In recent weeks, “Girls’’ has put two central characters in a difficult spot — the classic “ill-fated love’’ spot. Jessa and Adam, the show’s two towering infernos, are enormously attracted to each other. But Jessa really doesn’t want to hurt the prickly Hannah, her best friend and Adam’s ex. Adam keeps aggressively courting Jessa, but she keeps fighting his efforts, trying to alter her lifelong pattern of unscrupulous, impulsive choices.
Actually, “Girls’’ is putting viewers in a difficult spot. too. It’s obvious that Jessa and Adam, both looming physical presences, could make a great couple. They seem to belong together, in that somewhat indescribable but natural way, unlike Hannah and Adam, who never appreciated each other and were forever parsing misunderstandings. We’ve watched the Jessa-Adam chemistry grow, as they’ve toyed with friendship born of mutual sobriety. We’ve seen that even the actors who play Adam and Jessa, Adam Driver and Jemima Kirke, click organically. But we know about the Ex Code — that you don’t date your friends’ past loves — and Hannah and her inevitably dramatic feelings of betrayal hang over all of us.
On many shows, this kind of three-way crash is something of a time killer. The lead guy and gal are clearly going to get there, with their wedding serving as one of the season finales, or even as the series finale. They are the show’s fated pair, and that is the subtext of everything they do. But the writers need to find obstacles in the meantime, to fuel seasons of episodes. So they bring in a third player. On “Friends,’’ we knew all along that Ross and Rachel would wind up together, that they were “meant to be.’’ But nonetheless we had to go through a ridiculous dating period between Joey and Rachel, as if. “How I Met Your Mother’’ played the same game, steering Robin into Barney’s arms — even marrying them — while all along we felt in our heart of hearts that she’d wind up with Ted, which she did.
Sometimes, though, writers fool with the fated-couple expectation, that often wearying cliché, and it can work perfectly. The best example I can think of was on “Dawson’s Creek.’’ At the start of the series, viewers could easily assume that sensitive boy Dawson would end up with his childhood pal Joey. But as the series developed, it became clear that the endearing innocence of their early bond made them soulmates, but not lovers, and that Joey and Pacey were far more suited for each other romantically. In the end, Joey and Pacey were together, and it felt right.
I certainly thought early in “Girls’’ that Hannah and Adam were destined to work out, that they’d grow up and together, that he’d be her Mr. Right and her Mr. Big. But the writers have shown the unbearable dysfunction of their relationship in such detail, it seems increasingly possible that Hannah and Adam aren’t going to prevail. Is the Jessa and Adam story a detour, or is it a main thoroughfare to the end of the road, which will be next season? I love the thought that “Girls’’ would avoid the guaranteed-love formula, that it would follow through with its generally more realistic and honest approach to twentysomething romance in the 2010s.
By now you can probably tell that I am an Adam and Jessa shipper, that if I wrote fan fiction I would have them together and doing performance art on the streets forevermore. They could be Brooklyn’s bushy, boho birds of a feather, mumblecore’s own Gomez and Morticia Addams. It’s so obvious they are cut from the same cloth; they’re both moody, cryptic, and willfully unpredictable. Perhaps that means that, as Jessa said, a love affair would be a mess: “You know as well as I do, even if we could be together, even if Hannah didn’t exist, that I would destroy you,’’ she told him after they spent a carefree day together. “And you would destroy me.’’ I’d definitely like to find out if that’s true.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewGilbert.
