'Girls' Recap: Hannah Horvath is Dead Inside

This week on Girls, Hannah's editor, David, dies. It's abrupt and unexpected; he's found floating facedown in the Hudson. David might be dead, but the episode, titled "Dead Inside," is really about Hannah's reaction (or utter lack thereof) to death. She's been on an emotional maturity upswing, so this was just the incident to prove to us that Hannah still experiences the world in a unique (and some would say shallow) way.

Let's start by getting the Shosh and Marnie storylines out of the way, as neither girl gets any significant screen time nor has much to do with the episode's overall theme. Shosh appears briefly to be ignored by Jessa and then spur her on to her plot for the episode and Marnie continues to give zero fucks about anything other than her embarrassing YouTube video. She quits her job at Ray's when she catches him sharing the video and is a giant brat, as she's wont to be.

Now, onto the many fucked-up reactions to death in the episode.

1. Hannah, to David's death.

At its core, the episode revolves around Hannah's reaction to her editor, David's, untimely and sudden death. Her reaction is essentially a non-reaction. She's in publisher's office when she hears the news. She arrives late for a meeting with David and is relieved to hear that he's not even in yet. When the news of his death breaks, she's sitting in the waiting area and witnesses the office go crazy reacting to the death. She gets up and leaves.

That's her reaction to his death. Adam, for his part, continues to play the role of Hannah's personal emotional anchor. He's appalled by her non-reaction to David's death and insinuates that she wouldn't care if anything happened to him. Hannah responds that she would be "very sad" if Adam died and that she's spent lots of time planning what she would say at his funeral if he did. It's a typically self-involved Hannah moment, taking the idea of Adam's death and turning it into an opportunity for attention for herself.

Hannah insists she's not in shock over David's death; she just doesn't really care. In fact, she's more concerned with what this means for her eBook.

Fucked Up Level: 7 It's shitty that Hannah doesn't care about David as much as we all imagine she would, considering he seemed like a mentor to her, but I don't condemn her as much as some of the characters on the show do. There's no "right" way to mourn.

2. Jessa, to her BFF Season's death.

We learn during the conversation with Shosh that Jessa's best friend, Season, died after choking on her own vomit. Since Jessa didn't attend the funeral, Shoshanna insists that she needs to visit the grave and say her final goodbyes. Jessa agrees and calls Season's mother to ask where she's buried.

Here comes the shocker: Season isn't dead. She's alive and well and in New York. Jessa goes to visit her and learns that she faked her death exclusively to Jessa in an attempt to cut her out of her life once and for all. It turns out Season was an addict, actively seeking help and Jessa was standing willfully in the way of her recovery. The kicker is that they sent Jessa a physical invitation to the fake, not-really-happening-at-all-funeral, banking on her to Jessa it up and flake out.

Jessa responds by being completely pissed. She's not sorry for being such a negative influence. She's not happy for Season, who has turned her life around and now has a husband, baby and brownstone to her name. She's just angry that she was way lied to.

Fucked Up Level: 10 WTH, Jessa? Just… WTH?

3. Hannah, to Adam and Caroline's Fake Cousin Margaret.

Hannah, Caroline and Laird go on an afternoon romp through a cemetery, because that's a thing in Girls world, and Caroline decides to test Hannah's lack of a heart. She tells a fantastically sad (and completely made up) story about her and Adam's cousin Margaret. This poor, fictional girl was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy as a child and died at the ripe old age of 12. She was Adam's world. He spent every afternoon with her and would do anything to make her happy. Her one dream before she died was to go to a high school dance, so Adam told his girlfriend that he couldn't take her to prom and spent all of his savings on a fabulous dress for cousin Margaret, who died a week after the dance, still clutching the wilting corsage in one hand and Adam's hand in the other. It's one of the saddest, sweetest stories you'll ever hear, even though it's made up, even within the context of the show.

Hannah doesn't even blink. She doesn't cry. She doesn't frown. She just wonders why the dress Adam bought was described as being so small. Did the muscular dystrophy make her abnormally small? When Caroline reveals that it's made up, Hannah is pissed, but Caroline tells her to shut up. She still likes her, she just thinks she's fucked up about death. Laird, for his part, cannot stop crying, even after the story is revealed as a lie.

Fucked Up Level: 8 It's fucked up not be affected by such a miserably sad story, but it's also fucked up to make one up. It's more outrageous than a Nicholas Sparks novel, so maybe Hannah knew on some level that it couldn't be real.

So there you have it, everyone on Girls is dead inside. And it's totally fucked up, at least according to everyone else on Girls.

Image: HBO