‘Girls’ Review: “Welcome to Bushwick a.k.a. The Crackcident”

This week Hannah and the girls on 'Girls' go to a giant warehouse party, and it's mostly laughs until their baggage catches up with them in "Welcome to Bushwick a.k.a. The Crackcident." Oh, and Shoshanna smokes some crack.

The warehouse party is one big game of hipster bingo -- Indian-style braided headbands, high-waisted shorts, feathers (courtesy of Jessa, naturally), spirit animal hoods, and Adam with an ugly shirt. Yes, we finally see the shirtless Adam out in the wild, wearing a shirt, and we begin to understand why he doesn't because frankly, that is one ugly shirt.

Charlie's band is playing a set and Marnie does the adult thing by going to say hello. Though she doesn't appear to fully understand why she feels obligated to do so, and it reads a bit like she's just trying to twist the knife a little deeper. Mid-conversation Charlie is tackled by his new girlfriend, which sends Marnie on an episode-long selfish-binge. When Hannah ditches her to go talk to Adam, Marnie starts talking at anyone who will listen, eventually leading her to Hannah's gay ex Elijah (Elijah!). This doesn't end well, as Elijah is seemingly the first person in the history of ever to tell Marnie how selfish she is.

It's a fascinating moment to behold as Elijah confronts Marnie with the idea that she and Hannah are very much the same, and there's  a reason they're friends. They are both so self-involved, and while they have a long friendship built on something deeper, they seem to orbit around one another, never really touching -- each other's selfishness just bouncing off and setting the other spinning. There's this cushion of selfishness that acts as both atmosphere and gravitational pull.

The moment culminates into a heated argument that results in Elijah slapping Hannah. And before the knee-jerk reaction starts about how men shouldn't hit women, let's get frank here: Marnie deserved a slap. Verbal, or otherwise. Morally speaking, a person should never physically attack someone else unless they've been provoked, but my god, was it refreshing to see Marnie take one across the face.

Jessa receives a text from a mysterious sender, whom she invites to the party. It turns out to be Mr. Lavoyt, in the midst of a mid-life crisis, his intentions with Jessa become crystal clear. After he gets his nose broken by some crusty punks Jessa antagonized earlier, she rushes him to the emergency room where he plays the part of simpering, lonely father and husband. When Jessa rejects this, his true colors show, and just as she's assumed, he's like every other guy she shouldn't have had sex with -- only this time she didn't, and her apprehension is validated when his crying abruptly stops and he calls her a tease before walking away. Jessa is clearly making some strides on her path to adulthood, and her maturity later in this episode is commendable.

Shoshanna accidentally smokes some crack, naively believing it to be pot, which sends her running in a frenzy from Ray, whom Jessa has tasked with babysitting her. Shosh always seems to get the short end of the stick, plot-wise, but the little time we spend with her this week and her crack-induced flirtation with Ray seems to hint at a more dimensional story for her ahead -- hopefully.

Aside from Marnie, Hannah gets the meatiest stuff to work with tonight. She bumps into Adam's friend Tako (with a K because she can tell when people think it's with a C because of course she can), who informs her that Adam is a member of Alcoholic's Anonymous -- a seemingly crucial bit of information that Hannah should probably have known.

This solidifies my theory that Adam isn't  really a horrible dude. This show deftly relies on perception, as we aren't always immediately in one character's corner over the other. Hannah hasn't exactly gone to great strides to get to know Adam, or else she may understand his behavior more clearly. He points this out to her later when the two of them skip off together and Hannah loses her cool because she doesn't feel that Adam is driving his bicycle -- with her on the handlebars -- safely enough. It's indicative of Hannah's lack of trust with Adam, and how she doesn't feel that he considers her needs. But that's the problem, as he's quick to point out: Hannah only cares about Adam in how what he says or does affects her. She doesn't care about anything else, only her own feelings. As Adam says:

Adam: "You wanna come over in the night and have me f--- the dog s--- out of you and then leave and write about it in your diary."

Hannah: "Do you ever think about me when I'm not there?"

Adam: "See?!"

Are Hannah's feelings valid? Yes, and they're incredibly relatable, if a bit weak and indicative of her insecurity. But again, relatable. What hasn't been considered and what so many have dismissed up until now is Adam's capacity for being a human being with feelings of his own. As we discussed in last week's 'Girls' Talk, there's something up with this whole situation. For all the times Hannah has popped over to Adam's unannounced, she's never seen another girl there. His unavailability may be little more than a maneuver borne of his own insecurities to not only keep Hannah interested by inspiring some slight jealousy, but by making himself seem more desired. Or maybe he really was dating around -- it's hard to say. But the possibility that he was all talk is distinct.

In the end Adam asks Hannah what she wants, and when she fumbles, he screams, "Do you want me to your boyfriend?" We cut to Marnie, Adam, and Hannah in a taxi (with Adam's bicycle, of course), and Hannah just looks so smug now that they're (obviously) together. It was a nice touch, not showing us Hannah's response to Adam's question and shifting straight to the result. But that justified, smug little smile on her face while Adam and Marnie look clearly annoyed on either side of her silently speaks so well to who these characters are and the way that Hannah -- in all her early 20s glory -- positions herself as the center of the universe.

Quotable:

"You'll never even find him. It's like Waterworld in there."

"Are you one of those Real Housewives?"

"They're fawning all over him like he owns a Home Depot."

"He does sort of look like the original man."

"I've never seen him with a shirt on!"

"I just watched Charlie get climbed like a gym class rope by a tiny Navajo."

"I will be your crack spirit guide."

"Crusty." "Crusty, really? You're gonna reduce us to a subculture and then not accurately name the subculture? Nice."

"Enjoy going through life as yourself."