Okay, so I was literally stepping my foot into my bed when my friend texts me like, “you really, really, need to watch the last episode of Girls”. Happens to be the same friend that recommended me to watch the whole show in the first place, “it's totally your kind of show”, she told me (which led me to wonder if she saw me somehow projected in Hannah Horvard's character, which of course scared me to death). However, I then proceeded to watch the whole Girls thing, which I literally did in one and a half week, but didn't feel the show was making such an impact on me, nor was I astonished or, as most people, fascinated about it. I somehow didn't see it as such a feminist show as it is claimed to be and I didn't feel I was laughing that much with it.
 Nevertheless, the fact that I could watch five or six episodes in a row, made me realise I was actually starting to really enjoy the show. I was debating about it with friends, and it was really making me re-consider and re-think stuff I would normally not think about so much.
 However, as my friend predicted, this last episode totally overwhelmed me for the way it addresses such a difficult topic as consent is and totally changed my opinion of how the show works.
 I find it's never easy to talk about consent, to begin with because no one does, so it's difficult to know where to start, what point to make or which could be the best way to make an impact about it in people's minds. The magnificence of this episode (“American Bitch”, the third episode of what will be the last season of Girls, its sixth one) is precisely the way in which it addresses the delicate issue that consent represents and how it manages to make such a point that rests for a while in the spectator's mind and will surely create him or her an internal debate about it.
 I find it to be an absolute masterpiece. It consists of half an hour of basically just two characters, a man and a woman. The woman and main character of the show, Hannah, is invited to a famous novelist's home, Chuck Palmer, whom she has totally dissed in a “niche feminist blog”, because he has allegedly had not-that-really-consented-sex with a few college girls who have told their stories about him on “something called Tumblr, without an e”, as he himself claims. From the very first moment of the episode, you can tell it's going to be absolutely wonderful, when he goes: “How exactly does one give a non-consensual blowjob?”. Like, that phrase is absolutely BRILLIANT because, can't you not picture so many men wondering that? Like, how exactly does one do that? And he says it all calmly, like there’s nothing THAT bad about him wondering that because, really, how the fuck does one do that? Well, unfortunately, it happens, it has happened and it will continue happening because it's not that difficult (“it would be something very chokey…”, Hannah answers). But there you have the very first important point that the episode makes about consent: How are you to believe all these girls that claim to have been forced into having sex with someone when it's really not that easy and of course not that possible, physically speaking? Starting from there, all these kind of testimonies are easy to be doubted because, really, this sort of situations are much more difficult to happen that one might think. Or at least that's what lots of men seem to think.
 The brilliance of all of it comes when you actually start kind of liking the guy. He has a point, he of course is not the kind of guy who would force anyone into sex with him and he even makes Hannah begin to wonder if maybe she has been too harsh on him, dissing him in such a way before knowing the details of the stories. He's an interesting guy, they have an actual intellectual debate about the topic and you really not hate the guy at all (until you cannot like him anymore at the end of the episode). The thing is, he is a NORMAL guy, he is not a terrible monster that eats human being's fingers as chips with his steak. He's totally not the type of guy who would force anyone into having sex with him. He's totally not that type of guy. He's just not that guy.
 This part, where the viewer will totally start to like him, is so interesting, as one thought may also be evoked: he's not that kind of guy, BECAUSE HE DOESN'T NEED TO BE THAT KIND OF GUY. I mean, it's impossible for him to have any difficulties to fuck with any girl so, why would he force anyone? He has so many admirers over the globe, so many of them are so willing to go back with him to his hotel that, really, why on earth would he ever force anyone into sex? He doesn't need to! I find this idea to be so essential: no one needs to be that kind of guy to actually BE that kind of guy, also, because non-consented sexual relations have sometimes such subtle aspects that not always consist at all of some rude big man physically forcing a petite woman into doing things she would never want to, because power relationships have so many times so much to do in these non-consented situations, which is precisely one of the points that this episode so perfectly addresses and communicates to those watching it.
 However, the absolute magic of the episode comes when, just at the point when you are totally liking the guy at your most and indeed Hannah is also liking him after all and sharing with him views about Philip Roth, he asks Hannah to lie down with him “just to feel close to someone”. And Hannah does it, I think because she just doesn't find reasons at that point not to, although it's clear it feels weird to her. And, all of a sudden, here it comes, he takes out his penis. Just like that. Takes out his penis, puts it on top of Hannah's thigh, without saying a word. And Hannah, walking that thin line that separates consent from what is not consent, grabs it. She just grabs his penis, not even in a sexual way (there's in fact nothing that sexual about the scene, but there's no need to). She grabs it, just for a moment. She quickly stands up, freaking out, not understanding what the fuck has just happened or how it did happen. And there he is, with an indescribable expression that goes between satisfaction and a huge feeling of power, that kind of power only a penis can give you and, therefore, that kind of power only a man can feel. He really hasn't forced Hannah to grab his penis, but she absolutely hasn't done something she wanted to voluntarily do. And he has gotten no sexual pleasure from it, but just that feeling of superiority that clearly makes him feel so good about himself, and that allows him to then go to listen to his daughter play some flute, in the astonished company of Hannah, who can't believe that such a creepy and indecent guy can take out his penis, without anyone asking him to, and then five minutes later play the role of the father of the day so naturally.
 Not to mention of course, the final scene, where a multitude of girls keep entering his building, representing those many girls that aren't actually so lucky to escape sexual assault.
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