Hard Being Easy was hard to watch because it was frustratingly easy (and weird) to relate to.  I guess that is what makes it a good show. It was like watching a train wreck that has a sort of happy ending because at least no one was killed.

Last week, Charlie found Hannah’s diary and read a particularly upsetting entry about his relationship with Marnie (she compared him to a limb that needs to be amputated so that the stump can heal, among other things). So this week started with Charlie forcing Hannah to read the journal entry out loud to him, Marnie (fairly) complaining that she didn’t actually do anything wrong, and Hannah egotistically asking if they would have liked the essay more had it not been about them.  Charlie storms off and Marnie doesn’t want to be broken up with so she vows to get him back. It would be easy to say that they gloss over the fight between Marnie and Hannah here, given that they don’t actually have a fight. But if you have ever had a best friend, especially one you have lived with, you know that sometimes you don’t need a fight – or even words – to forgive, forget, and go back to being in friend-love with them. It’s one sign of a true friendship.

So, Adam has thoroughly effed with Hannah’s head and she now thinks her heart-to-heart-to-sex with him means he is her boyfriend. You really just want to smack her for thinking that because he touched her face and they kissed, they’re basically together. She tells this to Jessa, who turns around and suggests that Hannah sleep with her 60-year old touchy-feely boss….”just for the story.”  For an aspiring writer, it’s an unusually common bit of advice. After all, where would Tucker Max be if he wasn’t screwing every weird type of woman, just for the story? Primed off that notion, Hannah goes to work and throws herself at her boss and is totally not prepared when he laughs in her face. Not spiteful laughing either, hearty laughing. He thinks she is on drugs, and why shouldn’t he, when she says things like:

I know you want me. Because I’m gross. And so are you. So let’s do it.

She offers to have sex with him, then says she will sue him for sexual harassment, then tries to extort money from him and then finally quits, telling him someday she will publish an essay about the whole “sex scandal” and use his real name.

In the meantime, Jessa is getting tarted up at her nanny gig while the dad is totally flirting with her. She says she is getting dressed up because she is meeting up with an old boyfriend from San Francisco – one that broke up with her. He turns out to be some weird dweeb with a skinny mustache and fedora who insists over and over that he has a girlfriend, Gillian (with a hard G), who he loves, and is not enchanted at all by how beautiful and clearly seductive Jessa is. But she ain’t trying to hear that and eventually she takes him back to her (well, Shoshanna’s) apartment and totally bones him in the window of Shoshanna’s bedroom. Unsuspecting and still virginal Shoshanna is unfortunately sorta-trapped in the closet (what’s up, R. Kelly?) and ends up watching the whole thing. Her face is priceless and at least a little makes up for the fact that she has no lines at all in the episode.  After the sexing, the guy tries to give Jessa a kiss and she pulls away, asking “What about Gillian?” He storms out righteously pissed, and she discovers Shoshanna and calls her a bat shit little perv for watching the get-down. And right when you are in the middle of calling her/your tv an asshole, Jessa says:

Allow me to tell you what you just witnessed. That was me proving that I am un-smoteable.

And that’s when you realize that what she did wasn’t her being slutty, or just wanting what she is being told she can’t have. It is her showing that guy that even if he did break up with her (and apparently break her heart), she gets the last laugh in the end. So, she did get what she wanted after all and it wasn’t the window-sex.

Marnie (who apparently did not know where Charlie lived despite dating him for 4 years) goes to his apartment for the first time and begs him to not break up with her. He does such a good job of making her feel terrible that she eventually offers to do anything he wants – she’ll kick Hannah out (ouch), they can move in together, she will….blow him all the time. Eventually, after a cute flashback to how they met in college, they get down to the getting-down. But Charlie can’t stop himself from telling her all the things she needs to do and has to do and can’t do (“You can’t make me feel safe and then desert me again”) in order for the relationship to work. During the sex. Over and over until she finally says, “I want to break up with you.”

 
And lastly, the masturbation scene. What a hilariously uncomfortable and oddly vilifying moment for Hannah. She shows up at Adam’s and all too quickly finds out that they are most definitely not boyfriend and girlfriend. He only had sex with her because she looked sad and that whatever “thing” they might have had, it’s over now.
 
 

These kinds of things have an expiration date on them. Like, six months, or until someone stops having fun.

She goes into the bathroom and nearly cries – a touching moment if you get passed the fact that she pulled down her pants and sat on the toilet before tearing up. She eventually comes out and finds Adam…masturbating. Because why not? He tells her to watch….for the story. And she does.  And you want to smack her when she misinterprets the dirty verbal exchange as a cue for her to also get on the M-train. You think she’s sunk as low as she can sink and then suddenly, a power shift. She demands money from Adam for a cab (and pizza and gum). She calls him pathetic and gross and degrades him, all while he is going to town on himself. And he loves it! She tells him off, she forces him to apologize over and over to her until he “finishes,” she takes his money (he only had 100 dollar bills) and then she leaves – telling him he’s lucky she didn’t take all of his money.

Watching this show is like watching my early 20’s on acid. To say I am addicted would be a massive understatement.