By Colton Dunham OnMilwaukee.com Staff Writer Published Feb 18, 2015 at 4:16 PM

If you haven't watched this past episode of "Girls," spoilers ahead. If you have, keep calm and read on.

As that saying goes, "Nothing good ever happens in Iowa."

Actually, that's not a saying. I just made it up. I wouldn't doubt that Lena Dunham's Hannah would disagree, though.

Aside from the little things like a bat getting trapped in her apartment, forcing her to sleep overnight in her bathroom in this season's opening episode to her bike – her only means of transportation – getting stolen, she soon found there were far bigger problems heading her way.

With each episode following, Hannah increasingly becoming more coldly disconnected from the other grad students in her Iowa Writers' Workshop, leading to the most obvious: Her time in Iowa was going to be short-lived. In episode 4, titled "Cubbies," that became true after a disastrous attempt of leaving pseudo-apology letters in her fellow students' cubbies, leading to them belittling her during the following workshop. Of course, Hannah is defensive, but the writers were like vicious wolves lunging towards their prey. In a bit of rage that was building up, she crumpled up a piece of paper and aggressively threw it at fellow writer Jeff. 

After class, Hannah's professor hints that the program may not be right for her, saying, "Everyone here is an adult, and can make their own choices." Similarly, Hannah's father Ted – like Elijah in episode 3 – tells her to do what makes her happy.

Although the scene was particularly difficult to watch, in a way, Hannah had it coming. After all, the reason why she wasn't able to get along with the other writers in the program is because of herself, which, in Iowa, was insufferable. 

Hannah is often impulsive, selfish, and irresponsible. As evident from previous seasons of "Girls," more times than not, she doesn't behave in the same way an adult would. She tends to always take the easy way out of in any situation that poses extreme difficulty. In this case, she drops out of the program, one in which she was willing to leave behind her life in New York City for, including her boyfriend Adam. 

She moves back in hopes that her life back home would be just the same as she left it. Much to her surprise, as she soon finds out after returning back to her apartment, things back home at her Brooklyn apartment aren't the same as she left it. In this past Sunday's episode of HBO "Girls," titled "Sit-In," picks up immediately following the surprising blow that Hannah's boyfriend Adam (Adam Driver), whom she left behind, has a new roommate: his artist girlfriend. Her name? Mimi Rose Howard (Gillian Jacobs, "Community"). 

As she stands in the episode, Hannah is now a jobless grad school dropout who returned to to discover that her belongings are in storage – on Adam’s dime – and Mimi has moved into her place. They even followed through on Hannah’s dream of knocking out the wall between the two bedrooms in order to create a master bedroom. Adam has most definitely moved on.

This realization marks a turning point of vital importance for Hannah. One in which starts in true Hannah fashion: hitting emotional rock bottom and locking herself in her bedroom where, instead of facing Adam and Mimi to walk out to go to the bathroom, she opts to urinate inside of a trash can instead.

"Sit-In" is the season's most impeccable episode, the majority of it taking place inside of Hannah's apartment – maybe to convey Hannah's own isolation following this newfound, non-first world problem hardship. As she locks herself in her bedroom, Adam is left to call her friends to come over to try to console her and to probably get her out. As her friends and familiar faces come in an out to help her get through this shell-shocked crisis, Hannah's anguish only builds.

Soshana (Zosia Mamet) is the first to come over, although the last to hear about Hannah's ordeal. Their plan of looking up Mimi backfires when they find a YouTube video of Mimi giving a speech as a visiting artist at a conference. Mimi, who Hannah declares, "That's not a name. That's just a woman's name and a man's name with a flower stuck in the middle of it," is an artist who has her you-know-what together.

This is a quality that Hannah doesn't have. As she finds out, Mimi is an cold-pressed juice-loving artist who is accomplished the kind of creative career that Hannah has always wanted but failed or given up on the majority of opportunities that could've led to success. 

Soshana quickly closes her laptop after briefly watching, but the video gives Hannah all more reasons to keep watching in her bedroom or locked in the bathroom as the shower is running. 

Jessa (Jemima Kirke), quite possibly the most insufferable and toxic character on the show, makes things worse for Hannah as she tells her that she was the one who set Adam and Mimi up. Hannah asks Jessa shortly before, "I don't understand what's happening, Jessa. I feel so f-cking insane. How did this even occur?" Once Hannah finds out the truth, her confusion grows into frustration, leaving Jessa to tell Hannah that she left, leaving everyone she knows in New York to think that she'd be gone for two years and she shouldn't have expected them to freeze until she got back.

Although her words may have been hurtful, she makes a point, but keep in mind that all of this took place under a month's time, leaving Jess setting up Adam with a new girlfriend. It's understandable that Jessa wanted to help Adam out to be happy as he becomes better, but to do so in a short amount of time isn't exactly something a friend would do to another friend unless, of course, Jessa did it in a spiteful reaction to Hannah leaving. It's clear enough that Jessa doesn't feel as connected to Hannah as she once was. Jessa's visit ends with them literally hitting each other, leaving their relationship strained – perhaps temporarily so. 

Although a bit random and out of place, Adam's sister Caroline (Gaby Hoffman) and Laird (Jon Glaser) – who are now pregnant with their love child – even stop by to help out Hannah, or at least keep her company. With Marnie (Allison Williams) nowhere to be found, it's clear that Adam was in real desperation to find someone. Hannah seems oddly comfortable with them both, as they form an awkward group hug. Shortly after, Caroline hilariously, and maybe passive-aggressively, tells Hannah about Adam, "He has such a big heart. He's really at his best when he's nurturing the poor, the lost, the profoundly damaged, which is why you were so perfect for him." 

Later, Hannah is awoken by Ray cooking breakfast in the kitchen. Although they've hardly seen each other eye-to-eye, they have a sweet moment together, even though he seems all worked up about his own issues to stay too concerned about Hannah, who's remarks that she's she's in this puzzle with no possible solution, "like a Rubik's cube." To make matters even worse, she burns her hand while flipping bacon in the frying pan. She doesn't really get the help she really needs until Marnie finally shows up and becomes the most reasonable of all Hannah's visitors, which is ironic considering Marnie hasn't been the most reasonable in her own dilemmas so far this season.

She's the only one to tell Hannah this cold hard truth that will eventually mark Hannah's turning point. "You need to let Adam go," she tells her. Like Jessa, she even reminds Hannah that she's the one that left Adam behind anyways. As Adam declares in the episode, he really didn't break any rules by seeing Mimi – even if it all happened way too fast.

At first, Hannah doesn't want to hear it, but it's something that she has to face like someone who she hasn't acted like throughout all four seasons thus far: an adult. "So I guess we're not like, some great artistic love story," Hannah says to Marnie, willing to accept that her relationship with Adam is over and there's nothing she can do about it. 

Despite the fact that Hannah left things vaguely ambiguous with no formal breakup with Adam whatsoever, this episode makes us finally feel sorry for Hannah because heartbreak is universal. Hannah's behavior was increasingly becoming alienating in Iowa, so it's a welcoming change of pace for the character, to make us more relatable to her through this tribulation. She got the blunt of heartbreak by being blindsided by Adam's new-found happiness without her so it's entirely reasonable as to why she reacted the way she did by locking herself in her bedroom, laying in bed a complete wreck, even going as far as to avoid going to the bathroom to cross paths. Although the blame could've been entirely placed on her for this entire ordeal, Adam tells Hannah towards the end of the episode that I long expected.

Before heading off to the storage facility where most of her belongings were stored in, Adam fixes the bandage on her burnt hand, which leads to a much-needed, and difficult, conversation for Hannah to move on – or at least, take the first steps in the right direction. "You left and I was sort of relieved," Adam tells Hannah. "What we had was real, and it was beautiful and intense and weird and terrifying, and there was a time I couldn't imagine myself with anyone else, ever." Eventually, though, Adam goes on to say that the relationship had run its course and they tried everything they could've. 

It was a real, emotional moment between the two, with Dunham offering up her best acting in the show yet. It's this raw emotion of the scene that cultivates into Hannah finally leaving the apartment. Before she leaves, however, Adam tells her, "Thanks for stopping by, kid." Hannah shoots back, almost sickeningly, "Thank you for stopping by, but maybe don't call me kid anymore." This exchange, symbolically, ends their relationship. She journeys to the storage unit where most of her belongings are stored. Once inside, she snuggles onto the couch, but instead of falling asleep, her eyes remain open, mentally bracing herself for what's to come following her break-up with Adam.

If all is right, she'd reemerge from the storage unit, revitalized for a new start, a new beginning. Perhaps it's the break-up with Adam that she really needs to grow as a character, to not be tied down by anything or anyone else for her own artistic pursuits. Hopefully, ideally, she has nowhere else to grow but up. 

Colton Dunham OnMilwaukee.com Staff Writer

Colton Dunham's passion for movies began back as far as he can remember. Before he reached double digits in age, he stayed up on Saturday nights and watched numerous classic horror movies with his grandfather. Eventually, he branched out to other genres and the passion grew to what it is today.

Only this time, he's writing about his response to each movie he sees, whether it's a review for a website, or a short, 140-character review on Twitter. When he's not inside of a movie theater, at home binge watching a television show, or bragging that he's a published author, he's pursuing to keep movies a huge part of his life, whether it's as a journalist/critic or, ahem, a screenwriter.