TV Recap: ‘Girls’ Season 2, Episode 7

Photo: HBO

We are only three episodes away from the season 2 finale of HBO’s Girls. I feel like this time around last season the episodes were really good: Shosh was on crack, Adam and Hannah were finally a couple, Marnie was sort of discovering herself and Jessa was well Jessa.

In episode 7, entitled “Video Games” we discovered the root of Jessa’s free-spirited and erratic nature. It’s all from her dad, played by Ben Mendelsohn, but let me backtrack a bit.

Jessa and Hannah headed upstate New York, Manitou to be exact, to spend the weekend with Jessa’s estranged father, his girlfriend Petula and her son. With Jessa’s recent pending divorce in her life I guess she felt she needed clarity from a man figure on why things always end up how they do on her. As the girls wait to get picked up from the station Jessa explains her dad sent her this cryptic message filled with numbers and letters so she wants to see what it means. Hannah bursts her bubble and tells Jessa her dad probably just butt dialed her.

To wrap up the following events in a concise recap I offer you these bullet points…

• Jessa’s dad is a full-fledged creep who has old computers in his trunk because he doesn’t want people stealing his ideas.
• Jessa opens about her marriage and reveals she’s sad Thomas-John didn’t want to work on it. Her dad basically said it was doomed to fail because they’re not like most people.
• Hannah meets Petula’s son Frank and she loves his turned down turtleneck.
• Frank’s pal Tyler arrives and a disappointed Jessa ends up going out with them after she realizes her dad has no intentions of spending time with her while she’s there.
• Hannah, Tyler, Frank and Jessa go for a drive while “cool whipping,” sucking air out of an empty can of Cool Whip, but Hannah gets pissed when Jessa covers Tyler’s eyes as he drives at full speed and insists they stop the car.
• Hannah has 8 seconds sex with Frank in a graveyard and later he yells at her for using him for sex.
• Jessa has a breakdown with her dad while out in the backyard. She cries to him about never being there and telling him she’s the child. *tear* Jessa just wants a normal dad.
• Jessa and Hannah get abandoned at a local store by Jessa’s dad after he says he’ll be back in five minutes. Jessa isn’t too surprised he didn’t come back because he always does that.

I guess Jessa decided this level of an emotional breakthrough was just too much to handle so packed her stuff and left Hannah at her father’s house. At least she left a note it read, “See you around my love. X.” Hannah then headed to the train station to head back to New York City but not before she called her parents to vent about how lucky she feels to have parents that cared. Of course knowing Hannah that conversation did not go so smoothly because her mother thought she was trying to sweeten her with compliments because she wanted something. My major problem was that this episode lacked Adam which is always sad to me but next week he goes on a date, oh my gosh I can’t wait for that!

New episodes of Girls can be seen on HBO Sunday nights at 9pm with episodes available on HBO GO as soon after the new episodes air.