This entire episode was one gigantic cringe. From Hannah's punctured eardrum (more on that later), to Marnie serenading her ex with a lite FM cover of Kanye West's "Stronger," to what was probably the most disturbing sex scene in a show were sex is commonly viewed as awkward and ugly, everyone is coming unglued. What took place between Adam and new girlfriend Natalia was extremely difficult to watch. I don't even know if I'd call it sex because it definitely didn't look consensual, and yet, I don't see a lot of people calling it rape either, something I find equally disturbing. (FYI, Natalia's boundaries were explicitly laid out earlier in the episode when they had sex for the first time.)
I haven't talked a lot about Hannah's descent into mental illness. Unsurprisingly, Lena Dunham's portrayal of anxiety and OCD has been criticized for being over-dramatized. In her recent Rolling Stone interview, she talked about struggling with both, so I'm inclined to believe her. Even if it's not entirely realistic, it's grounded in something real, and it's a pretty smart of her to show the unglamorous, and often isolating, side of mental illness.
I just realized what Girls reminds me of and why I'm drawn to it, despite not being part of its target audience. For three seasons, United States of Tara was one of my favorite under-appreciated shows. Tara was unstable, a lot of the time unlikable, but you wanted to root for her -- you wanted her to be okay. My problem with Girls is week after week I find it hard to muster enough empathy for any of the characters, especially Hannah. The dark parts of Tara were always laced with humor. Hannah's dark parts are just that: dark. And this was the bleakest episode to date.
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