Talk about a blast from the past!
Girls just surprised us by suddenly bringing back Marnie’s (Allison Williams) ex-boyfriend Charlie, but we wouldn’t have known it just by looking at him.
Pretty much everything has changed since Charlie disappeared between seasons two and three when Christopher Abbott decided to leave the show due to what a source told E! News were “creative differences” with Lena Dunham.
Marnie’s married now, of course, but she and Desi aren’t exactly living in marital bliss. Tonight’s episode opened with a spat that had something to do with “aggressive guitar” and a general lack of interest in each other, and Marnie went out for a walk. That’s when she ran into Charlie, who looked and sounded like a completely different person. We almost didn’t recognize him, and Marnie almost didn’t either.
His voice was different, his face was different, and he’d put on a few pounds, but it was clear Marnie had missed him just as much as we had.
After they spent a minute catching up—his app company fell apart due to “weird legal s–t” and his dad committed suicide—Charlie took Marnie on a strange and mostly unexplained adventure. He bought her a low-cut, high-slit fancy dress with no shoes to go with it (while he went to the bathroom) and took her to a party full of rich people and apparently their hookers. While Charlie went to the bathroom (again), a guy mistook Marnie for a prostitute. She pretended her name was “Meguita” and scammed him out of $ 300.
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They spent her newfound riches on a fancy spaghetti and pizza dinner, they danced a bit, took a boat ride, kissed in the boat, fell in the water, floated in the water for a second, and then they were mugged by the last kid you’d expect to be robbing people at gunpoint. Even with the mugging, it was all sweet, easy, and just another sad reminder of what Marnie’s current relationship is not.
They then ended back up at Charlie’s place, where they formulated a hypothetical plan: get rid of their stuff, run away together, and open a general store “somewhere where they need a general store.” This talk was followed by sex, after which Marnie showered and made friends with Charlie’s lesbian roommate(?), and then Marnie found a needle on the floor.
“I’m diabetic,” Charlie told her sleepily, but Marnie took off, shoeless, moneyless, and ringless, thanks to that silly mugger.
Desi was waiting for her on the stairs of the apartment building, and Marnie dropped a bomb: “I don’t want to be married to you.”
She wants to find herself, which is all well and good according to Desi, except she’s going to get murdered in the real world, apparently. What a guy!
Marnie packed up a few of her things before heading to Hannah’s and climbing into bed with her.
Will we see Charlie again? We hope so, but it’s also clearly time for Marnie to take some time for herself. This may not have ended with the closure we’ve been dying for since the end of season two, but it was enough for now.
Girls airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on HBO.
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