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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