Episode Review: Girls – “Bad Friend”

Girls – “Bad Friend” (season 2, episode 3)

Without putting it lightly, this episode of Girls feels like it’s on drugs. Which, you know, is on purpose given that both Hannah and Elijah are on cocaine. And despite what my mother and educational system have told me, sometimes being on drugs can be a good thing (for an episode of course!) Hannah learns this in the worst possible way by learning about Elijah and Marnie having sex with each other while she’s on an extremely positive level of cocaine.

Hannah decides to do cocaine simply because she has just been “hired” to be a freelance writer. She is told to write about things like having a threesome with two guys she met on Craigslist, or doing cocaine for the first time! Hannah ends up choosing cocaine after the not-so-great first option and soon finds out that the guy downstairs, Laird, is a junkie. Turns out he was a junkie and is now clean, though he still gets drugs for Hannah and Elijah to do.
The two do the cocaine, draw on the walls, go to a club, sing and dance, and talk candidly to each other. I’d like to point out that when Hannah finds out about Elijah and Marnie, she’s snorting cocaine off of a toilet seat. Elijah tells her after claiming that he really feels like he needs to be honest with her, and then things get shitty (pun.) Hannah reacts with huge confusion towards the scenario while Elijah is a little confused about her reaction himself. He stands on the fact that it doesn’t matter because 1. He didn’t finish inside of her 2. He’s gay and 3. He shouldn’t be telling her these things anyway. All of those reasons end up being the main reason on why, at the end of the episode, she tells him to move out.

Given that the episode is titled “Bad Friend,” Hannah makes Marnie realize and admit that she is indeed a bad friend for sleeping with Elijah. Marnie has been spending the entire episode with Booth Jonathon (Jorma Taccone) in his apartment marveling at his artwork. The guy is a total pretentious douche bag who, like all total pretentious douche bags, knows exactly how to work his charm and get Marnie to sleep with him. It’s bizarre that he would trap her inside of “his best work” which features a box full of TVs showing random footage while Duncan Sheik’s “Barely Breathing” plays, but it works for him and the story. God only knows how long he kept her in there, but when she emerges she exclaimed “You’re so talented!” it makes sense that Marnie would fall so easily for a guy who only seems like he knows what he’s doing.

So Hannah makes Marnie admit she’s a bad friend, then kicks Elijah out. Why? Well, because he didn’t admit this. He gave excuses to Hannah on why it happened and how it didn’t matter. Whether or not it did matter is irrelevant because it still hurts Hannah. She leaves Booth’s apartment and ends up kissing Laird when they both arrive back at their apartment complex. “For work,” she says.

Loose Ends:

• I have the feeling that this episode will probably be looked at negatively towards other reviewers. This could be because of the drug nature of it, or its general straight forwardness. If anything, look at it as a conclusion to the last two episodes! It solves the Elijah and Marnie problem, and opens up a can of worms of Hannah and drugs.
• I hope this isn’t the last time we see Elijah.
• The use of Grouplove’s “Everyone’s Gonna Get High” was great, given that it’s from the show’s official soundtrack.
• Laughed out loud at “Extremely Close and Extremely Loud.” It was so sad.
• “Is this a bank?”
• Because I predict that the song will suddenly get popular like “Dancing on My Own” did, the song that Elijah and Hannah were dancing/singing along to was “I Love It” by Icona Pop.

Episode 2 “I Get Ideas”                                                            Episode 4 “It’s a Shame About Ray”