Warning: This article contains spoilers.
Well, it’s the end of Season 3 of “Girls,” and the only character who’s really making it work in New York is not a girl at all but Hannah (Lena Dunham)’s gay ex-boyfriend Elijah (Andrew Rannells), who’s perfectly comfortable inserting himself into Broadway cast photos, was recently drooled over by Patti LuPone, and has a clear-eyed view of exactly how all the titular characters are screwing up. His advice to Marnie (Allison Williams) upon her news of kissing musical partner Desi (Ebon Moss-Bachrach): “I have to say I don’t see that ending well for you.”
Hannah, meanwhile, receives a deus ex machina that’ll solve her foundering relationship and recently-unemployed status: an acceptance from the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Who knew she’d found time to apply to grad schools in between working at GQ’s “pun sweatshop” and obsessing about Adam (Adam Driver)’s absence from their apartment?
The turbulent episode was a strong end to a stronger season than the previous one, in which we’ve seen all four main characters slowly develop into more defined versions of themselves. Hannah wrestled with a dip into the corporate-writing world and couldn’t suppress her urge to subvert it; Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) finally broke through her façade of type-A ditziness (with a spectacular Hamptons rant at her self-centered friends); Marnie calcified into an increasingly amoral opportunist; and Jessa (Jemima Kirke) delved into her junkie tendencies but rescued herself before it was too late (though, one worries, it could be too late for her temporarily-suicidal new employer).
In “Two Plane Rides,” tonight’s episode, we also got to check in with Gaby Hoffman’s character, Caroline Sackler, who’s shacked up with Jon Glaser’s skeevy drug dealer (whom she deems highly “integrated”) downstairs from Hannah and Adam — and, apparently, pregnant. We didn’t see enough of her mentally-careening character this season, but here’s hoping she’ll remain down there for the next season.
Shoshanna finds out she isn’t graduating, due to a failing grade — and is then accosted by Marnie, who reacts to this news, predictably, by blithely confessing to sleeping with Ray. And Jessa is slowly coerced into helping her wheelchair-bound artist boss, Beadie (Louise Lasser), kill herself with pills.
Everything comes together on Adam’s opening night of “Major Barbara” on Broadway, where Hannah picks the arguably terrible time of minutes before curtain to tell her boyfriend she’s been accepted to grad school in the Midwest. (Counter-point: She’s elated at the news and she never sees Adam, because he’s living at Ray’s, so her opportunities for conveying the news are limited.) True to narcissistic form, she then falls asleep on Elijah’s shoulder during Adam’s big scene.
Marnie, visiting Desi in HIS dressing room, presents him with the cringe-worthy gift of a James Taylor guitar pick and is rewarded with the kiss she’s been angling for since first seeing him play one of his cheesy songs. When she runs into his girlfriend Clementine (Natalie Morales) in the theater restroom, things go very differently from their meeting at the bar last episode: “You’re a sad, pathetic mess,” Clementine spits at her, vowing that there will be no recording an album now. Marnie’s predatory gaze at the couple fighting outside on the sidewalk, though, says otherwise.
Jessa and Shoshanna, meanwhile, are both left in seriously weakened positions: Shosh literally begging Ray to take her back, and Jessa frantically dialing 911 after Beadie downs a lethal dose of pills, then decides she doesn’t want to die.
And Hannah is once again on her own, after being yelled at by an irate Adam post-show. We leave her in her apartment, alone, holding the Iowa letter in her hands with a smile spreading across her face. Tough to say how a departure to the Great Plains would fly in this New York-centric show, but Season 4 is a go, so plans must be afoot. Perhaps there’s a Greenpoint West just waiting to be anointed out there.