When it started, some criticized Girls for being a show about rich-kid problems. And it seems like, this season, Lena Dunham took that as a challenge. Sure, there’s still the whole “What am I doing with my life?” stuff, but now there are mental disorders, loneliness, drug use (though sorta fun-looking), and alcoholism. Things have gotten dark the past few episodes. As the season draws to a close this Sunday, we take stock of everyone’s fall from grace. Well, maybe not grace — let’s just say everyone’s fall.
7. Charlie
Fallen? Pssh, Charlie has risen like a phoenix out of the ashes of his driplike personality. Before this season, who was Charlie? Just another dude in Bushwick with a band and broken heart. Now he’s created an app that is so legit he gets to work in an office in Chelsea and have an employee that’s both blonde and wears glasses. Seriously, did you hear how many MAUs he got? Like, tons of them. He slept with Marnie, which is probably not for the best, long-term (see: later in this post), but who cares? Shit happens when you’re celebrating your MAUs.
6. Shoshanna
Last season ended with Shosh losing her virginity. And while she didn’t exactly sashay into this season with a satchel full of butt plugs as a result of this sexual awakening, she has come alive, especially in the last few weeks. Look, we don’t condone cheating, but it felt good to her in the moment. According to this show, doing dumb, selfish stuff is a big part of being young, so it’s good to see Shosh embrace that. She is now officially a woman, see her lion emoji roar.
5. Jessa
It’s hard to gauge Jessa. Sure, she got that divorce, and her dad is kind of not a dad, but also, there’s a sense that nothing sticks with her. Jessa has had some darker moments, when she realized all of her gallivanting hadn’t amounted to anything but a collection of flowy clothes; however, this season she’s realized the alternative — marrying a venture capitalist — doesn’t work for her either. We assume she’s in Morocco or Belize or Mars right now, which is still better than most of these people.
4. Ray
Aww, poor Ray, getting cuckolded by an NYU student. An NYU student that he tricked into letting him move in with her, because he doesn’t really have money. And he took quite an emotional hit from that sharp-tongued Staten Islander. It’s all pretty bad, but at least something is happening. Ray seems like a guy who would embrace both the love and tragedy of his life and relationship with Shoshanna. Like he’ll be sad for a while but then spend a year pontificating at parties about how human love is a fallacy and that we can’t trust the young. Basically, it’s hard to say Ray has fallen, because it seems like he’s been in this exact sort of situation for nearly a decade.
3. Marnie
Seriously, watch this again:
Singing “white Kate Moss” is literally the worst thing that’s ever happened on TV ever. Marnie was the perfect girl with a perfect life, and as a result, she is completely ill-prepared to handle anything once things start going wrong. She would top this list were the next two people not suffering from actual diseases.
2. Hannah
Sure, she got that “book deal,” but it obviously has not come at a time when she was ready for it. You know how people like to say they’re OCD because they wash their hands after tying their shoes? Hannah laughs at those people, or maybe cries at those people. Seeing her count her blinks is pretty troubling. All season she has been confronted by the conflict between what she thinks she wants (and wants to want) and what she actually wants. And despite more success, she’s somehow in a worse place than before. The reason she doesn’t top this list, despite having effectively isolated herself and despite having nearly stabbed her brain out with a Q-tip, is because at least she has her writing and all this shit would make a good nonfiction book (or at least a good TV show, since, you know, we’re watching it). Though, at this rate, it doesn’t look like she’d be capable of writing it.
1. Adam
As Hannah said in episode two of this season: “I know I always said he was murder-y in a sexy way, but what if he’s murder-y in, like, a murderer way?” Last season, we saw Adam as a character with a quirky darkness, but it was always at a distance — partly because Hannah never really let him in and partly because he was in control. This season, despite his efforts, he has slowly lost his grip on things. He has been going to AA for a while (remember, it was first mentioned in last season’s “Crackcident” episode), and he tried to be in a “normal” relationship, but as we saw last episode, neither appeared to work. We have no reason to believe his drinking and spiraling won’t continue, unless he puts the brakes on in the season finale.
