After the Boom

Aber Student Media

GIRLS

SEASON 2, EPISODE 5








Hannah

Please don't tell anyone this, but...I wanna be happy.

Joshua

Of course you do...Of course you do. Everyone does.

Hannah

Yeah but I didn't think that I did.

I made a promise such a long time ago that I was gonna - take in experiences, all of them so that I could tell the people about them and maybe save them, but it gets, so tiring. I try to take in all the experiences for everybody, letting anyone say anything to me... 

Then I came here, and I see you, and you've got the fruit in the bowl, and the fridge with the stuff, and the robe, and you're touching me...And I realize I'm not different - you know? I want what everyone wants. I want what they all want. I want all the things.

I just wanna be happy.

She cries.

There's all these experience that I just feel like I've asked for. Things where it's like, who in their right mind would want that?

... 

You know I think what I didn't realize, before I met you, is that I was, like, lonely. In such a deep, deep way. You know I was reaching for all this stuff, but all I really needed was to look at someone and be, like, oh that person wants to be there after I'm dead - you know?

Joshua

Mm, hm.

Hannah

You think I'm a crazy girl?

Joshua

No, I don't think you're crazy at all. I wasn't thinking that.

Hannah continues in her honest yet selfish rant I picture being the shot heard 'round the world for young writers. She says how Fiona Apple told New York Magazine "Oh, everybody acts like I'm nuts; I'm not nuts, I just wanna feel it all."'

Hannah

It's like, that's what I'm like, I just wanna feel it all. 

You know?

Joshua

Yeah, I get it...I mean that's a, that's a, great goal. 

Um, I'm gonna go to sleep, I've gotta, gotta get up really early for work tomorrow. 

Hannah

You're going to work tomorrow?

Joshua

Well I gotta.

Hannah

D'you wanna kiss me?

Joshua

Yes.

I learned the early American historian and Harvard professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote a book called Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History. Although Hannah Horvath is fictional, and she gets the "good" guy at the end of season 1, maybe next time on Lena Dunham and HBO's Girls, she'll succeed in the literal sense. All her misadventures will somehow get her book to go 'e'. Her hair will grow in, her ears will heal from the obsessive Q-tipping damage. And being herself will be enough.