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"We&amp;#x27;ve been saying for a while now that the one thing Girls has been missing lately is friendship-bonding moments&amp;amp;#8212;and, oh boy, did HBO address that head-on in last night&amp;#x27;s episode, &amp;quot;Beach House.&amp;quot; I want to discuss with you lovelies your take on the tricky political waters that are post-college friendships, but first, let&amp;#x27;s recap what went down. Marnie has planned a girls&amp;#x27; weekend at a family friend&amp;#x27;s beach house in North Fork (not to be confused with the Hamptons, according to Marnie&amp;amp;#8212;North Fork is for people who think the Hamptons are too tacky). She has painstakingly prepared tasteful flower arrangements and created special place cards outlining where everyone should sleep. Basically, it&amp;#x27;s a Pinterest lover&amp;#x27;s dream. Marnie wants an organized a weekend that will involve bonding time, a gourmet duck dinner, and putting up pictures on Instagram to prove to everybody (and Charlie?) that the four girls can still have fun together. But, of course, the first rule of having fun&amp;amp;#8212;especially on a vacation&amp;amp;#8212;is that if somebody constantly demands you follow a rigid itinerary, you&amp;#x27;re not going to have a lot of fun. The whole thing starts out on an awkward foot until Hannah runs into Elijah in town and invites him and his friends to come over to help ease the tension. It goes well enough until Marnie makes dinner for only the four girls, as she had originally planned, and demands that Hannah send the guys away. Instead, Hannah invites them all to dinner. Was it rude of Hannah, a guest, to invite people to a house that&amp;#x27;s not hers? Absolutely. Was it weird of Marnie to suggest they all leave in the middle of everyone having fun? Yeah. Nobody was going to come out of this a winner. After dinner, the girls show off a fun dance that Elijah&amp;#x27;s friend choreographed&amp;amp;#8212;but Marnie can&amp;#x27;t even let slight imperfections go, instead pointing out to Hannah the mistakes that she made with the moves. The leads to a big fight where things get real and honest fast. Surprisingly, it was Sosh who upped the ante by laying down some of the harshest truths&amp;amp;#8212;she calls Hannah a narcissist, tells Marnie her dinner tasted like &amp;quot;used condoms,&amp;quot; and calls the group &amp;quot;a bunch of whiny f--king nothings&amp;quot; who are holding her back from meeting real friends. All four said things that in real life would have very real, lasting consequences&amp;amp;#8212;we&amp;#x27;ll see how it plays out on the show going forward&amp;amp;#8212;but there was a glimpse of hope that all the honesty actually made things better: The next morning, Marnie wakes up to find the girls all helping clean up, and while they wait for the bus, they re-create their dance from the night before. I don&amp;#x27;t think everyone&amp;#x27;s forgiven yet by any means, but I do think that only true friends can still dance together after even the biggest argument. All in all, I thought this was a much-needed episode. It was good to see the girls together again without boyfriends (well, mostly without boyfriends) involved to air out the awkwardness and passive-aggressive digs that have been rolling around in their friendships all season. A group friend trip has a way of either making everybody super close or leave you questioning if certain friendships are worth keeping in your life (I know this from experience). Overall, I thought the episode felt pretty true to real life. It hit close to home for a few different reasons&amp;amp;#8212;mostly because I think it&amp;#x27;s common for many 20-somethings (myself included) to struggle to find the same enthusiasm for their friendships as they had in the past. More than ever, relationships, work, added responsibilities, less available free time, any number of issues, get in the way of bonding time. Not only that, but the gap between where people are at in their lives feels more apparent than ever&amp;amp;#8212;as a result, it&amp;#x27;s harder to maintain some friendships and near impossible to go back to those carefree college or high school days. It&amp;#x27;s not that you don&amp;#x27;t want to be friends anymore, but relationships evolve and change over time&amp;amp;#8212;some make it through the ebb and flow, some don&amp;#x27;t. It&amp;#x27;ll be interesting to see where Lena Dunham and Co. take the girls&amp;#x27; friendships from here. Can any friendship survive those harsh words? (I&amp;#x27;m not sure.) It could make them stronger and better, or it might be the final end to an already drifting-apart friendship. I would love to hear your take on this episode (and on friendships in general). Sound off in the comments below!"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/entertainment/blogs/obsessed/2014/02/girls-recap-beach-house>