The Book of Rannells: Girls: Season 1, Episode 10 – “She Did” (2012)

Season 1 finale.  Lots of things happen, but most importantly to me, this episode sets up an in for Elijah to be much more involved in the show – yes, please!

Jessa invites all her friends to a “secret party,” where she blows everything up in an unexpected way (not that Jessa blowing everything up is unexpected, but her friends are certainly blindsided by what goes on here.)  Various things come to a head at the party, rather like they did in the “Crackcident” episode, and this time, pretty much everyone comes out the other side in a different place from where they started.

It’s going to be hard to discuss what goes on without getting too much into spoilers, but there are big developments on a couple of major ships.  I can’t tell to what degree Hannah is intentionally or subconsciously self-sabotaging vs. just blundering into drama she didn’t plan on.  Either way, she doesn’t expect the fallout she gets from that, and it hits hard.  Shoshanna, who generally receives less screentime than the other main characters, starts to cement herself as my favorite of the “girls” somewhere around this point – she’s had some seriously funny stuff, and I just like her weird nervous energy.  In this episode, someone tells her, “You vibrate on a very strange frequency,” and it’s a surprisingly sincere, albeit odd, compliment.  The episode also features Bobby Moynihan from SNL, which is fun.

And then there’s fantastic Elijah.  As a fellow guest at the secret party, he’s on the receiving end of a patching-up from Marnie and then offers one to Hannah.  As in episode 3, he starts out cordial in a way that, by now, we know really isn’t him, but like before, that only lasts so long.  This time, though, it doesn’t devolve into sniping and personal digs.  Instead, we get our first full-on look at the weird way that Hannah and Elijah just click, which is what paves the way for Elijah’s increased presence in the series (sort of – he still won’t be a full-fledged major cast member until later, as we’ll discuss when we get to season 2.)  In another situation, I might complain about two characters having a huge blow-up and then, seeing each other again for the first time a handful of episodes later, quickly settling into a comfortable routine only one or two steps away from being self-absorbed besties.  But, weirdly, it works.  It really does.  I perhaps ought to question the 180 Hannah and Elijah do compared to the last time they saw each other, but Andrew Rannells’s friendship chemistry with Lena Dunham fits so well that I find myself just nodding along.  I buy it – it works.

And Rannells’s delivery is just the best.  He has plenty of lines that aren’t all that inherently funny themselves, but the way he says them is spectacular.  I love his description of the communal bathroom at his living situation – “It’s like, murderers, and like, junkies, and girls who huff.”  And after Elijah and Hannah handily demonstrate their ability to steamroll themselves into trouble with others, they blithely move on from it with Hannah giving a complimentary remark about Elijah’s boyfriend, and he tosses off the most wonderful, “I know, right?  And rich as fuck.”  I know the whole “I’d watch ‘em read the phone book” thing is hyperbole, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Rannells could find a way to make it interesting, at least for a couple pages.