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‘Girls’ Review: Hannah Has the Baby But Has a Hard Time Growing Up in the Series Finale

In Season 6, Episode 10, "Latching," Marnie and Loreen head upstate to help a flailing Hannah.
Girls 610 Lena Dunham
Mark Schafer/HBO

[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for “Girls” Season 6 Episode 10, “Latching.”]

LAST WEEK’S REVIEW: Hannah’s Future Comes Faster Than She Expected As Her Past Gathers One More Time

Love Her or Hate Her

Post finale, it feels like the “Girls” audience will probably be split on their love towards Hannah, depending on their own experience with parenthood. The moms out there inevitably related with the brutal frustrating of attempting to breastfeed, the pressures new moms face to get everything right and the utter feelings of loneliness that can often accompany such a new bundle of joy. Those same viewers probably felt a bit of anger towards Hannah when she just left Grover with Marnie and her mother for extended periods of time, ignoring her responsibilities as a mom. Loreen hit it on the head when she reminded Hannah that having a baby isn’t a decision you can simply take back, and that it was ridiculous to feel like her baby hated her.
As for those viewers who either don’t have experience with parenthood or were hoping for a more finite conclusion from the show? It seems like they’ll have to leave the series with some disappointment, because this is Hannah’s life now and it seems like the “glamorous” adventures are over. It’s all crying over spilt breast milk from hereon in.

Hannah and Marnie

In the end it had to be Hannah and Marnie who were left standing, given the way things were left with Jessa and Shoshanna. It was actually really fitting that Marnie sucked up all of her narcissistic problems and moved in with Hannah to help with the babe, essentially putting her best friend first during the biggest adjustment period of her life. It was a sacrifice unlike anything we’ve ever seen from the character and it left us with a favorable opinion of her in the end. Of course we all know that duo can’t last (Loreen likened it to her own relationship with her “best friend” Tad) and that Marnie will eventually be moving on. But for a show that started out examining female friendships, Hannah and Marnie playing house was kind of a nice picture to end the series on. Even if Marnie did completely creep us out with the “I love you most” line.

Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants

The quirky teen running away from her mother and freaking out when she was told to do her homework was a weird little twist, but one that had to happen in order for Hannah to get a little perspective. The characters on this show have always needed monumental events to happen in order for them to shake themselves out of their status quos and grow up a little, so in that vein it makes sense that Hannah needed an encounter like this to return home and get her chill on. As for the cop car following her home? Well that was just a fun visual that made us giggle.

About That Name…

There’s something romantic about the idea that Hannah went ahead and called her son Grover after all. That was the only input Paul-Louis had about the entire pregnancy, and so Hannah’s decision to honor it left the impression that should he ever try to return it’s possible that he could one day have a relationship with his son.

Sometimes to Cringe About

We’ll never look at a hands-free breast pump without thinking of “Ghostbusters” again.

Something Else to Cringe About

Can we talk about Marnie’s sexy selfies and her flight attendant role-playing? We get that the masturbation scene, into which Loreen walked, had to happen in order to thrust Marnie into reality (pardon the pun). But that didn’t make it any less cringe-worthy. Thankfully, it was also hilarious.

Girls Allison Williams

The Case for the Finale

At its core, “Girls” has always been a show that attempted to showcase a slice of reality: real friendships, real bodies and real conversations. The thing is that for six seasons the reality was one that took place under the larger character of New York, and that gave it a glamorous quality. But when Hannah moved upstate, all of that glamour suddenly disappeared. While she’s still pursuing her dreams and her career (to a certain extent), those dreams now involve a little tiny human who will depend on her for the foreseeable future. Hannah’s new future isn’t what her body looks like during sex, it’s how her nipples feel while she’s trying to get her baby to latch. Or what it feels like to still be bleeding weeks after the delivery. Or how akin to a cow you feel when you’ve got pumps sucking out all of your breast milk.

In true “Girls” fashion, the episode did a fantastic job showing the physical reality of the situation, but by the same token that turned it into a different series than the one viewers have grown used to. It all culminated into a confusing finale in a way, but also an inevitable one. We didn’t need to see the other characters; they all got endings of their own (however brief) in the weeks leading up to this. Instead, viewers were left knowing there’s a huge unknown facing Hannah’s future, but that she’s going to be okay. If she can see latching through then she can tackle anything, and at the end of the day she’ll always be there for her son. Following Hannah any further than that would just be a spinoff.

Grade: A-

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