GIRLS – S5xEp06 – ‘The Panic in Central Park’

“The Panic in Central Park” belongs to Marnie, who breaks the seal on the superficially successful but spiritually unfulfilling life she’s clung to up until now. The least self-aware of the show’s main characters, Marnie generally can’t be counted on for much of anything but loyalty to Hannah, as she ricochets from one man to the next, unable to maintain respect for anyone foolish enough to fall in love with her. The last time we saw her, she was trying out a new, nurturing persona, assuring hubby Desi that he only felt bad about himself because she’d been “picking at” him.

This episode opens with Marnie back in her customary ice-queen mode, giving Desi the silent treatment and then scoffing, when he says her “cruelty” makes him want to kill himself, “You don’t want to kill yourself. You are far too narcissistic to kill yourself.” But she’s knocked out of that familiar groove when she runs into Charlie, the old beau she fell desperately in love with only after he gave up on her and moved on.

 

Most importantly to me is how much time the show spent showing us that Desi was a bad guy. Or thought he was a bad guy, or both. He moaned over and over again that he was going to hurt her, and yet he winds up sobbing on the stairs (but also, sobbing about her not wanting to get a scone, so I’m not sure she’s wrong here).

She never thinks about Desi once, despite all the threats that she’d be left at the altar. None of it comes true. If he did hurt her maybe patterns would be the same. Now, though, it’s different because it has to be.

When the two got to Charlie’s party, Marnie found out that Charlie was selling cocaine. Oddly, this didn’t seem to bother her much at all. She was basically fine with that.

Marnie’s brief stint as “Magita Perez” was hilarious. It was a little difficult to suspend disbelief enough to think that this old rich guy would just drop $600 with no actual guarantee of action later in the night.

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen or heard from Charlie, so it’s easy to forget the early impact he had on Marnie, when he called her out for all her terrible traits and made her take a good, hard look at her life. The revelation that half her album is about him and the effect he had on her makes perfect sense, though, so it was easy for her to fall for him again despite his obvious fall from where we saw him last.Perhaps the needle she found in his pants pocket towards the episode’s end was a stark reminder of just how low her life could have gotten, had she stayed with a person who thought so little of her — giving her that one final push she needed to finally ditch Desi for good.

Hannah and Marnie’s relationship once took center stage on this series, but for the past couple of seasons it’s fallen away as love lives and personal drama has stepped in. By episode’s end, when Marnie crawled into bed beside her bestie, there was a sense of a core relationship reuniting. No words were needed to show us that when it really counts, these two have each other’s backs. It’s nice to have that dynamic somewhat reinstated for now; here’s hoping it continues to be intact, moving forward into the back half of the season.