The Book of Rannells: Girls: Season 2, Episode 4 – “It’s a Shame about Ray” (2013)

This is Andrew Rannells’s last episode of season 2, which gives us Elijah’s rather unceremonious exit to make room for Rannells shooting The New Normal.  There isn’t much of him to speak of, always a bummer, but there’s some interesting stuff going on elsewhere in the episode (a few relationship spoilers.)

To celebrate an essay of hers getting published, Hannah invites most of her friends over for a low-key dinner party.  Or rather, “low-key” is what she envisions – when she invites Marnie, who she’s currently on bad terms with, along with Marnie’s ex and his new girlfriend, it’s not exactly a recipe for chill conversation and good camaraderie.  Also having an awkward dinner is Jessa; I haven’t brought it up before now, but she’s with this wealthy guy from a very different background than her, and she’s subjected here to a meet-the-parents dinner.

It’s pretty much a given that any type of social gathering on Girls is bound to end in disaster, and this episode fits that pattern well enough.  My favorite part of Hannah’s dinner party is the Shoshanna/Ray stuff, in which Shoshanna makes a surprising discovery about their relationship.  And Jessa’s plot is pretty good, even it’s been heretofore-underwritten enough and I’ve been disinterested enough not to have mentioned it in an earlier review.  It’s the sort of storyline we’ve seen a hundred times before, particularly in couples where one is quite a bit more well-to-do and/or straightlaced than the other, but the show does some unexpected things with it, taking a different path to the more usual endpoint.  I really like a speech Jessa has late in the episode, where she says, “I’m going to look 50 when I’m 30,” and she’s going to fat because she’ll “be so full of experiences.”  I like that, that she essentially knows she’s borrowing now from her future but considers it an acceptable trade for living the life she wants.

As I said, we only get a bit of Elijah, a continuation from some of the developments of the last episode to facilitate Rannells’s exit from the show.  As reasons for characters to leave go, it’s not a bad one, and it’s very in keeping with both Elijah and Hannah as established to make the choices they do here.  He leaves us with a few bitchy parting remarks, heading out until The New Normal’s cancelation.

Normally with my actor review projects, I’ll do recommendations twice:  a first impression after the initial episode that actor appears in and a revisit after their last episode.  But then, normally, I do all their episodes for a particular show one after the other, then move onto a new role.  Here, going more chronologically with Rannells’s stage, TV, and film work, that won’t necessarily make sense.  Case in point:  Girls, in which Rannells appeared in all six seasons with different projects sprinkled between each one.  So instead, I’ll make a habit of doing my revisit-recommendation when I get to the end of his first season’s appearances (second season in this case, since it was a late realization,) probably swinging back around one more time for the end.  Anyway, now that I have more Girls write-ups under my belt, here are my recommendations.

Recommend?

In General – A cautious yes, provided you’re okay with tons of sex/swearing and a fair amount of drug use.  While the show can be uneven, it overall falls on the side of entertaining for me.

Andrew Rannells – Without a doubt.  Elijah is very much a supporting character, but Rannells runs away with him.  He’s positively hilarious, and he also displays some nice range whenever he has the opportunity to.