‘Girls’ season 2 finale review: From point A back to point A

If you look at the “Girls” season 2 finale just in terms of one-line descriptions about where some of the characters are, it’s really not that different than back when the show began in some ways. Hannah is back in the arms of Adam, Marnie and Charlie seem to be looking towards a future together, and Jessa is off somewhere being weird and aloof.

Then, you imagine how all of these characters got to where they were, and how this was not an easy journey for them to realize how grateful they should have been for what they had. Adam may be a frightening crazy man who seemingly only owns one shirt, but he loves Hannah literally more than anyone else alive. Charlie may be emotionally dependent at times, but all he’s ever wanted was Marnie. There were some weird stops along the way, but the theme of this season involved going through dark places, and realizing that the light on the other side may have the sunshine that was there all along. The only real outlier here is Shoshanna, but the sentiment there is that in terms of maturity she is a little behind everyone, is really now at around the point that Hannah was earlier on in the season.

The beauty of “Girls” is really just how you don’t necessarily adore any one character, and many of them are not necessarily people who would would want to be with. Hannah frequently underperforms her ambition, but much of it is based on circumstance and loneliness; meanwhile, Marnie seems to have little direction except for following someone’s lead. Adam has major temper problems, and Ray believes that everything is horrible (which is why Shoshanna broke up with him to begin with).

If this were real life and we weren’t going to be seeing these people for a while, odds are that we’d be happy; however, in this situation we’re admittedly going to miss them, all of them. Even Jessa for being the most horrible of the bunch and giving us the worst episode of the season. These are the realest characters on TV, and it only makes sense for this to therefore be the medium’s most compelling, polarizing, but also mesmerizing comedy. We’ve loved getting the opportunity to sit down every week, never knowing what Lena Dunham was going to send our way. If more shows were like this, we have a feeling that television would be a much more reflective, albeit much weirder, place to visit every night after dinner.

What was your take on the “Girls” finale, and did you actually prefer the more experimental second season? If you want to go back and read what we said about the episode earlier this weekend, you can do so over at the link here.

Photo: HBO