‘Girls’ Recap, Season Four, Episode Nine: “Daddy Issues”

Although it’s late in the season, we finally see all four girls make a significant appearance that involves more than a few lines. That’s not to say that the show didn’t continue its tradition of having Jessa and Shoshanna overshadowed by supporting characters Ray, Tad, Loreen, and Elijah.

However, not all of the girls made a strong showing. Shoshanna shows up solely to channel her frustrations over her job search into seemingly platonic support for Ray at his election night victory party, only to see Ray give an awkward victory speech that was a thinly veiled pledge of devotion to Marnie. Ugh. Shoshanna’s adorable new love interest Scott was nowhere to be seen.

Marnie made an appearance just to throw her engagement ring in Ray’s face knowing full well he has feelings with her before co-opting his victory party to announce to the whole bar that she and that granola doofus Desi are tying the knot. Not quite sure what the point of Marnie grabbing the mic was considering that she knew like three people in the bar, but it’s Marnie. She will never not grab the mic. That being said, Hannah’s “She is so not sorry to interrupt” aside was priceless.

Jessa probably got more screentime tonight than in all the previous episodes combined. The episode opens with her in an almost tantric sex scenario with Ace, who seems to be more enthralled with the decor of her room than with the fact that he’s deep inside her via some ambitious spider-style position. Hey, at least he’s not chomping on that obnoxious prop toothbrush from the art opening.

We could go ahead and congratulate Jessa for finally bedding this idiot after she fought so long to do so and basically ruined Hannah’s life in the process. Still, Jessa’s passive aggressively aloof long game from the previous episode finally got her into Ace’s pants. She’s got that in common with Marnie in the sense that she fought an uphill battle with an unavailable love interest only to end up scoring the most pyrrhic of romantic victories with dudes who are ultimately complete zeroes. With Marnie I kind of feel bad because she was making progress and setting defined boundaries before Desi threw her the unexpected curveball of showing up in the middle of the night after breaking up with his girlfriend Clementine. She’s kind of like a lamb with low self-esteem being led to slaughter.

However, Jessa’s romantic entanglement blows up in part because of her failure to be the most manipulative person in the room and it’s not for her lack of trying. That honor goes to Mimi-Rose after Ace accidentally / on purpose crashes the quiet dinner between Mimi-Rose and Adam at her apartment. Ace is using Jessa to bait his ex Mimi-Rose, and it works.

“So this is what jealousy feels like,” Mimi-Rose realizes aloud, crushing Adam in the process. Mimi-Rose lets it slip that she wants Ace back, but in a move that ultimately steals a page from the Brenda Walsh / Olivia Pope playbook she chooses herself, calling back to that keynote video that Hannah internet-stalked from earlier in the season where Mimi-Rose talked about her romantic entanglements ultimately diminished her artistic focus. In the end, Mimi-Rose would always choose herself. She’s always going to choose what she thinks will keep her art unobstructed and “honest.”

In the end, two couples entered Mimi-Rose’s kitchen and four single people left. After being rebuffed by Mimi-Rose, Ace went chasing after Jessa, claiming that he was ready to be with her and was turned down a second time. When Jessa storms out, she drags Adam out with her in what I’m assuming is a symbolic gesture. She pushed Adam into the relationship, so she might as well take some ownership of the situation and pull him out, right? In the meantime, Jessa is facing an existential crisis given that she built up this pervasive self-mythology is being this impervious master-manipulator only to have it toppled by a complete yutz like Ace. It’s no doubt painful, but maybe this is the opportunity her character needs to grow into someone more mature and realized. Given that Jessa’s been objectively horrible this season, it will be interesting to see how she moves on from this and hopefully into someone who is more complex and dynamic. On the other hand, Adam shows remarkable restraint and maturity when he refrains from entering Ray’s victory party because he wants to see Hannah way too much.

As for Hannah, she’s doing her best to process her dad’s coming out, but she’s definitely handling it better than her mom. She has a heart to heart with her dad over pierogies, insisting that Tad’s coming out isn’t about her, which is antithetical to the tantrum Loreen threw last week. Of course, Hannah also has some experience with having a romantic partner come out of the closet. However, it’s not like she spent over twenty years raising a kid with Elijah. Tad then calls Hannah’s maturity bluff by pointing out that she probably didn’t even bring her wallet to lunch. He’s right, of course.

Speaking of Elijah, he’s happy to both rub Hannah’s face in the fact that he knew that her dad was gay and help Tad figure out this new leg in his life’s journey, which Hannah’s dad apparently insists will include staying married to Loreen. For now, anyway.

Outside of talking to her parents, Hannah is barfing the feelings that come along with this unexpected revelation onto everyone in her direct vicinity, including her principal and Cleo, the student she tricked into getting the tongue ring. Perhaps the most surprising part of Hannah’s storyline is that she still has a job after taking Cleo off of school grounds and backing out of their frenulum pact after Cleo’s painful botched piercing job. However, it seems like the incident that will threaten Hannah’s position is an argument with Cleo over the various unreturned texts and voicemails from when Hannah wanted to sound off about her dad’s coming out, rather than reach out to a friend that’s her own age. However, when your friends include Jessa and Marnie, I can see how the company of a high school kid would look appealing. Unfortunately for Hannah, Cleo has a more well-defined sense of boundaries and the ensuing argument results in a trip to the principal’s office after what looked like Fran ratting her out. That’s all we get from Jake Lacy this episode, unfortunately.

While meeting with the principal Hannah, admits that her dad just revealed himself as “a proud gay man,” prompting her boss to try and repeatedly introduce Hannah to the concept of boundaries. Even when Hannah tries to diffuse the tension by complimenting her boss’s jeans, he replies with a succinct and beautifully timed “boundaries!”

Somehow Hannah’s lack of professionalism doesn’t lead to her to getting fired outright, but she is encouraged to take the rest of the day off and decompress. At this point, she’d probably have to bring a case of tall boys to class and hand out cans to her students in order to get the axe. Still, she’s raw and a bit crazy, but she’s dealing with unexpected change in ways that are far less destructive than past seasons. The whole process is kind of like shedding a skin.

That inability to recognize boundaries isn’t exclusive to Hannah. That failure was present when Ray looked right into Marnie’s eyes to pledge his undying devotion right in front of Desi and in the vicinity of Shosh during his victory speech. Marnie demonstrated a flagrant lack of boundaries when she grabbed the mic and announced her engagement at a party thrown in honor of a man who is still broken up over her. Ace took the cake when he barged into Mimi-Rose and Adam’s dinner only to incite a domino break-up effect through the room. It’s the ability to negotiate, recognize and respect ever-shifting boundaries that will determine which characters grow and move forward and which ones stay stagnant.

 

Maggie Serota is a Staff Editor at Death and Taxes and a freelance writer who loves TV more than life itself.

 

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Photos: HBO