Girls - “One Man’s Trash” - Review

Television series have to balance story-arc heavy episodes and standalone episodes. The standalone episodes may be informed by larger narrative, serialized elements, but anyone can come in and watch that episode without being unreasonably confused. Television viewers have become so literate with the medium and so used to serialized narratives that it’s easy to mistake a standalone episode as a bad thing. But on the contrary some of television’s best episodes are standalones. The episode that crystalized The Sopranos as the show we know it today was the standalone episode “College”.

Standalone episodes are frequently used to do structurally or stylistically ambitious or interesting things not normally done on a show. Many of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s best episodes including “The Zeppo”, “Hush”, and “The Body” work perfectly as standalone episodes while also breaking formatting and structural rules to great effect. 

“One Man’s Trash” is a standalone episode. Much like season one’s “The Return” (another, very good standalone), it cuts out almost every other major character besides Hannah. There’s no Marnie; there’s no Jessa; there’s no Shoshanna. Ray appears only briefly and only then to get the plot in motion. Otherwise this is a half-hour dedicated to the puzzling and often frustrating psyche of Hannah Horvath. 

When Ray’s neighbor Joshua complains about finding trash from Ray’s coffee shop in his garbage can he asks him to stop. Ray knows that this couldn’t possibly be true and so he begins to berate Joshua. Well, the garbage was from Ray’s coffee shop and Hannah is responsible. She goes to apologize to Joshua and somehow ends up spending the rest of the day and the following day talking, fucking, and hanging out with the forty something guy separated from his wife whose out in San Diego.

  

Here the meandering aimlessness of Girls (with massive hints of Louie) comes out in full force. It’s hard to read where this episode is going to go from one moment to the next. Hannah starts out the episode believing she invented the word “sexit” and ends up hooking up with a total stranger.

The total irony of the episode is that Hannah’s big revelation she has, breaking down in tears and confessing to Joshua, is that she’s tired of “having experiences”. And yet the whole episode is one of those bizarre series of events she’s been seeking to write about since the start of the series. 

Hannah’s adventure seeking has driven her to a point of desperation. She’s on the rocks with both Marnie and Elijah; she broke up with Sandy and she lost Adam who’s continually gotten crazier. It’s no wonder she declares “I’m so lonely”. Hannah is her own worst enemy and early on in the episode it almost feels impressive that Joshua isn’t felled over by Hannah’s narcissism. 

Lena Dunham’s storytelling suits itself well to this kind of wandering storytelling. Standalone episodes almost provide the perfect framework in which to tell such sorts of stories. It would be impractical for the series to do this in every single episode (at least as extensively as it’s done here), but it highlights many of the series best aspects: its wonderful character work (even from guest stars), its wry sense of humor, and its ability to set a tonality. 

Stray Observations:

-The weirdest part of the episode: The "beg me to stay" scene which is a line of pleasure seeking, self-satisfaction Hannah would totally go for.

-Urban Dictionary of course has tons of definitions for "sexit", none of which are Hannah's. 

-What are we to make of Hannah's bizarre garbage drop off fetish? Or better yet how the episode ends with her taking out the trash?

Grade: A