Everyone is falling apart. From puking to drowning to fighting to crying, our characters are displaying all kinds of physical reactions to their personal lives this week. Since last week was Girls’ most naked episode yet, this week the ladies have taken a break from nudity and the focus has shifted toward tears. As much as I appreciated last week’s more thoughtful episode, I’m happy to have (almost all of) the rest of the characters back (miss you, Elijah! Not so much, Charlie!). They provide perspective about important subjects like mood lighting, tacos, and literature. Or, they fall asleep in bathtubs and only get out to remind us that everything sucks and we’re all just depressed people.

Within the conflicting mess of emotions that was this week’s episode, a few little pieces of wisdom emerged from all the nonsense:

1. “Ice cream is technically groceries.”

Marnie is seeing someone! I take back what I said before about the porcelain doll! Wait, no I don’t! Because girlfriends aren’t technically girlfriends until both parties agree.

Despite the fact that Booth tells her he doesn’t “really care” the second she begins talking about her friendship with Hannah, is openly naked in front of his assistant Soo Jin, and fires her for taking a small bite of his rosewater ice cream (but she stocked his fridge with goat milk probiotics!), Marnie is busy being smitten with his naked, trendy self. So she agrees to host his party for him. Apparently, they technically have different ideas of what “hosting” means, too.

“It’s a thing. It’s like happening on a nice level. On like a fancy, nice level,” Marnie tells Shoshanna while she goes through perfectly adorable clothing options before deciding she needs to shop for a plastic monstrosity (Jennifer Rogien does it again! I love this woman so much). Completely ignoring Shoshanna’s complaints about her own relationship, Marnie just stares at herself in the mirror, swaying back and forth holding different silky basics to her chest. “It has to be perfect. I mean, this is the first thing we’re hosting together as a couple.”

Um, well, technically, no one said couple yet.

Regardless, Marnie breaks down in Booth’s wine cellar when he offers to pay her for hosting, because usually when she thinks someone is her boyfriend they’re her boyfriend! Putting aside the fact that by “usually” Marnie means “Charlie,” let’s discuss Marnie and Booth: we’ve seen them together thrice. The implication is that they’ve been sleeping together in between episodes, since Booth is comfortable enough to tell her he doesn’t care about her friends, and they seem to have passed the porcelain doll phase. But when she confesses to feeling stupid for enjoying spending time with him, he turns it around on her, and pulls the “I’m an artist so you like the idea of me more than you like the real me” card.

A prevalent complain of the rich and successful seems to be that people are just “using” them, or like the “idea of” them. I say tough shit. I don’t feel bad for you, Booth Jonathan. Maybe if you were nice people would love you for you, instead of for your art. Maybe I’m just on Marnie’s side lately, but I got a little bit of satisfaction from watching Booth curl up on the floor, surrounded by nothing but his temper tantrum and his broken wine bottles. Also, Marnie’s little comedic shimmy out of the cellar in the unwieldy plastic dress almost made up for the fact that Allison Williams still can’t cry on screen!

(in real life: Jorma, come to my bed, I long to lie with you while you spit rap lyrics at me. I will say YOLO a lot while we have sex. I hope you aren’t actually into porcelain dolls but you can totally bring one if you are and I’ll even pretend not to be weirded out.)

2. “Call when you need to. Don’t call when you don’t.”

Hannah meets with Pumped Mag’s editor, who compliments her on her “sweet… very naive… very infuriating” essays. She has a voice, so she should own it, and write this e-book and turn it in in a month.

“My new protege,” he says as he bids her goodbye “Call me when you need to. Don’t call me when you don’t.” After he departs, Hannah promptly vomits in some nearby urban shrubbery, then stalks away from the brunching judgmental onlookers in her clogs. Where do I get those clogs? I want a pair of clogs.

Ray is impressed, because “usually when people say they want to be a writer they really don’t want to do anything except, you know, like, eat and masturbate, so.” But in general, Hannah isn’t getting positive feedback about her newest career venture. Mostly because Jessa – Hannah’s roommate of the week – is busy being mean when she’s depressed and reminding Hannah that it doesn’t matter. Not to the readers, not to the author, not to anyone.

Okay one time I wrote an e-book in a month and it was extremely difficult, and I would just like to take a moment and express my empathy for Hannah. Sorry I’m not sorry your marriage broke up, Jessa, but please stop diminishing the challenge that is e-book writing. I mean, mine wasn’t even about Our Lost Generation! (It was about how to be a full time stand-up comedian and you can buy it here if you want to send $0.05 in royalties to my PayPal account! Which I would so totally love.) Not to mention, Hannah has done such a thorough job widening the gap between herself and Marnie that she can’t even phone a friend when she’s bereft of inspiraysh. Shame, really. I bet Marnie would have a lot to contribute on the subjects of being lost these days.

3. “Everyone’s a difficult person.”

Ray and Shoshanna are in the “Fix You” stage of their relationship. He’s not exactly enthusiastic about her suggestion that he attend a seminar that “gives people the tools they need to be as happy as possible every single day of their lives,” and he won’t even spend four dollars on tacos. And no, he doesn’t want to run his own coffee shop someday. He does, however, want his copy of Little Women back. Since he won’t accept her help in any other aspects of his life, Shoshanna isn’t about to go get it for him: “I mean it’s like really your duty as a man to go,”… get it from Adam.

Since Adam is very busy taking care of the break-up dog named Dog that he stole, he doesn’t have time for a scavenger hunt, especially not to look for a book that Hannah was probably reading while she was taking a dump. Ray patiently listens to Adam’s reasoning:

“And then he [Dog’s owner] tied him outside a fuckin’ coffee shop, so he can what? Get coffee? Fuckin’ croissant? And then he [Dog] wrapped himself up in his own leash, and I was untangling him and he licked my face, and – I don’t know – I felt like he wanted me to rescue him so I did.”

… then tells Adam that stealing a dog is basically like stealing a baby, and agrees to serve as “extra muscle” on their trip to Staten Island to return the dog, “in case shit gets real.”

I’m still hopelessly attracted to Adam’s brutal and compulsive honesty, and his goofball smile, and his diction, and his… well, everything. So this was my favorite storyline of the episode. After Ray and Adam agree that the best women are too young or too old to carry the insecurities of your average 20-somethings, the two “kinda weird looking” but “honest men” seem like they may be developing a sweet little bromance. Complication: Ray, unnecessarily confrontational as always, begins to poke at Adam’s attraction to Hannah, saying he’s never understood it. He calls Hannah a “difficult person.”

“Everyone’s a difficult person,” Adam says, bluntly. “She was accepting of my brand of difficult. She was okay with it.” But Ray keeps poking, prodding and provoking until Adam attacks his relationship with Shoshanna – “you’re just babies holding hands!” – and eventually runs off, leaving Ray with Dog (whose real name is Mikey).

Well, Ray, you deserved that. Not so much the crazy slurs from the aggressive Staten Island girl when you tried to return the dog, but you definitely deserved Adam’s departure. But Ray, just like everyone else in this episode, didn’t feel like listening this week. Just like Booth and Marnie in Booth’s bed, Shoshanna and Marnie in Shoshanna’s apartment, and Hannah and Jessa The Grumpy House Guest, Ray and Adam seemed to be having two entirely different conversations.

This episode captured that classically immature way in which humans stop listening when they start to get too comfortable. And then suddenly we wake up, look around, and have no one to confide in when they need their friends most. Perhaps we should see this episode as a public service announcement to Boys & Little Women alike: stop talking at your friends and take time to listen to their sides of the stories once in awhile. Or you may end up alone crying on a bench in Staten Island. But at least you’ll know how to make a DIY dog muzzle if you ever need one.