"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Thursday, June 13, 2019

The Book of Rannells: Girls: Season 3, Episode 8 – “Incidentals” (2014)


A reasonably good episode, although a bit of a letdown after the previous one, both for the episode as a whole and for Elijah’s involvement.  Not nearly as much for Andrew Rannells to do here, although he’s still reliably fun.

Lots of work stuff and relationship stuff today.  Adam makes a major breakthrough in his acting career, and while Hannah is excited for him (they’re together right now,) she’s psyched out during an interview with Patti LuPone (Hannah is writing advertorials for a magazine at the moment,) when Patti talks about the havoc a show could potentially wreak on their relationship.  Meanwhile, Jessa is bored out of her mind working at a boutique, which doesn’t put her in the best place to make smart decisions when a guy she knew in rehab comes along, and a run-in with a former coworker has Marnie feeling down about the state of her life.

A few guest stars of note.  In addition to Ms. LuPone, Richard E. Grant plays Jessa’s rehab buddy, Jessica Williams (formerly of The Daily Show) has a recurring role this season as one of Hannah’s coworthers, and the episode also marks the introduction of Desi, a castmate of Adam’s played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach (who more recently appeared as Lieberman on The Punisher.)  LuPone, playing herself, is pretty funny but still feels grounded, not the sort of exaggerated celebrity persona you see on shows like Extras or BoJack Horseman, and Grant’s character plays off of Jessa really well – he also has a fabulous exchange with Shoshanna in one of the best scenes of the episode.

It feels very Hannah to let Patti LuPone get into her head and start stressing about Adam being in this show, but for the moment, she mostly handles that worry in a semi-mature way; the episode ends with a really nice scene between the two of them about it.  Rather than immediately taking her worries out on Adam, she instead channels most of her feelings into being annoyed at Desi, who Adam just met at his callback, crashing Adam’s mini-celebration.  All her friends are instantly taken with him, and it’s fun to watch her mounting irritation at his folk-singer mountain-man vibe.

After getting quite a bit of focus last time, Elijah is more in the background in this episode, taking part of Adam’s celebration.  Still, neither Rannells nor Elijah ever really wastes an opportunity to bring the laughs, so we get some good bits here.  His and Shoshanna’s matching dreamy-eyed stares over Desi are fun, and when Desi inevitably breaks out the guitar, there’s a quick bit of Elijah singing along (way deeper than I’ve ever heard Rannells sing – my guess is Elijah is trying to butch it up a little around Desi?)  Also, apropos of nothing, we get his wonderful delivery on the line.  “I’m not what you’d call a One Tree Hill fan, but I have seen every episode…”

The best Elijah-related bit in this episode is the series of quick scenes of him “advising” Adam about his newfound success, telling him which bars he “has to” go to after shows and rather thirstily fishing for networking contacts into “the Broadway world.”  Watching the series the first time, it didn’t occur to me until this episode that we don’t often see Elijah interact with the other guys, and particularly not with Adam.  I don’t know why, though, because it’s gold.  It’s a good setup, since both of them are performers but they’re such completely different characters, in both their personal and professional lives.  Watching Adam put up with Elijah’s nonsense is great, as is Elijah’s increasing jealousy over the course of their convervation:  I laugh so hard at his last petulant remark, which is too fun to spoil here.

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