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

Thursday, February 27, 2020

The Book of Rannells: Girls: Season 6, Episode 7 – “The Bounce” (2017)


If season 5 is the only one to feature an ongoing centric arc for Elijah, “The Bounce” is the only episode in which Elijah takes the A-plot.  This is an Elijah episode all the way, and it is glorious, absolutely hilarious with nice dramatic flourishes here and there.  It’s an episode that proves there’s no reason a character like Elijah couldn’t be a protagonist instead of a supporting character (a few Elijah-related spoilers, including one from last season.)

Elijah is getting more serious about acting, and his anxious preparations for an open call (for a workshop of White Men Can’t Jump:  The Musical, natch) are thrown for a loop when Dill shows up unexpectedly at Elijah and Hannah’s apartment.  Elijah hasn’t seen Dill since the tail-end of last season, and Dill now comes seeking a hideout in the middle of a PR scandal.  With Hannah back at the apartment “watching” Dill, Elijah heads to his audition with thoughts of his ex swirling in his head.  Meanwhile, Marnie gets a wakeup call as she tries to deal with some financial issues.

In the last episode, Marnie was still very much in “everything wrong with me is someone else’s fault” mode, and she starts out in a very similar place here, but this episode takes her through a pretty humbling experience, and refreshingly, she’s forced to reckon with the part she’s taken in her own problems.  (It also features an amusing couple of burst bubbles from Marnie’s personal mythology.)

I enjoy the scenes with Hannah and Dill at the apartment.  She at least partially does her due diligence as Elijah’s friend, showing loyalty to Elijah in her chilliness towards Dill and texting Elijah his requested updates on all Dill does there.  But this part of the plot also gets into what’s going on with both Hannah and Dill, and the two end up weirdly connecting over their respective woes.

But let’s be real:  this episode is all about Elijah.  It took over five-and-a-half seasons, but this is the big one.  Just the audition stuff alone is a goldmine.  As Andrew Rannells has explained, Lena Dunham and co. mined his own past auditioning experiences for the comic beats of this story, and it’s heavily based on his trials and tribulations auditioning for the basketball-themed Lysistrata Jones.  Elijah’s audition song is as phenomenal as it is ridiculously thirsty (does it make sense for Elijah to sing that well?  I don’t know, but I’m okay with it,) his fumbly dancing is awesome, and everything that follows the introduction of basketballs into the audition is full-on hilarious.  In the midst of all this top-shelf comedy, though, there are also a number of nice, subtle character beats, particularly in Rannells’s wordless reactions to the indifferently-distracted casting directors as Elijah sings, dances, and dribbles (well, tries to) for his life.  Even though Elijah has talked for years about wanting to “break into” Broadway, we see that this is why he hasn’t done much of anything about it until now:  because it matters so much to him, and it’s hard for him to watch it matter so little to the people who can decide his fate.

All that on its own would be an embarrassment of riches for an Elijah A-plot, but then you throw in Dill?  The undercurrent that’s been following Elijah through this season have been Dill’s words to him when they broke up, that he needed someone less “aimless,” and now, when Elijah is finally taking an active, tangible step to make something happen in his life, who shows up at his door?  It’s Elijah’s feelings about Dill’s words to him, it’s his thoughts about how they broke up, it’s his lingering feelings for Dill, and it’s his own fears of putting himself out there professionally and not being good enough – all that is what’s swirling in his head as he arrives at his audition, a personal/romantic/career crisis all rolled into one.

The stuff with Dill is the more dramatic part of Elijah’s plot here, but just as the audition story mixes in some good drama, the Dill story includes some great humor as well (I think this episode might have more genuine laugh-out-loud moments for me than any other in the series.)  I love their exchange about Elijah’s “basketball outfit” for his audition, and there’s this spectacular moment where Elijah drags Hannah out into the hallway to whisper about Dill and he’s so worked up that he just sort of flails himself against the closed door.  While I can’t say I’ve ever done that or have ever been in the particular situation that causes Elijah to do it, I can pinpoint exactly what that feeling is and what would make someone want to do that.  Rannells is unquestionably fantastic, and this is an episode that recognizes that wholeheartedly.

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