to present oneself – especially in an artistic fashion – through a prism of personal flaws and baggage is a dishearteningly common millennial mindset, if one that has obviously existed in most aspects of human society. It is in some ways the entire raison d’être of Girls, and it becomes all the more pronounced when Hannah is thrust into this alternate universe where contentment is not only attainable, but is in fact the norm.
Every show, I think, needs to squeeze itself into a bottle every now and then. For The Walking Dead, it had the unfortunate side effect of highlighting the flaws of the series as a whole, but it gave us an absolutely brilliant piece of television. Girls managed to elaborate on its major theme in a fresh and exciting way, one reminiscent of the best short fiction – imagine Richard Yates if he lived now and wrote more sympathetic female characters.
The truisms that apply to life often apply to the best art, and the idea that the detours we go through can be our most meaningful experiences is definitely reflected in great TV that exemplifies the same spirit.
Liam Green can be reached at lgreen@thoughtpollution.com.