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Girls Episode 2 Recap: Hannah Explains Short-alls

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Another week, another episode: Last night HBO aired the second episode of the second season of Girls—and my how quickly things change in Hannah Horvath's Greenpoint.

Last week she was all about her new black beau Sandy—this week they might be over because, mostly, he didn't like her essay. But also, he's a republican. Last week Shoshana was done with Ray, this week they're just amazed by each other. Last week Marnie lost her gallery job, and this week she was turned down for another but is hardcore convincing herself that a "pretty-person" hosting job is like the total best thing in the world for her right now. Oh, and Adam is now stalking Hannah, which ends up with him getting hauled off to the police station for unpaid parking tickets, public urination, and probably general grotesqueness.

Some things change, others stay the same: Jessa and Thomas John are still obsessed with one another (and totally gross). She's painting a life-sized portrait of him shirtless and in a fedora; he bought her a basket filled with three tiny puppies (and judging from their new meaningless template tiger tattoos and his ludicrous apartment furnished with Buddhas from West Elm, it's probably safe to assume they're from one of those crooked puppy shops and not, like, a reputable breeder—but we digress ?)

Anyway: Our favorite moments and the Racked Style Recap is right this way.


One of the first moments of the episode is a true feast for the eyes: Hannah clumsily performing some sort of jump-based YouTube aerobics in her bedroom—clumsily wearing leopard-print tights with a magenta tee and crazy turquoise sneakers. The best part: Said aerobics instructor? She's wearing the actual-athletic-wear version of the same outfit and looks totally together.


Hannah: "But also, I can deal with your judgement because I've always marched to the beat of my own drummer, ever since I cut my camp shirt into a halter top." A minute later—as she collapses on top of him wearing a hooded, sleeveless sleeping bag (what is this thing?!), Elijah responds: "You're just a sad, limp little glowworm."


Meawhile, Marnie is interviewing for a job with an art world woman who first berates her poof-skirted assistant for bringing her too-strong tea before: "And can you bring me juice number 5 from the fridge please?" She's impossibly chic and she knows it—and she doesn't see it (or art) in Marnie: "You got that suit. Where does one get a suit like that?" The answer is, unsurprisingly, Ann Taylor.


An awkward scene passes with Hannah and her boyfriend and Elijah crammed into the homestead's bathroom. Hannah rationalizes the aforementioned republicanism with: "People are different—like you were with George for a very long time and he's still on Hotmail." Elijah then brushes his hair into a puff rivaling Conan O'Brien's: "You've gone too high. It's bananas."


Post-interview, Marnie is exasperated by all the happy love emanating from Shosh's bed: "I just don't want to be around people who don't hate everything in their life right now."


Marnie is coming to terms with the fact that the world probably doesn't need a ton of curators. Shoshana: "It's not like pop stars. We don't need like a million of them." She suggests, however, that Marnie "could like totally make money off how pretty" she is. Marnie feigns modesty ("I mean, I don't think I'm like a model ?") before Shosh and Ray very quickly agree that she's not and never will be a model: "No I wasn't talking about modeling. But you could totally get a pretty-person job?" Hostessing pays well—a hostess Shosh knows has great clothes "and fresh gel nails all the time!"


When Hannah visits the newlyweds Thomas John continually calls her Dannah and proclaims: "And you know what? You're just so great. I was just saying to [Jessa] this morning that I always am impressed by what you do with what you got. I mean, what is this?" Hannah: "It's like a pair of shorter-alls."


Hannah talks up Sandy to Jessa, whilst stuffing a chihuahua into her short-alls: "And when we have sex there's no like part of me that wants to pretend I don't exist—which is a rarity."


And then: New boyfriend Sandy doesn't like Hannah's essay and goes there: "This 'oh I'm a white girl and I moved to New York and I'm having a great time' and 'oh, I've got a fixed gear bike and I'm gonna date a black guy and we're gonna go to a dangerous part of town!' Hannah responds in Missy Elliott lyrics: "Lay this thing down, flip it, and reverse it." He tells her to leave.


Elijah calls Marnie's new hosting uniform fit for "a slutty von Trapp child." Meanwhile, Elijah's outfit would be too small for that von Trapp child.


Hannah does not approve of Marnie's new hosting gig. While housing Cool Whip directly from the tub (who even has Cool Whip in their house?!): "I made a choice not to cash in on my sexuality." Marnie is virtually speechless and Hannah continues—her mouth full of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil-based cream—"oh, you think I'm not pretty enough for a pretty-person job?"


Here's a shot of Hannah using giant dollar store scissors to trim her bangs as instructed by someone of YouTube. Because, why not?


Finally, as Adam is being arrested (as a result of Hannah's wanting to know more about restraining orders), he wonders why he never pursued a restraining order on Hannah "when [she] used to show up at [his] house all the time wearing fucking knee socks."

Episode takeaway: We win for saying Marnie didn't dress arty enough for art last year. Also, kudos to short-alls and a big sigh of relief for Hannah's bangs—if Adam wasn't totally stalking her they'd be a (bigger) disaster.

· All Girls coverage [Racked]