Fulfillment is difficult to find for our Brooklyn broads. Hannah and Jessa are learning that their jobs are simply sources of funding rather than enriching careers, while Marnie and Shoshanna are realizing harsh truths about their underwhelming interpersonal relationships. Still, everyone soldiers on bravely. When life gives them lemons, they suck lemon wedges. Lemonade requires effort and additional ingredients.
HANNAH
Emotional Age: 18
Many people, upon graduating high school, feel that they are on the brink of becoming a special snowflake carrying out a unique purpose in the wild, wonderful world. Hannah is like that this week, seeing her snack-providing, product-schilling gig at GQ as the spark that will light her skyrocket to superstardom. Of course, like any naïve teenager, she’s gobsmacked at the news that most people don’t get empowered by a special destiny but simply work to support themselves. The thought that she might not actualize her deepest spiritual dreams leaves her in a puddle of inappropriate office tears.
MARNIE
Emotional Age: 50
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If you don’t have a midlife crisis, then the years directly after when it would have happened can be filled with a particular brand of complacency. Your situation has been defined, and you roll with it. You’re old enough to find joy in the things you like and make do with the things you don’t, and wise enough to understand that these things are all here to stay. Marnie loves reality TV but hates watching it with Ray. She likes sex but hates having it with Ray. She wants lunch but hates eating it with Ray. But Ray is all she has, so here we are.
SHOSHANNA
Emotional Age: 25
It’s weird not to put Shosh in a post-menopausal place, but this week she is steadfastly confronting her quarter-life cleanup. Though only in college, she’s acting like a graduate who has, after a few years out of school, realized that it’s time to shape up and act like an adult. So focused is our favorite hairstyle innovator that she can’t even stop listing her demands and expectations mid-coitus. She’s right, though: communication is important. When you’re 25, you take oversimplified life lessons like that very seriously.
JESSA
Emotional Age: Mountain
I don’t know how old mountains are. I do know that when Jessa is outright, 100 percent wrong in this episode, she remains so staunch and immobile in her opinion that others have no choice but to concede to her will. Her rigidity is so powerful that some poor girl is going to be crammed into a skin-tight black communion dress just because.
