RECAP: The GIRLS Are Absolutely Losing It

Here we are at the penultimate episode of GIRLS' second season - a season, that, well, hasn't felt entirely like GIRLS. At least not the narrow-in-scope, boho-Brooklyn series we came to know from the first go around last year. It's turned into more of a depressing mish-mash of millennial problems and bad life decisions, that constantly make me question my own. Lena Dunham has taken GIRLS to a dark place, occasionally good, but for the most part, mediocre.

Alas, on tonight's episode, aptly titled "On All Fours," everyone is - as, always - taking it from the universe.

Adam is still seeing Natalia (Shiri Appleby), who is now officially his girlfriend after having sex for the first time. She's super detail-oriented and pretty bossy in bed. Which, you know, may not be such a bad thing for Adam.

"I like how clear you are with me," he tells her.

Which translates to: you rely way less on mind-games than Hannah.

Speaking of Hannah, her anxiety is only rising as she meets with her editor, played by John Cameron Mitchell. He essentially hates the pages of her manuscript she's turned in, not even bothering to finish it. "Where's the sexual failure?" he asks, wanting that signature Horvath desperation. His disapproval essentially throws Hannah off of her crumbling cliff of sanity.

"Can you make it a novel?" He asks.

Well, maybe. But she's better at getting giant splinters on her butt from scooting around on the floor while attempting it. And the self-sabotage begins here. In putting off writing her book, cleaning herself from the inside out, Hannah also stuffs a Q-Tip straight down her ear canal. She eventually heads to the hospital, but not before calling her parents while wailing on the floor, "I heard air hiss out of it, I heard air hiss out of it!" You know, that could really be her mantra for her mental state.

"Well, you must feel very silly," the doctor says as he removes the bloody swab. Hannah feels a lot of things. The reality of her emotions is not one of them: she wants to frame the Q-Tip. See?

Natalia, Adam's "mature" girlfriend, takes him to an engagement party that's full of wine and Jack Daniels and is clearly not the place for a recovering alcoholic such as himself. He hardly fits in with her friends any better: "he looks like an old-timey criminal," Natalia's newly-engaged friend says.

Hannah runs into Adam on the way back from the hospital outside the bar. Because Brooklyn is that small and also, duh. This is great for her deteriorating mental state. It's pretty awkward. Hannah can't stop talking about her bloody Q-Tip and deadline, while Adam calls her "kid," and walks away. The regression starts now: he goes back inside and starts drinking. A whole lot.

Oh, and Marnie is now writing songs - on GarageBand. So, we're going with this storyline, Lena Dunham? Marnie and Charlie are also hanging out again. Or, rather, Marnie is trying to hang out with Charlie. Charlie is too busy with his new adult life, flourishing business, and app-junk to remember his Taylor Swift-y ex.

Anyway, he invites her to the company's 'AMU' celebration - I don't know what that means, tech stuff, probably. It's a good thing, though. Something about a certain number of downloads? Hits? Whatever, it's basically an excuse to just round up all of the characters at another party so all the bad stuff happens to them.

Charlie also invites Ray and Shoshanna. Following her hook-up with the doorman last week, Shoshanna has settled in to full-on paranoia/guilt, waiting on a sick Ray hand and foot. It's bad. You can tell her pure, innocent little self is about to snap: she's also talking to other guys - including Charlie, who she says she'd totally have sex with. There's a weird bit of split-Shoshanna-personality emerging. Her guilt is making her basically self-destruct, while she attempts to keep up her typical Lisa Frank demeanor in front of anyone she actually cares about. By episode's end, she ends up confessing everything to Ray. Or rather, she confesses that she held the doorman's hand - even though that's about 1/10 of the actual truth.

Because Marnie is Marnie, she hijacks the DJ's iPod at the party and proceeds to 'entertain.' Oh, god, it's just awful. Her singing isn't necessarily, but the whole situation is passive-aggressively gag-worthy. Actually, scratch that, it's pretty bad. STOP SINGING Kanye West, BrIan Williams' DAUGHTER.

Needless to say, she does not receive a standing ovation.

"You are flailing," Charlie tells her as he drags her back into an office. "It's like you're manic...what can I do to help?"

Well, they pretty much just end up having sex. I'm sure that'll do the trick.

Back at his apartment, drunk and basically a mess, Adam reverts to his old 'potentially a murderer' way: he orders Natalia to get on all fours and crawl around like a dog. It's like she's Hannah or something. The point is: it's really creepy. Adam is really creepy.

"I really didn't like that," Natalia says after they have weird, rough sex that's probably a bit too graphic to actually write about. "I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me," he says. "Are you done with me?" She doesn't answer, but yeah, probably.

And because you can never have too much self-sabotage in an episode of GIRLS, because Hannah will never learn and keep making the same mistakes, she goes home and sticks the clean end of the bloody Q-Tip in her other ear.

Well, that's that. We're set up for the season finale of the sophomore season/slump of GIRLS. What do you guys think? Has Dunham recaptured the desperation and futility of the 20-something lifestyle, or something a little more mediocre?

Photos Courtesy of HBO

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