Thursday, November 21, 2019

The Book of Rannells: Girls: Season 5, Episode 10 – “I Love You, Baby” (2016)


Season 5 finale – for my money, a fairly uneven episode, but I do come away liking it overall.  Elijah doesn’t have as much focus as he’s had lately, but Andrew Rannells is still really strong in his scenes.

Hannah attempts to ignore a visit from her parents while preparing for The Moth, a story slam contest; while she’s not consciously trying to get back into writing, the night’s theme is jealousy, and she has a lot of Adam/Jessa-related thoughts about that.  Marnie invites Ray to join her and Desi on a tour capitalizing on a bit of recent success, leaving Shoshanna to handle the “save the coffee shop” stuff with Ray’s boss Hermie (a recurring character on the series played by Colin Quinn.)  Adam is angry that Jessa keeps dwelling on the effect of their relationship on her friendship with Hannah, and it leads to a savage fight between them.

I’ll start with the stuff I was more “meh” on.  Marnie, Ray, and Desi are so-so, although I laughed at a scene between Desi and a groupie in which he admits that he’s on her fansite for him “all the time.”  There’s some interesting stuff in Jessa and Adam’s argument, but when it devolves into rage on both sides, I’m not really sure where the show is going with it.  What are they trying to show, and do they think they accomplished it?

The rebranding of the coffee shop is neat, and Shoshanna and Hermie make for a fun duo; they have a really nice scene together in the ending montage.  And with Hannah, while her story continues to make me side-eye her writing, I like the ideas she expresses with it and the emotional process she describes going through.  Also, I cracked up at her condescendingly trying to lecture her parents on endorphins when she doesn’t even know how to pronounce the word, and I liked her anecdote about sounding “like a fucking newsie” in her awkward attempts to be cordial around Adam and Jessa.

I won’t get into the specifics of it, but Elijah is going through some stuff in this episode.  It’s never mentioned what that is, although we the audience know even if other characters don’t.  He has some funny bits with Hannah at the story slam, but I particularly like two other scenes he has, one with each of Hannah’s parents.

Elijah first appears in the episode while Hannah is out with her mom (her mom having decided that Hannah can’t be trusted to pick her story slam outfit on her own,) and he’s absolutely wired.  Hannah’s dad, who’s back at the apartment, immediately sees that something’s up, and Elijah valiantly, hopelessly tries to act like he’s completely fine before falling into a ramble of dramatically over-the-top rueful nihilism.  The scene features such gems as, “I need your bosom,” (to Hannah’s dad, against which to rest his weary head,) and “The rich keep getting richer while I turn to dust on Bleeker Street, you know?”  And later, Elijah and Hannah’s mom bond during a drinking-and-commiserating session.  Obviously, Rannells does great work bringing the emotion forward in these scenes while still keeping the humor, but I really love how he plays off of Peter Scolario and Becky Ann Baker, who play Hannah’s parents.  Scenes like this show how well Rannells plays Elijah’s age – whereas most of the main cast play characters roughly their own age, Elijah is at least seven years younger than Rannells.  But I believe it.  It’s not just that Rannells looks young, which he definitely does, but his acting is a big part of it, too, and it really comes through in scenes where Elijah is more vulnerable.  Here, being vulnerable and looking to his best friend’s parents for a little security?  Rannells plays it perfectly.

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