Girls, "Japan"

"What a breath of fresh air!" thought Shoshanna, and probably all "Girls" viewers, as she steps out to her commute in the Land of the Rising Sun.  This show has explored a small slice of New York life for such a long time that any new settings and characters that mix things up are welcome.

And there's more than just the novelty of loudly colored apartments and sauna breaks at work here.  Shoshanna's time in Japan gives the show the opportunity to explore what can get lost in translation.  Both literally, as she and Yoshi struggle to communicate in broken English, and figuratively, as Shoshanna deals with Japanese assumptions about American girls.  (Just as Americans make assumptions about those abroad.)  But in spite of Yoshi's friends' best efforts to treat Shosh as a slut at a BDSM club, these two connect just as any two people might in any culture.  Some things, thankfully, are universal.

And some things are just universal on TV shows.  "I'm not doing the 'Will they or won't they?' thing," Jessa insists.  But referencing the trope you're using doesn't make it feel any less tired.  As Jessa and Adam review his performance on a show in the vein of "Law and Order" and make cute eyes at one another, it's depressing to see these prickly characters pushed into the same old familiar boxes.  Thankfully, they can't be totally contained.  Adam's performance on the show-within-the-show really is good.  (While at the same time slightly hilarious, as Lucy Liu tells him, "Brother, we're both from the streets.")  And his little awkward dance after Jessa leaves is a marvel.  The man continues to push the limits of what acting in a conventional TV show can be.

Meanwhile, you're not going to believe this, but we've got a storyline about how selfish and unreasonable Hannah is!  After she discovers pictures of naked women on Jake's phone, it seems for a thrilling moment that Jake is going to turn out to have a creepy dark side.  But it turns out he just needs masturbation material and is morally opposed to porn.  (Hannah has taken her own nude selfies, but she strikes an awkward pose, as she demonstrates in an amusing photo shoot with Ray and Elijah.)  This is a profoundly first-world problem.  But I suspect that there is more to Jake's collection than he's letting on.  Here's hoping that it leads to a discussion of monogamy as a construct, as Marnie puts it.