Last week's episode of Girls had a lot of lows, starting with Adam's sad, shirtless YouTube music video, which Hannah and Elijah watched like a nature documentary while Hannah wondered aloud if Adam loved her enough to murder her.
Episode three, however, was concerned with the highs, and opens with Hannah interviewing at a publication called Jazz Hate, where her editor points to a wall that holds the episode's directive: The "magic" happens outside your comfort zone.
At the behest of her very blunt editor, Hannah tries to find that magic on cocaine, so she can "write the fuck" out of a story and expose "her vulnerability to the Internet." This is no doubt a jab at the show's overly confessional tone, or her generation's obsession with memoir, or the farce of writing for the Internet (Editor's note: Hey!), and it takes Hannah a moment to realize she's not writing any of her "experience" down.
Previously on Girls: - Girls, the Season 2 Premiere: Hannah is Still Very Naked and Very Confused - Girls, Season 2/Episode 2: Nothing is Happening, Save for Hannah's Haplessness
These experiences include an extended scene involving her and Elijah high on cocaine, dancing at a club to an Icona Pop song, and she eventually ends up wearing a mesh tank top with no bra for the second half of the episode. The hyper-speed conversations that take place between the two drive the mid-section of the show, like Hannah's confession that she's always wanted to have sex with herself, but that it's also her greatest nightmare, and Elijah's revelation that he slept with Marnie, which brings their coke binge to its dark, prickly comedown.
This leads to a confrontation between Hannah and Marnie in the apartment of Booth Jonathan (Jorma Taccone), the lecherous art weirdo from last season, who has just imprisoned Marnie in a tower full of TVs projecting horrifying images while Duncan Sheik's "Barely Breathing" plays. We've all been there, right, ladies? The exchange between Hannah and Marnie is intense, the emotion heightened by Hannah's ridiculous mesh shirt, which serves as the punchline when she slaps her chest and declares, "It's Wednesday night and I'm alive!"
By the end of the episode, she's evicted Elijah, revoked Marnie's friendship card and hooked up with her recovering addict neighbor, played by Jon Glaser. Hannah's self-centered drug trip has produced a lot of drama, but no real magic has happened. We, once again, feel the weight or her bad decisions. It wouldn't be an episode of Girls without a mess to clean up.
