That was an EPISODE.

Charlie returned last night for (as suspected) one episode of the hit HBO show Girls and I have to say I’m a mess of emotion. Where to begin?

On one level, the episode did everything I wanted it to do. It was, as I hoped, a capsule episode for Marnie who we’ve probably seen the least of this season. We got to see that amazing chemistry between Allison Williams and Christopher Abbott. Finally, Marnie reached that level of growth we knew she had in her! She came to the conclusion after a night with (who I still believe is) the love of her life that she is not supposed to be with Desi.

To really soak this up though you’d have to go through the bases.

I don’t think any fan, or even anyone that works on the show, can deny that Charlie and Marnie were the most beautifully dysfunctional couple they introduced to us. They showed us true millennial love and the emotional roller coasters of their personal lives. I adored them.

Now, three years later (what is about two and a half in the show according to Marnie) we get this giant arrow to the heart. You notice immediately that this Charlie isn’t the Charlie from the past. This is a broken man.

Something else that I had hoped for in this episode was that the two would come together in a space far from the negativity of their past and take from one another what they needed. I think Marnie got that but the same couldn’t be said for him. I don’t know if Charlie is in a place anymore where he could receive the enlightenment.

Of course, Marnie did not get what she needed in a kind and fantastical way. She had to find Charlie’s heroin needle to learn that the night, like her marriage, was just an illusional. It was nothing real. There on that bed was another man needing her for salvation.

This is the moment where she got it. She had said earlier in the episode that she was not going to try and change anyone anymore and at that moment on the floor she realized she wasn’t there to save anyone either. She can’t save Charlie from his life, his choices, and his pain. Therefore, she can’t save Desi from himself.

Now, Did I like the episode? Absolutely. I don’t think you can see this and not appreciate the divine tragedy that it is. We were introduced to these characters, as Lena Dunham put it, as babies! They were two children playing house and now years later, as it happens, life found them both and did its work. Both of them found each other again at their lowest points but fate wasn’t as kind to Charlie. Or should we say, the writers weren’t.

As much as I loved the episode and saw how it was a perfect rude awakening for Marnie on her path towards growth, I still can’t help but feel a bit angry over what was done to Charlie. You have to pause for a moment and reflect on the question, “was this fate something that was really possible for him or did they just need to give Christopher Abbot something hardier so he’d agree to come back?”

He said he left the show due to creative differences and he just didn’t like the way the character was being taken. Three seasons later we see this Charlie and realize immediately that he is NOT the same person AT ALL. The Charlie we knew feels like a dream at this point. So, sounds like it would have appealed to Christopher Abbot very much for a one episode return!

I suppose the argument could be made that Charlie could find himself down this road. I don’t mean to sound like a PSA but we know drugs don’t discriminate. They take very kind genuine people and turn them inside out. On a certain level you can agree that the people who fall into those worlds are usually the most sensitive among us. Charlie certainly could be seen to fit that.

The other element to the character that signaled this path was his true addiction to Marnie. His constant truth in both season 1 and 2 (even though we didn’t learn of it until his final episode) was that he never stopped being in love with her. Marnie was his everything. He said to her, “everything that I do good I do because of you.” That’s romantic on a page, but in life that’s risky business!

If his life revolved around Marnie then it showed he lacked any real idea of who he was. I can see how his father passing traumatically and his impulse decision to leave Marnie, however right it was, left him in a state of limbo and vulnerable to darker things.

When it comes to Marnie’s choice at the end to just walk away, as an adult, I agree completely. It’s not her place to fix him or save him from himself. Though on another level, he isn’t a stranger! They dated for four years! A majority of that time she was indeed incredibly selfish and there in that rundown apartment is not her ‘boyfriend’ but a human being with whom she shared an intimate connection and who loved her very much! I would have liked to have seen her at LEAST try to understand what he was doing and tell him to get help.

She was clearly still his drug of choice. Do I think he would have done things different with her on that night without the drugs? Yes, but I think they would have ended up in that bed regardless.