RECAP: The Boys are Back on GIRLS

We open to Adam, naturally shirtless.

As unnatural as it is for GIRLS, this week's episode, "It's Back," strikes a formidable and welcome balance between the show's leading characters - minus Jessa, of course, because no one knows where the frack she's run off to. The boys, this time, are on a path of foreward momentum, while the Girls are sputtering around in lop-sided, smokey circles, while previous haunts of their past reappear.

Adam has spiraled a bit since losing Hannah and subsequently being arrested on trumped up 'stalker' charges. He's coping with his alcoholism, something that's only been eluded to in episodes past, and back in AA. See, forward? He's been sober since he was 17, but losing Hannah, who he maintains he never wanted in the first place, has made him consider using again. He's moving forward, I swear.

"She just hung around, and hung around, and showed up at my place," he says of Hannah at the AA meeting. "And gradually, I started to feel better when she was there."

He strikes up a friendship with a woman, who introduces him to her daughter, Natalia. And if we didn't already know Lena Dunham has a penchant for mucking up her characters' lives, you'd think he might actually be moving on.

Hannah, meanwhile, has begun to crumble under the pressure of her book deal. She's developed these compulsive tics: counting and arranging and organizing and, ugh, it makes watching it stressful. Even more so when its revealed that OCD is something she's been forced to deal with her entire life. It's odd that, amidst all of the general awfulness that makes up a whole lot of her twenties, it's just coming out now. But regardless, there's a bit of a reprieve: Hannah's parents are back! The best/worst parents in the world, or on premium cable. By episode's end, Hannah finds herself in therapy, by her parents' demand, refusing help, refusing to go forward.

So, yeah. No one knows where Jessa is, much to a worried Shoshanna, the suburban mother.

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Tyler is currently finishing his senior year of college in Chicago while working on the News Desk at BroadwayWorld. He has also worked in the public relations industry at Margie Korshak Inc., working on campaigns for Broadway In Chicago, including The Book of Mormon, Kinky Boots, Jersey Boys, and more.