Girls season 5 episode 1 review: Lena Dunham and the gang still have a lot of growing up to do

The 30-minute episode, although enjoyable and laughs aplenty, crammed too much in and felt a bit messy

Hannah gets ready for Marnie's wedding, but fireworks are sure to ensue (HBO)

It had to be big, it had to be busy, it had to be wacky. But maybe it was a bit too much.

Lena Dunham and her crew are back for Girls, Season 5 on HBO, the hotly anticipated penultimate series, leaving less than 20 episodes for the twenty-somethings to figure out their lives.

The first episode takes place at Marnie and Desi’s wedding in the country. Marnie Michaels (Allison Williams) remains neurotic and controlling, and fiancé Desi (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is reliably bohemian with a constant touch of marijuana in his veins.

In fact, all of the characters are just like their old selves five years on. Jessa (Jemima Kirke) is selfish and blunt, Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) babbles away and has a Japanese hair style, and Hannah's (Dunham) self-absorbed nature is welcomed like an old friend – “She’s [Marnie’s] going to be married – to someone she barely knows.”

“She barely knows him?” her boyfriend Fran (Jake Lacy) asks.

“No I barely know him, you’re not even listening to what I’m saying,” she replies.

Charmingly kooky ex-boyfriend Adam (Adam Driver) is awkwardly inserted into the plot, popping out from behind a door and saying "hello". He has a stiff but brilliant exchange with new boyfriend Fran, and says: “I have evolved”, as if creator Lena Dunham is insisting the show has moved on with time, although it doesn’t feel like it.

Hanna’s gay ex-boyfriend Elijah (Andrew Rannells) and Desi are meditating in their underpants, alongside a black man called Wolfie – at least a slight improvement on the show’s lack of ethnic diversity.

“They’re transcended, they should be back any minute,” chips in Ray, sitting like a God in his brown leather armchair, simultaneously disapproving and amused by everything he sees. There is no mention of his new political career, which had to be one of the highlights of the previous season.

In just 30 minutes character development might be stagnant but there are plenty of talking points. Desi gets cold feet before the wedding, Adam kisses Jessa – we got a hint of this in season 4 when they bonded at Alcoholics Anonymous - Hannah rages against Marnie’s freakish control over her “wedding vision”, and takes out her frustration by having rumpus sex with Fran in the car outside.

Then BOOM. The big moment: Desi has been engaged eight times. Does Marnie know that? His cold feet turns to attempted suicide in the nearby lake, floating like a crucified Jesus among pondweed and pouring rain. “I don’t deserve her!” he cries out in anguish.

It falls to Ray to save him, who swims into the pond in his suit.

“Love is about sacrifice and destiny,” he tells him as they both bob in the green water. His heroic act is elevated by the fact that Marnie is “the love of his life” - probably the largest character turnaround of the five seasons, as Ray had always been brutally saracastic and aloof.

Despite the unstructured chaos, there are genuine laugh out loud moments, one being when Marnie negotiates with the make-up artist for the big day: “Let’s do, like, a Ralph Lauren and Joni Mitchell – artistic but also with a nod to my cultural heritage, which is white Christian woman.”

When it all goes wrong, the make-up artist screams: “Sophia Bush, grateful. You, twats!”

Despite the plentiful laughs and plot twists, the episode had the end result of feeling like a bomb had gone off – the entire cast’s storylines, eccentricities, fall outs and make ups were crammed in, with constant witty one-liners firing off like shards of leftover shrapnel. Rather than the weaving narrative of earlier seasons, this episode felt too bitty for the viewer to re-connect with any of the characters.

Loyal viewers may think longingly to the very first episode five years ago - the argument Hannah has with her parents at a restaurant as she persuades them not to cut off her allowance. It felt real, grounded in the storyline of a young, struggling intern in Brooklyn. Now, the characters are verging on their late twenties and are still in limbo, but the narrative is less subtle and more wacky like "Broad City".

If this season turns out to be less convincing than earlier years, there will be less chance for real emotion or genuine heartbreak. (Who could forget the moment Adam said he no longer felt the same way about Hannah?)

Having said that, viewers will definitely be tuning in for the rest of the season. Saying goodbye to these familiar faces will be hard at the end of season 6. It feels like the end of an era, for them and for everyone, and it has to be witnessed, no matter how disappointing.