Nybro Action Team! Girls Recap: Episode Four
The Nybro Action Team consists of Hjalmar Sveinbjőrnsson and Alex Bejerstrand, two under-employed friends and former Nybro residents now living in northern Sweden. Hjalmar is a student and a chef; Alex helps run his father's talent agency. They will be recapping Season 3 of HBO's Girls.
We sit each in our chairs, divided by 350 miles of Swedish landscape, me in a tiny commune called Orsa, Alex is in Stockholm, brought together with Skype and Dropbox, both ready to press "play" and watch the forth episode of Girls: "Dead Inside."
We start off with Hanna rushing into the offices of her editor, Millstreet Press, stumbling in front of the reception and accidentally spilling out the contents of her purse, while picking up the ex-contents of her purse she tells the receptionist that she has a meeting with David Presser-Going, she replies "he is not in yet," Hanna goes "ohh, I thought I was late" and the receptionist replies "you are, he is just not in yet."
Hanna proclaims she is just going to have a seat it a reception area, couple of seconds go by until people start running back and forth in the hallway behind the waiting room glass wall, only to exchange worried "grunts" in hearing range of Hanna. She then stands up and asks the receptionist if it's safe to be on this floor, she gets ignored, a women by the name "shesi" walks past the front desk and bids good morning and asks the receptionist if she is "alright." The obviously worried receptionist tells her that "David is dead." Next shot shows Hannah's "worried" face, motionless like always, that's why I'm going to hire a actor when we do our TV series, Alex will of course play himself.
The intro song starts, 15 seconds of some hip-hop song with Marnie working out, running, doing pull ups, running down a packed street of people, running down some stairs and then anger punch-flailing into the air, a new age cardio-exercise, we recommend it as a simple effective way to burn couple of the calories while at work, just stand up from your office chair and punch-flail into the air for a least a minute, the staff of Gawker have been doing it for years.
We are in Hannah's apartment. Jessa and her are sitting in the couch while she tells Jessa about the events of today, mainly focusing on the point that know one could tell her what she was suppose to do with her e-book while Jessa replies, "It happens, like jury duty and floods." Hannah says she hopes she dies without knowing what happened, then like five minutes later being all "what the fuck happened?"
Jessa says she can't wait to die because basically time is not linear and everything that has ever happened and will ever happen is happening right now, we just make up this delusion of the linear measurement of time…. I hate New Age people, they are basically creationists, taking scientific or philosophical theories and sprinkling them with glitter of stupidity. Let's carry on.
Adam enters the room all psyched that he found an old picture of Tom Hanks as a "leather-egg-ball" player, that is what we choose to call "American football" because no one over the Great Sea calls what you guys are doing "soccer." Adam and Jessa exchange some friendly insults that ends up him offering her to "have his penis on her shoulder," Hanna tells Adam that David is dead, he gets upsets and tries to nurse Hannah's grief-stricken soul but it's okay because Hanna seems to be unable to feel. She says "and no one even began to tell her what was next for her e-book," "whhhattt" in the way we said "whhhattt" to her answer, Hannah's answer is "I know." Adam is shocked over how emotionless she is.
We cut to Marnie making some kind of health shake, listening to some audio help book, personal improvement is what is going on, we cut back to Hannah and Adam while she sits in bed reading the news, she tells Adam they found the body flooding face down in the Hudson river and goes on saying "and Gawker is reporting that they wont be releasing the toxicologist report." His response is "Gawker? You are getting your news from Gawker?" Her response is, "Yes, they report on media news and I am a mediaist, so ... its where I got to get my news." Adam: "So how would you like that when you die bunch of judgmental creeps, snarkily reported on every detail on your decomposing body?" Hanna: "Well that is not what is happening here, this is a very very nice eulogy, listen: Going Going Gone, publicizing most flamboyance publicist makes a waterlogged exit worthy of bread eastern character." Adam: "That is fucked Hanna, those are bunch of jealous people who make a living of appealing to our basic desire to see people kicked while they are down."
Hannah: "I don't agree, it's a web portal that celebrates the written word, and their sister site Jezebel is a place feminists can go to support one of another, that is what we need in this world of slut shaming." Either that is a fantastic ad for Gawker or we just got burned, but she does point out how important the comment board is for her, we always read over all the comments we get to our articles and try to answer as many as we can, normally I stay away from comments because they are often idiotic and racist, but our commentators and fans seam to be fantastic people, also our boss told us to do it, cut again to Shoshanna and Jessa hanging together, the hopefully made-up character Dumdum tells Jessa that her favorite possession is probably her bandana collection, free spirit Jessa has no answer for that because hers would be "heroin," what a freethinker she is. Instead she asks her if she ever had a friend that died, Dumdum says she did but it was okay because the friend-group was never meant to be a six-some but rather a five-some. Jessa tells the tale of her friend that choked on vomit, she misses her so much, funny and just her favorite friend. Dumdum says she is supposed to visit her mother or her grave, pay some respect.
We are back at Hannah and Adam's bedroom, she leaves and is heading out to take an extra shift at Ray's. They have a short conversation about that Adam is scared because he is worried that she won't have any feelings about if he died, she says she would be extremely sad, he says he would be so sad that his world would blur, he would not know what a tree was. Hanna says "that was really nice" then explains that she thinks about him dying all the time.
We are the café, she is telling Ray about her editor's death, quoting "Gawker" on that it was probably not "drugs", that was a passive aggressive journalistic insult if anyone is wondering. Hannah tells him that she feels nothing about his death but still would like to go home, Ray comes with one of his best responses: "Hanna don't you place just one crumb of basic human compassion on this fat-free muffin of sociopathic detachment and see how it tastes." She says he sounds like Adam, he then notes how its odd that he feels worse then her even though this guy threw him across a room onto a table. We cut next to Jessa calling someone from her past and asks about her dead friend's grave but the conversation ends up with a twist that I will tell you later, just imagine what it would take to get rid of Jessa and what lengths people would go to cut themselves out of that friend group.
We are in Hannah's apartment hallway and her weird neighbor Laird is "spiffing" or hanging up some art, all in one cluster on the wall, Hannah tries to milk some "grieving" attention from Laird but he proclaims that everyone he has ever known has died, showing his dead turtle in a bottle (why a bottle?, how?) but anyway. Adam's sister comes running down the stairs, inviting them all out for a walk, we cut to Jessa outside the house of her "ex-dead" friend, her friend seems to have faked her death, apparently it was the only way because Jessa is an enabler and when she asked her for help Jessa took her to some spiritual hocus-pocus thing. Her deadfriend's husband comes home and Jessa and her passed friend exchange some words, mostly Jessa saying how her friend's life is never going to work out, couch-surfing your friend group and neighboring methadone clinics is the only way to find your true self and connect to the universe, by the way. We love freethinkers and explorers of the mind, but we HATE New Age people and all their magical herbal teas, crystals ,and pyramids, basically Jessa if you are wondering what kind of people.
We are back at Ray's Café, Marnie is cleaning off the table until she hears something familiar, the sound of her "What I Am" music video, she is angry and ends up quitting her job and leaving.
We are back at some general horseplay and joyful expression as Hannah, Adam's sister and Laird run through a graveyard, of course the crazy sister took them to a graveyard, they are lying in the grass talking about life, Hannah is worried that Adam is going to realize who she really is, because he has such depth of feeling, he is going to be bored of a person that does not have his strength of a emotion. She might have invented some really good break up lines right there.
"It's not me, it's you and your depth of feeling that I am not able to match." Keeper?
Adam sister tells Hannah some super-sad story that we don't have space to write about, anyway the story ends up being a lie about Adam and some terminal niece he had. We cut to some weird shot of Jessa walking down the street and showing some mixed facial expressions while contemplating about her radical lifestyle choice, cut again to Adam and Hannah's building. Adam is sitting on the stairs outside, he is saddened. Hanna tries to squeeze out some tears while she explains how long it takes her to understand her emotions, she gives up and ends up using the made-up story Adam's sister used on her some hours earlier and tells Adam about her terminally ill niece that had the only wish of going to the prom before she died, of course in both stories her wish was granted.
The end.
[Illustrations by Alex Bejerstrand]