The Book of Rannells: Girls: Season 5, Episode 9 – “Love Stories” (2016)

A really strong episode.  Several engaging plots, great guest stars, and a particularly-good showcase scene for Andrew Rannells.  Really, that’s just about everything I could want in an episode of Girls.  A couple more relationship spoilers.

Hannah is at a moment of transition; she broke up with Fran in the last episode, and she’s also decided to quit her job at the school.  This is the state of mind she’s in when she runs into Tally, an old classmate from college who’s gained all kinds of success as a writer.  Shoshanna recruits herself to help Ray deal with his feud with the hipster coffee shop across the street.  Elijah makes a move to convince Dill that their relationship should be something more.  And Marnie, who’s been dealing with a divorce from Desi while still collaborating with him as a music partner, finds her feelings for Ray resurfacing.

I pretty much like all the Hannah stuff.  In episode 8, which I didn’t review, she’s colossally immature about breaking up with Fran, but she handles their parting at the top of this episode much more rationally, and she has the decency to quit her job during the summer so the school won’t be scrambling for a replacement.  And once she runs into Tally, everything gets pretty great.  Tally, who’s played by Jenny Slate, has appeared on the show once before, and whereas there, it was all about Hannah’s jealousy, the two make a great connection in this episode.  They’re a lot of fun together, they get real with one another (I love it when Hannah discloses something painful she’s going through and Tally just hugs her, saying, “It hurt me to hear that,”) and learning more about Tally’s life gives Hannah perspective on her own.  Basically, this is just the episode Hannah needed.

I love everything about Shoshanna teaming up to help Ray.  They’re always a fun duo anyway, and the scene of her “infiltrating” the hipster place to gain intel on the enemy is a blast.  Plus, her idea to save Ray’s coffee shop is pretty sharp – it’s neat to see Shoshanna put her marketing skills to good use.

Lots of Elijah goodness here.  After being varying levels of horrified and unhelpful as Marnie tells him about a dream she had about Ray (very funny,) it’s back to his plot with Dill.  It features a really fun scene of him making preparations, i.e. searching for the outfit that says what he wants it to.  Along the way, he has great interactions with the salesperson helping him out, and it ends on the fabulous line, “Let’s Pretty Woman this shit, D’Emilia!”  Also, I love how gladly Elijah tells anyone and everyone that he’s dating “a well-known TV personality.”

As for the big scene with Dill, all of it is really well done.  I’m reminded of his attempted confrontation with Pal in season 3, in that Elijah’s insecurity and nerves are all over the scene, although he holds his ground better here.  It’s still a bit “Elijah will be Elijah” (really, Elijah?  You’re “the only person” who would be completely honest with Dill and love him solely for him?), but overall, it shows an unexpected amount of maturity from him.  He’s open about his own feelings before trying to show why he thinks a more committed relationship between them would be to Dill’s benefit as well.  Just fantastic acting from Rannells, who knocks it out of the park here.

Something that I find interesting about this arc is how self-contained it is.  Other than a pre-date conversation with Ray back in episode 4, we haven’t seen Elijah say one word about Dill to any other regular on the show, and in fact, until his walk-and-talk with Marnie today, that Ray scene was the last time we even saw him with another main character.  Every other scene he’s had has been with Dill and/or one-off characters exclusive to that plot.  On the one hand, it demonstrates a faith in Rannells that Elijah can anchor his own plot without any other main cast members in it (Rannells has said in interviews that he specifically requested the chance to have a romantic subplot, and he’s also revealed that he, as “the only gay” on set that day, laid out the blocking for Elijah and Dill’s sex scene.)  On the other hand, though, it makes it feel like the show only knows how to make a storyline about Elijah if none of the other characters are around, like you couldn’t put Hannah or Marnie into a scene with him and have them be his supporting characters for a scene or two.  I still haven’t entirely decided what I think about this.