As fans of Girls know, Hannah, Marnie, Shoshanna, and Jessa are big on mouthiness but low on maturity. So each week, blogger Chris J. Kelly is grading the four main characters’ emotional ages based on their words and actions.
Chris took a semester of psychology so he’s, like, totally qualified.
Since the show aired at the same time as the Oscars, and since there are only two girls to explore, this special-edition recap will also compare each character to an element of the Academy Awards telecast.
HANNAH
Emotional Age: 5
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Me, me, me, me, me. This girl can’t stop talking about herself for ten seconds. Jessa’s relationship with her father is crumbling and she needs support. Frank is going through sexual confusion that Hannah only exacerbates. She’s even overtly nominated as the buffer by Petula, and she still can’t extend herself to thank the woman for the dinner she cooked. (Seriously, if you’re not a fan of eating animals, you might want to consider becoming a vegetarian. Whining has never brought a cute bunny back to life.)
Hannah’s favorite topic is obviously herself—but her favorite thing about herself to discuss is apparently her own urine. Let’s buy her a new jumper before she starts kindergarten.
OSCAR BONUS ROUND: Hannah is Ted as a presenter, Seth McFarlane’s self-indulgent joke that everyone wished would stop before it had even started.
JESSA
Emotional Age: 40
In a stunning turn, Jessa becomes a fully functional adult when placed in familiar surroundings. Her whole mentality snaps into sharp focus once we grasp her origin story and witness a bit of her home life. Interacting with her father is something she knows how to do; it might be the only thing she knows how to do. Resuming the role of the parenting her parent, she engages in a comparatively normal and healthy facsimile of human interaction.
Her mothering duties also extend to Hannah, who has to be told not to say rude things at the dinner table or have inappropriate graveyard sex with teenagers.
I’d dock her points for blinding Skylar while he drove or disappearing on Hannah without warning, but being 40 doesn’t automatically make you a very good parent (ex:. Jessa’s dad).
OSCAR BONUS ROUND: Jessa is Jennifer Lawrence falling on the stairs. This is simultaneously her best and worst moment, and how she handles it will be a huge part of defining how we view her in the future.
ODDS AND ENDS
- It was a great learning experience for Hannah to be put in a situation where she couldn’t make herself the center of attention no matter how hard she tried. What a shame that the growth was minimal, as evidenced by her inability to thank her parents without becoming defensive and aggressive at the same time.
- In fact, defensive and aggressive at the same time is kind of her calling card. Notice her reaction to Jessa’s dad being late to pick them up, or to Jessa’s emotional shakiness in general, or especially to Frank’s tearful attempt to discuss their gross thigh-fold coitus.
- Speaking of which, there’s no way a condom was involved in that interlude. I guess they didn’t 100% need one since he missed any of the available holes, but skin-on-skin contact transmits plenty of diseases. Be careful, kids.
- And also: of course Hannah met someone who couldn’t possibly contain his sexual attraction to her. Yet again.
- I know I’ve wished this before, but when Hannah was busy groaning and peeing by the tracks at the end of the episode and the screen blacked out to the ominous sound of a chugging engine in the distance, all I could think was, “Please let us find out next week that she got run over by a train. Please please please.”
- Lastly: hearing her make urinary-tract infection noises is the exact opposite of porn.
