I know this week’s episode of HBO’s Girls season 2 is already out, but I’d like to take a step back to explore the brilliance of last week’s episode, “One Man’s Trash,” in light of the vitriol and hatred it’s received.
On the surface it seems an episode about beauty and indulgence (which are integral to the episode, no doubt), but the core of the episode is vulnerability and basic human yearning.
In “One Man’s Trash,” we find that Hannah throws trash in 42-year-old Joshua’s trashcans, because she finds it thrilling. And the two have a weekend romance that ends when she reveals her fears and hopes about life. The brilliance of the episode lies in the understanding that her outer beauty (though I believe her to be gorgeous, as did Joshua) played a minor role in the episode as a whole.
When Hannah stumbles onto Joshua’s steps and admits, with her typical earnest wit, that she felt alive throwing away the trash in someone else’s can, the expression on Joshua’s face changes. He wasn’t attracted to her until that revealing moment. From there, she boldly walks over and kisses him, and off go the clothes.
Joshua is attracted to her in that moment not only because she is a 24-year-old woman (though that plays a role), but because she is bold, quirky, and humorous, as evidenced by her trash-throwing shenanigans. They both expect the moment to end.
But when Hannah tries to make an exit, Joshua is again enthralled by this woman who is willing to walk away and give him space. She convinces him to beg her to stay, and this is when she becomes entranced by him.
She keeps expecting the magic to end, perhaps due to her poor skills during topless ping-pong, and yet he reels her in and lures her into a false sense of security.
After she faints in the shower, and he literally has to rescue her, she admits to both herself and Joshua that she has real wants just like other women (and humans in general) that she has denied her whole life. Though she claims to be a woman who just wants to garner experiences to write about them, this weekend forced her to admit that she wants more. She doesn’t want to feel that incessant, nagging loneliness that she has been repressing, and she wants to be in love and loved.
As she bares her soul to him, viewers watch in dismay as he begins to recede from her. She felt it too. As soon as she became truly vulnerable and stopped being an alluring, mysterious, witty woman, he stopped being attracted to her. That moment is heart-wrenching and beautiful, because in her moment of vulnerability, he confirmed her worst fears: that her vulnerability makes her unattractive.
She wakes up, as one can expect, with him gone. And she eats breakfast slowly before ending the dream by taking out the trash. One can assume it no longer feels as thrilling as it did.
Though many chose to focus on her physical beauty or on their lusty romance, that is a shallow understanding of this episode. (And people need to get off Lena Dunham’s body in general. She is beautiful, so back off). In this episode, the strong Hannah breaks open, and admits that even as a wild, independent woman, she wants what everyone wants: to be loved. This episode is beautiful and different from all other Girls episodes, and should be understood for its underlying meaning: we are all scared, and we are all faulted.