The Book of Rannells: Girls: Season 6, Episode 1 – “All I Ever Wanted” (2017)

And here we are on the final season of Girls.  This supersized season premiere isn’t quite a bottle episode, but after a few quick establishing scenes with the gang, we mostly just check in with them here and there while keeping the main focus on Hannah on a very begrudging adventure.

Having gotten back into writing, Hannah is hired by a magazine to do a piece on a surf camp in Montauk for wealthy suburbanites.  She’s chosen expressly because “her whole vibe” is so antithetical to both surfing and wealthy suburbanites, which turns out to be even truer than the magazine anticipated, and were it not for a particularly-fetching surf instructor, she’d probably scarcely venture out from her room.  In other news, Ray is in search of a new place to crash when Marnie doesn’t want him staying out at her place; he technically lives with Adam and Jessa, but he’d much prefer Shoshanna’s apartment, another place Marnie doesn’t want him staying.

Hannah at a yuppie surf camp is everything you’d imagine it would be.  It’s all here:  her penchant for random nudity, her gangly lack of athleticism, and her general lack of enthusiasm.  The shot of her crouching on the beach and scowling while she sulkily eats a sandwich kills me.  Of course, there’s also her connection with the uber-chill Paul-Loius, played by Riz Ahmed.  He’s essentially the anti-Hannah, and he makes it his mission for her to actually enjoy herself while she’s there, even if that enjoyment doesn’t involve actual surfing.  It’s an undemanding role, but Ahmed plays it with a laidback charm (and gets to rap a little, though it’s during a loud party scene and you can’t hear him very distinctly.)

There’s some nice stuff tied up in the time Hannah spends with Paul-Louis.  While hanging out with him, she realizes that all her friends in New York “define themselves by what they hate” rather than what they love, and she starts to think about how much energy it takes to be above everything all the time.

Not much to say about the scenes back in the city, although Ray has some amusing bits.  I love his disgusted description of Jessa and Adam to Marnie (they’re always reheating fish,) and while a later scene between him and Shoshanna has them so in-sync that it feels over-the-top for the sake of making Marnie jealous, they’re still amusing together.

Just one Elijah scene, which, after all the screentime he got in season 5, feels like not nearly enough Rannells.  It’s still funny, though.  While Hannah packs for her trip, he very politely requests to use Hannah’s room for a small orgy – you know, for Broadway-related “networking” purposes.  He also turns up his nose at Marnie’s suggestion to take an acting class instead, and his reasoning involves someone they knew from college “who was always gaining and losing weight for a role, and that role was always chorus.”  Ha!