‘Girls’ Recap: The One Where Every Decision Comes With A Crisis And, Oh God Life Is Hard

This is a recap of the latest episode of Girls. Spoilers!

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Poor Shosh. Deciding to stay in Japan after losing her job was a cool, brave thing to do (the transpacific ghosting of her sweet New York boyfriend, less so) and it seemed to be working out well for her: a cat cafe assistant manager may not be the high-flying creative/corporate role she moved there for, but as interim jobs go, she could have done a lot worse.

Even better: her Japanese has clearly improved, her adorable new boyfriend looks (and talks) like the hero of a manga about two beautiful elf princes who fall in love, and she gets to live her life surrounded by a pop-culture aesthetic seemingly tailor-made for her. Her equanimity when the gloriously awful Abigail (Aidy Bryant, who gets most of the best lines in this episode — “I just want to sit steadily in a McDonalds until I feel safe again”, “I know what ‘cat’ is, I’ve had a boyfriend”) turns up at the sex hut cat cafe is lovely and encouraging. Offering to convince the woman who recently fired you to love Japan through a day-long tour is gracious as hell.

But it seems Shosh was really trying to convince herself that, despite being knocked off course with the shock loss of her job, she still feels at home in Tokyo. Shosh makes plans and has goals, and she doesn’t cope well when her plans are foiled (remember her little breakdown when she couldn’t graduate?). Her mask of graciousness and contentedness slips: the cafe is a humiliating step down for the career she’s still only just starting, Yoshi believes she’s a virgin, and the relentless politeness of Japanese society is grating. She’s tired and a little terrified, in that way you get when you’re working very hard just to keep it together and not freak out about how out of your control life has slowly, suddenly become.

This often happens in the aftermath, or the process, of a big decision or a life change. When you can point to something major that’s happened or one path you chose over another, it makes everything seem both more and less certain: yes, life would clearly be very different if you had done X or not picked Y, but you also have no idea exactly what that difference would look like. This makes you obsess over why you made the call, how you could have avoided the disaster, what you could be missing out on in that alternate universe where you did or didn’t take the leap, and who’s really to blame for the spanner thrown in your works. There are few things more insidious than the feeling that you’re not living the life you’re supposed to be.

This is why it’s important to push yourself out of your comfort zone sometimes — to stop waiting around for permission or instructions, and try something new to see what happens. It’s hard to make personal growth happen in the same little box you’ve always lived in. The existential thrill of testing yourself in new situations, no matter the results, is the umami in your ramen — the thing that creates depth and interest. 

This week, everybody is testing or pushing themselves a little. Hannah has removed herself from Fran’s needling orbit to join her mother at a place she knows she’ll hate, just to get away from him. The moment she starts not hating it, she manages to find a way to cheat on him. Jessa is experimenting with relative normalcy, and her dinner with her sister highlights how far she’s come since dedicating herself to her new passion. And Loreen is mapping out the possibility of a future without Tad, through the bleak tales of the Divorced Cathys.

The Cathys’ stories aren’t encouraging, and they’re wildly unsympathetic to the fact that her life was turned upside down by the revelation that her husband is gay; but these are women whose experiences are so limited that they can’t talk about anything except their divorces, the grimly wholesome food at the many retreats they go to while getting over their divorces, drinking wine in the morning, and MOUTH CHLAMYDIA.

Loreen is a gutsy, intelligent person with as much as a third of a life still left to her, and while her reasoning to Hannah for staying with Tad does make perfect sense, it is sad to see her shrug off the future possibility of love with such cold pragmatism in order to hold onto what she knows. It’s an echo of Marnie’s terrible advice to Hannah last week: better to hold on to what you have than to have to start over. Especially if what you have is A Nice Man.

Despite the fact that Tad wants to stay together (and they’re still having sex, apparently? Is my interpretation of that conversation in the car correct?) it does feel like a defeat to have Loreen stay with him, especially as she mourns the time she could have had to start over if she’d known 20 years ago. It’s a lovely, tragic little scene with her and Hannah at the end; the episode has her optimism and determination at the retreat run parallel to Hannah’s hilariously sullen resistance to the self-serious empowerment culture (and abortive sauna sex with a philosophical yoga instructor) only to twine them together at the end as they both consider things that can’t be undone and paths they can’t bring themselves to take.

Jessa and Adam are going all in with this relationship thing, apparently, and I’m still waiting for a non-Hannah reason not to be on board. (Igloo Australia is pretty stuck on how not-okay it is to fuck your friend’s ex, and a relatively official Twitter poll hasn’t settled it either). The explanation of how the terrible, terrible Minerva ended up fucking her half-sister’s dad is some terrific original-flavour Johanssen family crazy, and Adam Driver’s facial expressions throughout are just stellar. As is his rant to Minnie, from the tortured way he creaks out “noooo, you don’t” past his giant hand, to his best line since “If you died, the world would blur”: “She is a beautiful fucking rainbow, cutting and sublime.”

Now, offering to pay your new girlfriend’s college tuition using your acting money does not strike me as a sound decision either in terms of your finances or your relationship, but it’s a clear signal of commitment from Adam (and, of course, another twist of the knife for Hannah later on). Adam is not what your mother would necessarily call A Nice Man, but this gesture is beyond nice — it’s offered out of kindness and faith and passion, and it’s a risk — a hefty bet on their future together. It’s the inverse of literally everything Desi has ever done for Marnie (i.e. actually for himself).

Kirke and Driver are sexy together and totally selling the connection, so they can be as rainbowy as they like as long as they keep talking about non-incest and doing weird, hilarious sex improv. Sadly, the shit must hitteth the fan soon, and Jessadam will have to emerge from the honeymoon cocoon and face up to the reality of the choice they’ve made.

The episode closes with Aurora’s cover of ‘Life On Mars?’ — a decision I wonder about the timing of, but whether a deliberate tribute to Bowie or not, it suits perfectly. It’s a song about the possibility of more glamorous lives, and the tedium of repetition. At this halfway point in the season, all the characters are somewhere near the fulcrum of a big decision; perhaps the back half of the season will be about repercussions and new starts; less about wondering about other lives, and more about bridging the distance between the life you have and the life you want.

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Girls airs on Showcase at 7.30pm Tuesday nights.

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Caitlin Welsh is a freelance writer who tweets from @caitlin_welsh. Read her Girls recaps here.