Note: Do not read on if you have not yet seen Season 2, Episode 5 of HBO's "Girls" titled "One Man's Trash."
Let me start by saying that I dearly missed the presence of Marnie, Jessa and Soshanna in this week's episode of "Girls." This is partially due to the balance and wit their characters provide in the midst of sad and ridiculous storylines, but also because Hannah has officially hit a big fat zero on the togetherness scale.
Let's begin with the smaller problems that came up during "One Man's Trash."
She has a rebellious streak that has manifested itself in garbage.
In the same way teenagers sneak out of the house to defy their parents, Hannah gets a rush from throwing the Cafe Grumpy trash in a can that does not belong to the coffee shop. After the handsome man on the receiving end of her habit comes charging angrily into the coffee shop, Hannah is quick to tell him she's very sorry for what she's done, but that she thinks her rebellion "makes a lot of sense in a way." Does it?
She has no problem playing ping pong naked or passing out in a shower.
In case you hadn't figured it out from the previews, Hannah ends up hitting it off with the guy whose trash can she's filling with pastries and coffee grounds. Has name is Joshua (Patrick Wilson) -- not Josh -- and he's a 42-year-old, recently-separated doctor.
He invites her in to his very pretty, very adult brownstone, and they have sex almost immediately. Soon, they're playing ping pong naked. I'm not saying playing games naked is an entirely terrible thing, as a lot of people enjoy the occasional skinny dip. But ping pong? Really? It just seems (and looks) like a bad idea on a lot of levels.
Speaking of bad ideas, when Hannah discovers that Joshua has a very high-tech shower that can probably talk, she immediately turns up the heat and ends up fainting because of the amount of steam that accumulates. She is of course saved by Joshua, who is becoming something of a father figure at this point. But what if he hadn't been around?
And then there are her bigger problems ...
She thinks quitting her job isn't a big deal.
We all have moments that make us want to ditch the nine-to-five scene to travel the world, spend a year writing a book or just hide under our covers. But unless you have access to a trust fund, which Hannah does not, quitting your job because your boss was a jerk to a handsome guy isn't all that smart.
When you're paying your own rent and kicking out roommates every other month, a stable income is a necessity. Unfortunately for Hannah, being a free-spirited girl who stands up for herself only goes so far.
She completely trusts strangers.
It's universally known that taking candy from a stranger is a bad idea, but Hannah plucks them off the street and hangs out in their apartments for days. She attempted to do this with Adam back in Season 1, and succeeded in doing this with Joshua.
They had sex, played topless ping pong, ate good food, and read the paper. They talked about their feelings -- er, she talked about her feelings -- and other than a nervous comment about possibly getting herself into a Ted Bundy situation, Hannah didn't seem very concerned about the fact that she knew next to nothing about this older man. She's so comfortable, in fact, that she puts herself in the aforementioned compromising situation with a shower and assumes Joshua will come to her rescue if anything bad happens.
She has some hugely weird issues she hasn't addressed.
After Joshua saves Hannah from his high-tech shower, she feels the need to talk about her feelings a lot. While she brings up the standard #twentysomethingproblems like feeling lost, confused and lonely, she also admits some really horrific things.
"One time I asked someone to punch me in the chest and then come on that spot," she says.
"When I was three, I told my mom my babysitter had touched me on the vagina in the bath." She has no idea if it was true. She just told her mom that for the hell of it.
She isn't happy.
I know this should fall under "small problems," or maybe it shouldn't make the list at all, but although Hannah appears to be living out her twenties with the appropriate amount of angst and carelessness, her life is a rocky and unhappy one. She's hungry for the stability Joshua has and could provide for her: a sunlit apartment, enough money, and a caring relationship.
"Please don't tell anyone this," Hannah whispers as Joshua strokes her hair. "But I want to be happy."
It's unlikely that we'll ever see Joshua again, as Hannah found herself alone in his bed in the episode's final minutes. And although she hit zero in "One Man's Trash," Joshua provided Hannah with the small glimmer of hope that she could maybe, someday, get it kind of together.
"Girls" airs on Sundays at 9 p.m. EST on HBO.
