Girls Recap: Shoshanna Makes a Big Choice in Japan

By Reuben Levine | Mar 7, 2016

Last Nights Girls featured several storylines, but really it was all about Shosh.

After only hearing about Shoshanna’s time in Japan, and not seeing her at all last week, it was finally time to show viewers what all the fuss was about. The week’s episode of Girls, aptly titled “Japan,” starts by giving us a look a Shosh’s idyllic life. Not only does she have the coolest alarm clock of all time, but she also lives in a building that looks like it was put together my children’s building blocks. This is her life now, and this is Shosh in paradise.

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Back in America, Hannah and Fran are in a rough patch because he is keeping nude pics of ex-girlfriends on his phones because “porn is disgusting.” He’s not bothered at all by this, but Hannah is, and it will prove to be the first major test of their relationship. This episode doesn’t do much more than introduce that friction.

She has Ray take some erotic photos of her to replace Fran’s, which allows Elijah to say the funniest line of the night after Hannah can’t get the sexy look right: “Like you know a cake is coming later.” All smiles. It’s all just set-up for the inevitable showdown.

Adam and Jessa are still in the same holding pattern. Adam scores a role as a bum on a fictions cop show starring Lucy Liu, but no matter how much she praises his performance Jessa still rebuffs his advances. We do see Marnie for a minute while on honeymoon, but that’s nothing to write home about.

Shosh has arguably been the character to see the most growth.

The meat of the episode took place in Japan. Shosh, having the time of her life, has met a new Japanese man named Yoshi, who she has been flirting with despite still technically being involved with Scott — played by Jason Ritter in case you forgot. Scott is nice and understands Shoshanna, but that’s not what she wants right now. She tells a couple of Japanese co-workers that she “doesn’t even care” about her friends in America anymore.

Shosh has arguably been the character to see the most growth. She started as an annoying, naive counterpart to Jessa’s excessive nature, but now she’s the only one of the group able to stand on her own. For the most part.

She also, brilliantly, explains to those same coworkers that her family isn’t rich so she can’t afford to stay in Japan. When they bluntly tell her that they thought she was because of her spoiled attitude, she shrugs it off and says in perfect Shosh-speak, “that’s just how Americans act.”

When Shosh gets the news that she is being fired, she goes in crisis mode. After spending the night having fun with Yoshi, including visiting and participating in a fetish club, she makes the decision to stay in Japan regardless. She doesn’t, however, tell Scott this, who we see at the end waiting for her with flowers at the airport. It’s a corny scene, but works in that we already know that Shosh wants to cut ties with all things America.

At least we will get to see more of Shosh’s adventures in Japan. It would have been a serious let down to have all this build-up and then just have her go home. Whether things will work out with Yoshi or not is another story.

Next: Julia Louis-Dreyfus will produce a new miniseries for HBO.

Girls is taking a risk by placing Shosh in Japan, and it is paying off so far. As they usually do around this time, the cracks are starting to form. So far, however, Girls still has it together and seems to know what it wants to do.