RECAP: The Boys are Back on GIRLS

We open to Adam, naturally shirtless.

As unnatural as it is for GIRLS, this week's episode, "It's Back," strikes a formidable and welcome balance between the show's leading characters - minus Jessa, of course, because no one knows where the frack she's run off to. The boys, this time, are on a path of foreward momentum, while the Girls are sputtering around in lop-sided, smokey circles, while previous haunts of their past reappear.

Adam has spiraled a bit since losing Hannah and subsequently being arrested on trumped up 'stalker' charges. He's coping with his alcoholism, something that's only been eluded to in episodes past, and back in AA. See, forward? He's been sober since he was 17, but losing Hannah, who he maintains he never wanted in the first place, has made him consider using again. He's moving forward, I swear.

"She just hung around, and hung around, and showed up at my place," he says of Hannah at the AA meeting. "And gradually, I started to feel better when she was there."

He strikes up a friendship with a woman, who introduces him to her daughter, Natalia. And if we didn't already know Lena Dunham has a penchant for mucking up her characters' lives, you'd think he might actually be moving on.

Hannah, meanwhile, has begun to crumble under the pressure of her book deal. She's developed these compulsive tics: counting and arranging and organizing and, ugh, it makes watching it stressful. Even more so when its revealed that OCD is something she's been forced to deal with her entire life. It's odd that, amidst all of the general awfulness that makes up a whole lot of her twenties, it's just coming out now. But regardless, there's a bit of a reprieve: Hannah's parents are back! The best/worst parents in the world, or on premium cable. By episode's end, Hannah finds herself in therapy, by her parents' demand, refusing help, refusing to go forward.

So, yeah. No one knows where Jessa is, much to a worried Shoshanna, the suburban mother.

"This is what she does. She f**** sh** up, and she leaves," Marnie explains. "This is what she does. This is classic Jessa."

Marnie, who's now full force into her out-of-control identity crisis, learns that Charlie has designed an app, sold it, and now is some sort of iPhone wunderkind, that Marnie suddenly misses and longs for and oh, yeesh. Such a poor, poor, middle-class 20-something who has the luxury of struggling in Brooklyn.

"You seem kind of all over the place," he aptly tells her, when she shows up at his office in pigtails.

But really, it's just more for a narrative juxtaposition: Charlie, who she believes was 'messed up' after their breakup, is succeeding, living out those nerd dreams, while she slings drinks to investment bankers in that clown-like hosting getup. Later, Marnie tells Ray that she really, really wants to be singer. And quite frankly, she's fairly good. Not, like, breakout-Broadway-star good, but she's got that whole wispy, whiney, Taylor Swift thing going for her. We'll see if this is ever explored, or even mentioned again, as the season wraps up in the next few weeks.

Shoshanna wants to drag 30-year-old sad sack, Ray, to a college party. Ha. Can you imagine?! That guy with the five o'clock shadow that's mostly gray who asks where he can score some 'dope' and then begs all of the co-eds if he can hold their legs while they do keg stands. Anyway, Ray opts not to go. Sho ends up talking about him the whole night, and shacking up with the doorman. These choices.

Everything's come to a point of sorts. Everyone's walking around Brooklyn with metaphorical broken ankles, trying to make something out of their self-destruction. "I hate it when you look so concerned about me," Hannah tells her dad on the subway ride home - medication in hand.

Photos Courtesy of HBO

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