Girls Recap Season 5, Episode 1, “Wedding Day”: It’s Gong to Rain

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Girls returns strong with it’s fifth season opener by sticking to what it does best.

Girls is a show that has never been static. That actually tends to be part of its problem, since characters like Hannah quit so frequently that it can become frustrating to watch. On “Wedding Day,” however, despite some bumps in the road, things remain steady. Even pleasantly so.

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Marnie is getting married to Desi, in a quintessential Marnie wedding ceremony that she wants to harken back the Laurel Canyon’s past while also unironically admitting that she got some of the ideas from a Edward Sharp music video. The focus of this story is on the wedding, and that works fairly well. The main characters are all stuck each other, leading to some awkward confrontations between Adam and Hannah’s new boyfriend, Fran.

Also, apparently there is some guy named Wolfie.

Time has moved on since the end of season four, but there haven’t been any major shakeups. Shoshanna is still trying to make it work with her boyfriend while she lives in Japan, a place that was seemingly created just for her. We don’t find out why Desi ditched his important performance with Marnie last season, and at this point it doesn’t really matter. Girls has decided it’s not important.

What does matter is that Desi has been engaged seven times before, and is about to ditch for an eight time before Ray pulls him back from self-destruction. “Let the nightmare wash over you,” Ray says earlier on, and it’s a solid recommendation. This late in the game revelation doesn’t land squarely; it feels like there just has to be one more piece of drama here.

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We already knew that Dessi was weird, so it plays well enough for now, if not a little Soap Opera-y.

Adam also makes an ill-advised play for Jessa, but we’ll have to wait and see how that works out. There is danger in having a group of friends trade partners, as it can quickly become a gimmick and rob the show of its impact. Girls will have to tread lightly here to make it work, especially since they’ve already been down this road with Ray.

Elijah, Girls’ saving grace even during its shallow periods, is as funny and biting as ever as he assures everyone that he is “going to take MDMA just before the vows.” A quick glance to him before the end assures us that he did indeed.

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Rain threatens the entire day, and is all anyone can talk about for the first several minutes. Eventually it does pour, making it seem like the whole thing is going to fall apart. At the very end, however, the sun comes out. It’s difficult to trust that the actual girls of Girls are actually changing and growing — we’ve been tricked before — but even with the obviously impending marriage drama coming, this feels genuine.