The girls of Girls live in the biggest of big cities. They like to project the image of urbane creative types who write and work in galleries and think they’re above mundane day jobs. But they’re also only a few years removed from high school, and young enough where a five-year relationship spans the entirety of their adult lives. Marnie and Charlie have been together since 2007 and now have to end the most (and probably the only) serious relationship they’ve ever had. “Hard Being Easy” deals with that seriously without sacrificing humor and while reaffirming some of the show’s more notable themes. It’s not as funny as Girls can be (for that watch next week’s episode) but once again it’s a far more satisfying half-hour than the pilot that turned so many viewers off.
“Hard Being Easy” wastes no time picking up from last week’s awkward conclusion, where Charlie confronts Marnie about their relationship from the stage during a rock show he’s playing. In this week’s cold open Charlie angrily confronts Marnie about Hannah’s journal in the girls’ apartment. Hannah wrote that Marnie clearly doesn’t love Charlie anymore and should just end their relationship. Marnie is trying to salvage it while Hannah is just as concerned with what Marnie thinks about the quality of her writing as she is with what that writing has wrought. The self-involvement that made Hannah so unlikable in the pilot is now an effective (and somewhat understandable) bit of comedy, which shows how thoroughly Girls has turned that corner.
Even though Hannah’s observations were true, Marnie is determined to get Charlie back. She has no idea where he lives, though, which doesn’t seem like something that would happen in a balanced and healthy relationship. She has to get Charlie’s address from Ray, who’s just an absolutely colossal dick and one of the most odious characters currently on television. He’s such an equal opportunity asshole that it’s reductive to call him a misogynist, even though he abuses Marnie with thoroughly misogynistic language while giving her Charlie’s address. He’ll probably make a serious pass at her before the season is done.
Marnie’s chat with Charlie at his apartment reveals that Marnie probably was a bad girlfriend as she apparently had no idea how talented he was at woodwork. Charlie lives in one of those comically small New York apartments, but he’s maximized his space with some impressively handmade wooden furniture. Marnie says it looks like a Target ad, but it’s probably more like Ikea. Charlie tells Marnie there’s nothing to say because she’s not in love with him anymore, which leads directly to a flashback to Oberlin’s Galactic Safe Sex Ball in 2007. A young Marnie with bangs is frozen against a basement support pole after unwittingly eating pot brownies. Hannah promises to watch over her while Jessa heads off to eat whatever it is Marnie had. Hannah’s then-boyfriend Elijah (last seen in the third episode, and whose nascent homosexuality should be blatantly obvious to 2007-era Hannah due to his makeup advice and love of the Scissor Sisters) wants Hannah to come dance with him, and grabs a morose Charlie to watch over Marnie until Hannah returns. Marnie asks Charlie to hug her, Charlie invites her to his band’s show, and that’s how that started. While tenderly reminiscing over the past present-day Charlie confides to Marnie that when they met she looked exactly like a girl in a porno called Sophomore Sluts that he had just watched the night before that party.